Thank You Athena!

Athena was in Africa when we moved and she sent us this cool Kuba cloth
for our new house. It's made of raffia I think. I hung it in the stairway
and it fit perfectly. Hopefully I haven't hung it sideways or upside down.

Berry Mania

Sami and I knew we wanted more edible plants in our yard. He especially wanted lowbush blueberries similar to the kind that grow in Finland. I really wanted currants (good on cereal and in cookies and by themselves too) and I know they grow fairly well here in Oregon.

Two weeks ago when were at the Home and Garden Show, we found a company just south of here that has a great catalog full of all kinds of fruits from around the world.

So, Sami and I went through the catalog thinking we wanted one of everything. Of course we had to decide what could fit in our yard given the light in different areas and the existing trees and shrubs. Sami also wanted cloudberries, but this seems to be the one type of berry that the company does not sell. Yesterday we placed our order.

The Final List

• Lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idea) Red Pearl
  
• 2 types of Lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) Burgundy and Brunswick
  
• Everbearing strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa) Seascape
• Black currant (Ribes nigrum) Blackdown
• Black currant hybrid (Ribes nigrum x uva-crispa) Jostaberry - this is a black currant / gooseberry cross
• Red currant (Ribes rubrum) Red Jade
• White currant (Ribes rubrum) Swedish White
• 2 types of Sea Berry* aka Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) - Baikail, Baikail Ruby, + a male plant.
• Arctic Beauty Kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta) - Viktor (female) and Pasha (male)
  
• Dwarf Pie Cherry (Prunus cerasus) Northstar

* Sea Berry is Tyrnimarja in Finnish. The varieties we've picked are dwarf ones that will be more like bushes than trees.

Today we drove down to pick up the order. Of course they had a display out front with various sorts of plants and Sami realized he needed a Bay tree (Laurus nobilis). After that we stopped by wal-mart and ended up buying a couple more rhubarb roots (Sami believes there is no such thing as too much rhubarb) and some primroses.

Spring is Coming!

We're starting to get a bit of color in our yard. I love these flame-like tulips with the great striped foliage we have in a couple pots on our patio. Our pink-mini tulips are brightening up the place too. Sami's mom and I visited the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm the spring before last and she bought a pot of these very cute tulips for us. Unfortunately the bulbs tried to bloom in our garage a couple weeks ago before we could get them in the ground, but they seem to be doing ok now. We didn't plant the iris, so it's a bit of a mystery. This one sprouted in a half empty pot.
Last weekend Sami and I worked on cleaning up the yard. We don't yet know what these vines are, but we pulled last year's growth from between our siding and pruned them back drastically. We also added new soil to the planter. Our little old lady next door neighbor Shirley says they are "beautiful purple flowers".

Our new neighbor also informed us that the trees near our patio are not prune trees as we thought, but a fig tree and a pear tree. She says it is too bad that they haven't been taken care of and the fruit is wormy - We're hoping she's a bit of a pessimist and that it will be ok. We'll just have to wait and see.

Shirley also had stories of roof leaks, fires and other disasters. She's owned the house next door since it was new in the 60's. She told Sami that he looked Irish. She also misunderstood his name and called him "Stubby".

My creeping rosemary is also in bloom. It doesn't grow very quickly so we don't usually use this one for cooking, but the flowers are really pretty. Our rhubarb plants are starting to grow too. We'll have some really nice pies later this spring. I tried to plant some bulbs between the pavers in the little wall in the backyard but I guess I'll have to figure out a new location for them. Some little critter decided that those bulbs just couldn't stay.

Not a spam blog - really

Now that I'm finally well enough to start doing things worthy of posting, I can't post! Saturday, when I tried to write, I got this message:

WARNING

This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.

Save your post as a draft or click here for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.

So, of course I clicked:

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on March 4, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

And clicked again:

What Are Spam Blogs?

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

So, that's it, I guess I'm "irrelevant, repetitive and nonsensical". And that was before I posted "Garden Love Rock". Oh, and I have a large number of links all pointing to one site. Yeah, uhh, that would be my photo hosting site. Of course blogger should know that though since they are set up to use that site.

Garden Love Rock

Well, my case of the flu was much worse than I previously thought, and I ended up out of work and school for the entire week. Today was the first day that I managed to even get as far as the door.

After my class this morning, Sami and I decided to pull up some weeds and plant some bulbs. He was furiously digging and I was breaking up the clumps and pulling out the weeds and their roots when I found this cute rock. I wonder how long it's been there? Anyway, we planted a bunch of crocuses, tulips, and a few daffodils. Also some parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (yes, exactly those four) from the apartment complex that we brought with us.