Ready for insulation

I'm also ready for my nervous breakdown. I don't know why, but this upgrade-the-electrical-and-insulate-the-house project has broken me. Oh wait, I know why: it's really freaking expensive and disruptive. Again, I would never survive a full-scale remodel.

I'm going to apologize in advance for how whiny I'm being. Break out your tiny violins.

I mentioned a while back that Greg was going to invest in the house and pay for electrical upgrades and insulation, but that changed. Everything is fine with the two of us but it left me scrambling to apply for financing and it annihilated my savings to pay the electrician. As expected, everything took a bit longer than expected, if that makes sense.

The financing took place with Umpqua Bank with a really obnoxious man who kept asking, "No husband? You're doing this by yourself?" Then he slowly explained how a checking account works and what would happen if I "just had to have that diamond ring" and overdrafted my account. I am not making this shit up.

Have I mentioned that I've been having insomnia so I cut alcohol out of my diet? It's like I'm not thinking sometimes.

Anyway. Our electrician finished all the work in the attic! Instead of wires hanging out of our living room ceiling we have this super cheap Ikea fixture.

I'm not sure this is an upgrade.

I want something beautiful and dangling in here eventually but I have no money right now. So a cheap Ikea fixture it is! Yay, throwaway culture. The good news is that my electrician redesigned the wiring so things make a modicum of sense. Everything's up to code! If we die in a house fire it probably won't be due to sketchy wiring!

I also had him put in a new receptacle in the hallway so we can better see how badly we need to vacuum.

I grabbed these $39 schoolhouse fixtures from Lamps Plus, then went into a shame spiral over how they were made in China and I should have bought real Schoolhouse Electric fixtures and supported a local company.

We really need to vacuum.

Then Greg came out and said, "I think the scale is wrong and they're too big for the space," which made me start worrying about that. But you know what? I'd rather they be too big than too small. And everyone is going to be distracted by the fact that we need to vacuum so badly in here, and then they'll be noticing that our rug is the wrong length for the hallway. So it doesn't matter.

If you need me I'll be here, waiting for my waaahmbulance and reminding myself that things could be worse. I'm not destitute, nor do I live in a country where I could be punished for being a woman and driving a car. I can put up with stupid loan officers. Also: my mother sent me this:

Reference

She's the best.

And lo, there was hyperbole!

Guys, these lights almost killed us.

I came home from the gym last week after attending one of those classes with an oily bohunk who makes you lunge and lift and squat, all the while yelling, "faster! faster!" while he flexes his enormous, hairless muscles at you. It felt like I was part of a movie montage where the nerds try to get in shape but they're hopelessly flabby.

Anyway. I got home from the gym and the electrician had wired up the receptacles we installed and Greg was like, "Should we hang up the lights now?"

I was like, "Um, of COURSE we should hang those right now. But let me go throw up first and then I think I'm supposed to drink a glass of egg yolks."

There were a series of errors, beginning with the fact that the sun was going down, so we were working by headlamp. Next: Greg was hangry. He's a very sweet man until he gets hungry and then he gets mean. Third: At some point I dropped one of the nuts that attaches the fixture to the ceiling and it rolled away to parts unknown, laughing most likely. Remember how Greg was hangry? This was not our best moment. And we couldn't install the last light fixture.

Also: at some point I misplaced one of the Edison bulbs that came with the light fixture and we didn't have a replacement. We spent 20 minutes tearing the house apart looking for it.

I went and took a shower, during which time Greg located the missing nut! I came out from the shower and we finished the last light installation. Thank freaking goodness.

Nine hours after we started this project I flipped the breaker back on and hit the brand new dimmer switch . . . and nothing happened. Sonofabitch.

There was nothing to be done except go to dinner (at 9:30! so European!) and bemoan our lack of a proper reveal. We assumed the problem was in the dimmer switch, since our electrician seems to know what he's doing. After dinner Greg decided to swap out the new dimmer switch with the old one and voila! it freaking worked. FINALLY.

We were missing a bulb but it was still pretty glorious. To celebrate I promptly got a migraine that lasted four days.

But I'm fine now! And lights! Such pretty lights! Such pretty holes in the ceiling that need to be patched! Boy, I don't feel like doing that at all!

But if I've learned anything from movie montages it's that my muscles will soon be huge, I will get the girl, and you will find me either yelling Adwian!Adwian!* or singing We Are the Champions with my buddies** at the end of all this.

I love movie references. I love lamp***. The end.

*see: Rocky.
**see: Revenge of the Nerds.
***see: Anchorman.

This is why we can't have nice things

The other I day woke after sleeping poorly, went to work for nine hours, went to the gym, gave a quick garden tour to a friend's parents, ran to a class a different friend was giving, ran home and ate dinner at 9:30pm, then I poured myself a glass of wine and got into bed with my iPad (and Greg).

Then I knocked the glass of wine, of which I hadn't drank a drop, onto the bed, soaking the white duvet, the pillows, the sheets, the rug, the wall, etc, with red wine.

So if I ever stop blogging for a while and you wonder, "What's Heather up to?" I'm probably doing laundry. Thank goodness for bleach; everything came clean but I'm considering purchasing wine sippy cups.

Have a wonderful weekend!

My favorite plant in the garden . . . this week

I feel a little silly naming this week's favorite plant. It's like admitting that you find holding chubby, adorable babies who don't cry much to be awesome. Who doesn't like those things? It's easy.

And yet my favorite plant this week in my garden is my Colocasia esculenta 'Black Coral'. It's big and beautiful and easy to grow (it just wants lots of water). The biggest leaf is almost 2' long.

The inky purple coloring is fantastic, too. The stats, per Plant Delights:

Hardy zones 7b-10
Sun or part-sun
42" max height.

I was skeptical about this one when I planted in May because it looked so sad. Luckily it got down to business once the weather warmed.

May: newly planted and cat-proofed

My Colocasia 'Coffee Cups' isn't so bad either.

My Favorite Plant in the Garden this Week is hosted by Loree at Danger Garden. Be sure to check out her pick this week: Hedychium coccineum 'Tara'.

I louuuve it

Scott recently turned me on to Carol Klein's wonderful BBC series Life in a Cottage Garden. BBC gardening shows are completely unlike the gardening shows we have in the U.S. They feature actual gardeners instead of landscape architects who are more concerned with your hardscaping and where to place your lavender plants.

Carol Klein is wonderfully goofy, exclaiming over discoveries in her garden, lamenting dead plants, then immediately and unapologetically finding a replacement. It's so wonderful to see her running around in January in a ratty motorcycle jacket, dirty fingernails digging through her compost (pronounced COMpawst) heap. She would never get on American TV, which is a shame. She's muddy and a little bit crazy, like most gardeners.

I learned so much about plant propagation just from the first episode. She inspired me to try propagating some of my plants, like my Echium candicans 'Star of Madeira' and my 'Little Honey' Oakleaf Hydrangea.

Hydrangea quercifolia 'Little Honey'

I took two different approaches with the hydrangea: layering (which I learned about from Ricki) and cuttings tucked into "some nice gritty COMpawst." Hopefully they'll all take and I'll have some to share and some to tuck into the beds. It's such a small bright thing, why not make more? They don't look super great right now, what with our heavy rain and humidity. I'm hoping they rebound.

I'm not sure the echium cuttings will take but there's no harm in trying. I love that Carol takes cuttings of her tender plantings to her greenhouse, just in case the mother plant doesn't make it through the winter. So smart!

This spring was my first real foray into seed starting and I had mixed results. The Amsonia hubrichtii seeds from Nan Ondra sprouted and I've potted them up in the hope that they'll be transplanting size next spring. I had one lone Rudbeckia maxima seedling that I coddled and babied until I realized it was a weed. I felt so dumb.

When I started gardening I'd read gardening blogs and despair at the unending list of things those gardeners were doing: mulching, pinching back, deadheading, weeding, fertilizing (with what sounded like a different one for every plant!), pruning, thinning, collecting seeds, weeding, propagating . . . I thought I'd never have a nice garden because I didn't have time for all that. Every year I manage to add something new to my routine; this year I started deadheading things and it doesn't take much time or energy. And if I forget it's okay, too. Everything builds from year to year and you get to the point where you don't feel so much like you're behind the eight ball. I mean, spring will always be crazy and my garden will always have things needing doing, but I actually fertilized my bamboo (and that weed I thought was Rudbeckia) this year! Go me.

Are there any other wonderful gardening shows I'm missing out on? I'm looking forward to spending time this winter tucked under a blanket, watching them.

Plaster dust does nothing to cover gray hair, just FYI

Whenever I take photos of my dining room (which isn't all that often) I try to crop out the light fixtures. 

They are ugly and utilitarian and they make a terrible humming noise if you try to dim them.

Terrible photos, ahoy!

I never noticed that they're not even aligned, to boot. It took cutting holes in the ceiling for me to notice this.

Greg (an engineer) was like, "How have you never noticed that those lights aren't aligned?" and I was like, "Oh, I don't know, I've just been exploring the wonder of the natural world and worrying about bumblebees. God."

Except in reality I've been watching The Bachelorette and playing The Simpsons Tapped Out on my iPad. You know, the important things in life.

ANYWAY.

I got to use the hole saw to punch those beautiful holes in the ceiling. I wear glasses, which I thought would protect me from the falling debris but I ended up with two eyes full of plaster crud, which was awful. Our electrician went and grabbed his safety goggles for me, but I couldn't wear them with my glasses so I had to operate the hole saw blind, basically. I qualify as legally blind without corrective lenses, so I'd like a medal for getting three perfect holes in the ceiling (Greg was in the attic) without any blood loss.

Greg is in here somewhere

You have not lived until you've passed tools back and forth to your love through a hole in the ceiling while trying to discern what the other is saying.

Mumble mumble barn owls.
THERE'S AN OWL IN THE ATTIC?!?
I said I needed a drill bit! Focus, Heather.

The house was a mess and it took multiple showers to get the plaster out of my hair, but we got the electrical boxes installed and they are ready to be wired.

This was all a walk in the park compared to picking out light fixtures. I don't think Greg and I would ever survive a full-scale remodel and all the decisions that come with it, unless Jimmy Carter was involved. We finally found one single light fixture that neither of us hated, based on this picture:

Greg worked some Photoshop magic to mock this up:

I thought they were too far apart, so then we switched it to this:

But the attic beams conspired against us, so the final placement is somewhere between the two. Hopefully our electrician will be finishing up the attic work soon so we can ditch the old lights, patch the ceiling, and hang the new lights.

Grody carpeting, I'm coming for you next.

I feel so much better

Remember how I said that I felt off because I hadn't bought any plants in more than six weeks?

Scott and I took a trip to Wind Dancer to comb through Carolyn Kolb's remaining stock and stuffed my Honda to the gills with grasses. That wonderful spray of airy seedheads is Pennisetum spathiolatum. I bought it for my hell strip but now I'm wishing I had bought many more because I can think of ninety places it would look great.

Carolyn has closed Wind Dancer but she has begun garden coaching. I'm seriously considering hiring her because her garden is incredible and her plant knowledge is seemingly endless. And I need help, especially in the backyard. She also convinced us we need to attend the Salem Hardy Plant Society fall sale on September 14th. There's a really nicely curated selection of vendors (Dancing Oaks! Desert Northwest! Sebright Gardens!) and it sounds like the location is great.

We actually got real rain this week, which was wonderful. Sadly, it's probably not enough to soften the ground enough to plant these. Have you started buying plants again? Did you ever stop?

One of my most exciting acquisitions was Pennisetum 'Burgandy Bunny.' (Zones 6a-9b)

What you can't see from my crummy photo is that Carolyn had this planted adjacent to a Salvia 'Amistad' and some dark purple sedums, creating all of these wonderful color echos. You can bet I'm going to steal that.