Despite being completely mired in schoolwork this past semester, I somehow managed to start two small flats of seeds and keep them alive until they turned into cute little herbs! I think it had something to do with running to Home Depot every two days for supplies for this project, and I just kept walking past the seed starting supplies. Whats a girl to do?

I started basil, dill, and mint. The dill isn't doing so hot, but the basil is rocking out. I'm very lucky to have three huge south-facing windows, which might have something to do with it. I've been giving away seedlings to fellow classmates, but of course keeping the best ones for my kitchen. :)

I've been back a week now, after spending a week in Dallas hanging out with my family. I went up on Memorial Day weekend, and stayed until the following Saturday. It was such a nice vacation! I liked not feeling like I had to cram tons of activities into my typical one weekend trip, and I got to catch up with a ton of my extended family too.

First and foremost, my house had been infected with a crazy case of Maverick fever. I've never watched or talked so much basketball in my life! Every morning the Dallas Morning News would have huge, blown up pictures of Dirk Nowitzki (who is, I have to say, a really scary looking man) with dramatic 60-point headlines like "50!" (when they won) and "Never mind" (when they lost). This pride and excitement for a basketball team is a relatively new sensation for longtime Dallasites, a situation underscored at work when a coworker admitted he'd never even heard of a team called the Mavericks. But, for the sake of my dad and brother, I am rooting for them in the playoffs this week. :)

I went down to Dallas with a project already planned - because what is a vacation without a project? I wanted to archive all of my family's old vhs and hi8 videos onto DVD, and I had bought a dvd recorder online in preparation. Things didn't quite go as smoothly as I would like, but, four trips to Best Buy later, we had a decent vhs capturing setup. I spent the whole week dubbing home movies, church musicals, graduation videos, and tapes from our summers at Skyline. It was fun watching home movies, and my inner librarian had a blast sorting and archiving everything.

Another project for the week was spiffing up the courtyard on the east side of our house. On the morning of Memorial Day we all trekked down to the Dallas Farmers Market, where there is a whole street just filled with plants from local growers. I wish I had such a resource here! We filled the Explorer with all sorts of azalea bushes and hanging baskets and flats of annuals, and then spent most of Monday outside planting.

Monday night we had a lovely dinner with the whole big family at Macaroni Grill, minus Alison and Eric and Tatum. But I got my Tatum fix a day later at lunch with my mom, aunt Carol, Alison and Tatum. We ate at local Mexican food restaurant who's claim to fame is that the owner invented the frozen margarita machine. A generation of college students on spring break thanks him.

My grandparents came into town Wednesday, and although Jeff had started his summer semester, and my dad had to go back to work, Mom and I had fun touring the Arboretum and going over my granddad's home movies. We even endured a little "adventure" while eating breakfast at La Madeleine, where we were pooped on - twice - by pigeons. Apparently its good luck when this happens, but I'm reserving judgment. Of course we had to cap a visit from Grandad and Meemaw with a big dinner at Angelo's, which was, as usual, delicious.

Jeff also turned 25 while I was in Dallas. With all of those home videos lying around, we just had to drag out some of our favorites from over the years to torment him. My favorite is from the Christmas where he got a big, red plastic guitar. He spent the whole Christmas day perfecting his rock and roll boogie, and my dad spent his preserving this embarrassment for future generations. I'll have to put that one online for all to enjoy at some point!

Our last bit of excitement came later in the week, when my mom happened to look out the front window one morning and notice 4 Channel 11 News trucks in our front yard. Turns out they'd been broadcasting the news from our front lawn since 5:30 that morning, and none of us had noticed! We tuned in only to see that the one distinguishing feature of house visible in the broadcast was the pile of leaves that hadn't been raked up yet. Oh well. ;)

I live in a townhouse, and I am lucky to have a couple of decent gardening spaces. In the front there is the traditional flower bed-plus-ornamental-tree-plus-hedge combo, and in the back there is a patio with beds lining one side. I've learned so much just with this small amount to play with! My first spring in the house, I ordered a small bag of mixed spring bulbs from White Flower Farm. Having grown up in the hot Texas climate, I had no clue what to do with a bulb - but I stuck them in the ground anyways according to the instructions. Lo and behold, that spring they grew!

This is now my second spring with these bulbs (and a variety of perrennials I also planted), and I am finally understanding what gardeners mean when they say it takes three years for a garden to mature. Everything I've planted in the last year and half has gotten bigger, with more flowers and bigger growth all around. I've gotten through my early spring blooms, and am now anticipating some rather spectacular late spring/early summer arrivals: alliums. The first year, each allium bulb produced maybe one or two blooms. This year, I watched in amazement as six or seven long stems appeared in each grouping! I'm going to have to dodge bees like crazy to get in the front door, but it'll be a spectacular sight.

I also tossed around some leftover bluebonnet seeds on a whim, and a lot more of them have sprouted than I expected. They are called Alamo Fire Bluebonnets, and they come out bright red instead of blue.

They are mixed in with some as yet unnamed bulbs - unnamed because I cannot remember what bulbs I planted there. They will probably bloom in the next few days, and it'll be a nice surprise to see what they are! I think they might be asiatic lilies, but I have no memory of what color.

This weekend, in preparation for a visit from my (Great) Aunt Virginia and her husband Mark, Adam and I did a lot of cleaning. Real cleaning, too - vacuuming and dusting and organising of random corners filled with stuff. I only saw one closet where something had been stashed away in desperation, which is pretty good for me!

Ultimately their visit was cut short by time and health and the need for sleep, but it was great to see them even for a short bit. We gave them the grand tour of the (sparkling clean) place, talked a bit about holiday plans, and then they were off! I envied them their drive out the Dulles Greenway and north through Leesburg and into Maryland - the scenery is gorgeous out there, and I'm sure the leaves were starting to turn.

Speaking of leaves, fall on us with a vengeance. After the summer drought left everything parched, last week was a solid block of drizzle and rain. The temperatures are dropping, leaves are starting to fall, and pumpkins are cropping up in doorways. I put a pot on the stove with mulling spices this weekend because it just seemed to fit with the weather! I received the bulbs I ordered earlier this summer from Brecks, which definitely tells me fall is here - I've got to get planting!

I've been following the work of Friends of the High Line for several years now. Its such an intriguing project - take an abandoned, overgrown elevated railway track in the middle of Manhattan and turn it into a public meeting space, transportation corridor, and sustainable urban green space. They've managed to get funding, support from the mayor and city officials, and enough public awareness to garner an exhibition at the MoMa that opened yesterday. The show displays for the first time the projected designs for the 1.5-mile structure, but the designs are also nicely showcased in this online presentation.

You can also wander through some interesting photo galleries of the High Line in its current state.

When I visited Dallas over Easter, my family made our traditional pilgrimage to the Dallas Arboretum for fun and photographic frolicking. It just also happened to be the weekend of Dallas Blooms, and a gorgeous sunny day in the mid-70s. Between the four of us we got some pretty cool pictures.

I also found another Dallas Blooms photoset on Flickr!

Over the weekend we made some good progress on the townhome.. I finished painting my studio area, and started some test patches in the main living room. Adam's dad and grandmother came down on Sunday to visit and see the place, so that served as good motivation to get some of the key living areas in good order. We took a nice tour of the house and then had lunch at Coastal Flats in Fairfax. That place has the most amazing grouper fingers. Mmm.

On the gardening front, the grass seed that I put down two weeks ago has started to come up and gain hold in the front lawn. I didn't sow the seeds very evenly, it seems, so there will be some more work to do in the spring. I also took the plunge and order some bulbs from White Flower Farms. No more ghetto yard for us!

Note: I was excited to learn, while on the phone with my mom last night, that White Flower Farms has been my dad's garden catalog of choice for many years. Like father like daughter. :)

Well, of the various activities listed on Friday, I ended up only making it to one: Adam and I ventured out to Falls Church Saturday night to see Not2Night play at Bangkok Blues. It turned out to be a great night! The table I reserved ended up being right at the front, conveniently next to the table filled with Jason, Robin, Jan and Jane! We snacked on some excellent chicken satay, and I enjoyed one (ok, two) very yummy Singhas while the band played.

The rest of the weekend was spent on the townhome.. We hung curtain rods, cleaned floors, and unpacked even more boxes. I spent some time on Saturday weeding the front yard and sowing some grass seed, then went to the local garden center and picked up a few plants to make the place look a little nicer. I also ventured out to the fabric store for materials for curtains to put on all the curtain rods we hung. I'm going to be breaking in my new sewing machine very soon!

My hosta is about to bloom. :)

As promised a while back, I've got a few pics of my patio and assorted plants to show you! I took these pics about a week ago, and so far they are all still alive. :) I'm already getting the urge to add one (or a few) more to the mix. The first photo is festuca, then my hosta (Royal Standard), and then a view of one corner of the patio. The hanging basket wasn't originally on the bench like that: I moved it in preparation for a storm that was about to roll through. I liked it so much I haven't moved it back yet! :)

    

Its that time of year again. When I become really really interested in being surrounded by a huge jungle of gorgeous, green, leafy plants smelling of peat and moss and wet dirt. When I develop selective amnesia and forget all of the plants I killed last year during this phase.

It all started on Monday when I went to Costco. They had this huge sign hung just as you entered the warehouse proclaiming "Our Garden Center is now open!" And each aisle had a tall rolling display cart filled with flats of flowers and vines and ferns and bulbs and every good thing you can imagine. I picked up a flat of 12 small pots of various types of ivy, some sort of spiky tall grass, and a hardy vine that I couldn't locate a name for, but that I recognized as the one plant I didn't kill last year. I also couldn't resist the growers bunches of tulips in all sort of fun colors in the cut flowers section, and walked away with yellow and white ones.

Tuesday after work turned out to be a comfortably warm evening, so I spent some time pulling my patio out of its late winter doldrums. I rearranged my remaining firewood to form short, tumbled looking "shelves" for my to place pots and other miscellaneous things. I swept an impressive amount of leaves out from under my bench. And I dusted off the empty pots that were sitting in the storage closet and got to potting my loot from the day before.

Now my patio is tidied up and my newly-filled pots are arranged artfully on the various levels of firewood I created for them. I've started up my old habit of eating breakfast outside, but sometimes its still too chilly for me to stay out there long. I've stopped looking at the weather for myself, but rather am always looking out for an unwelcome mid-April frost that might endanger my patio. So sad. :) (I'll post some pictures when I get a chance!)

Besides my mad crocheting skills, I also scored some pictures this weekend of the winning orchids from the Philadelphia Flower Show:

First Place	Third Place	Happy Horticulturalist

I've been getting more into gardening lately. Maybe its the nice warm weather we're (finally) getting, or perhaps its the impending move to my own place, but I find myself observing, reading about, and experimenting with all things plant-related. A few of my projects:

• At home
  I've got three plants (two indoors and one hanging on my patio) that I have managed to keep alive for over two months! I'm particularly intrigued with the hanging plant, as its a hardy creeping vine that is currently adoring this weather. It is NOT adoring the squirrel that stops by for a nibble every now and then.
• At work
  A few months back I took a cutting from an office plant located in our lounge. The facilities guys here are actually quite progressive with their plants - we have a regular "plant lady" who comes around and cares for each of the plants in the building each week. Anyways, took a cutting from one of these plant and stuck it in a plastic cup of water. A few weeks later it had formed a small network of roots! Yesterday I created a makeshift planter out of another plastic cup, some coffee stirrers, and some thumbtacks and potted by little cutting. I'm hoping that I can get it to form a better root system so that I can put it in a real pot soon.

Online I discovered that the proprietor of one of my favorite blogs, Megnut now has a special section for her entries relating to gardening. She is growing herbs, veggies, and vines on the fire escape of her NYC apartment! Its inspiring to see pictures of how well her plants are doing. She recommends this book for other container gardening folk.

I also stumbled upon an interesting book called How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 Houseplants That Purify Your Home or Office. It presents houseplants in a different light from other books that I've seen, and talks about research into each plant's abilities to filter air and product oxygen. I'm hoping to read it soon.

This Sunday I ventured into DC to visit the National Building Museum. I spent most of my time in an amazing exhibit, called "Big & Green: Towards Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century." The exhibit sought to demonstrate just how much large buildings contribute to the environmental problems we are facing right now. Not only do they consume large amounts of water and energy, but they also release a large amount those resources back into the environment as unfiltered waste.

Despite a lot of alarming statistics, the tone of Big & Green was not negative or accusatory. The bulk of the exhibit's content showcased modern buildings that are using cutting edge sustainable architecture. It was reassuring to see so many buildings - many of them here in the US - that were taking issues of energy, waste, and sustainability into consideration.

From the buildings featured, I learned that there are several common strategies used in sustainable architecture. Many of them are so simple and low-tech that you wonder why they haven't been used before. The plans for the future Jets stadium in Manhattan, for example, features vertical wind turbines lining the top of the stadium's bowl. They will generate power to support not only the stadium's electric and heating needs, but could actually contribute surplus power to the surrounding power grid as well.

Many of the solutions presented at Big & Green were alike in this type of simplicity. The technologies were often adapted from heating and cooling techniques that were developed thousands of years ago in African and Arab cultures. In the 20th century we cast aside these traditional methods in our rush to make our tall buildings airtight, efficient, and climate-controlled. The irony is that we have actually created buildings that are more wasteful and less comfortable for the people inside. The challenge of sustainable architecture is to reverse this trend by adapting ancient methods to work with modern technology.

I walked away from the exhibit with a large collection of brochures and lists of additional resources, including the exhibits namesake book: Big & Green. I skimmed through it at the gift store (aside: the National Building Museum's book store is by far the most comprehensive collection of high quality architecture, art, landscape and urban design books I have seen) and was impressed with its quality and depth of information.

For those interested in this book as well as the others, I created an Amazon book list here.