Bonsai Classes - Cascade Juniper and Repotting

March was a busy month with the bonsai club. Besides our monthly meeting (which had a repotting demonstration) we had the booth at the Lawn and Garden show and two workshops. The workshops are fantastic!

The first was the "Beginner Bonsai" class. This year we did a cascading juniper.

When we all arrived, Dave gave a lecture on junipers and the cascade form. After our lunch break we went to the workshop where we selected our tree... a very shaggy little juniper that Dave and Barb had already repotted in a tall bonsai pot.

We snipped and hacked and wired and twisted.

And by the end of the two hour hands-on portion, we each had a nice little "baby" bonsai.

The next weekend there was a repotting workshop. Owen invited everyone to the nursery where he works to work on our trees together. The club provided bonsai soil. They also had a few tools & wire if you didn't have your own (not that it was really necessary as I have found the club members to be extremely generous in sharing both their knowledge and supplies).

The day was perfect - sunny and warm, with a cool breeze. I didn't think to count but I believe there were about 15 members who came.

I brought 2 trees - a 'windswept' juniper and a small form of holly. Both little trees as I still need to purchase some larger pots for my taller bonsai. It was a pleasant couple hours working on trees and chatting with other members. Owen worked the group, making sure everyone had the supplies they needed and offering help and much appreciated suggestions.

Here are my trees before repotting--

And after.

Salud! at Whole Foods - Greek Easter Feast

Last Wednesday I was back down to Nashville for another class at Whole Foods (Green Hills) cooking school Salud!. This time it was a hands-on class called "Greek Easter Feast" taught by Merijoy Lantz Rucker.

Oh my!

We did a spring greens Greek salad, avgolemono soup, roast lamb stuffed with greens and feta, roasted potatoes with garlic, lemon & oregano and a cheese & honey tart.

First course was the Greek salad. Merijoy explained in Greece they are all about seasonal cooking and the early greens of this time of year are a special treat.

Next we did the avgolemono soup. This is one of the reasons I took the class! It's one of my all around favorites and I wanted to learn the trick to making it.

This is the trick... you have to "temper" your eggs with hot broth to slowly bring up their temperature without ending up with 'scrambled' eggs.


Then you stir and stir and stir.

Next we observed the preparation of the lamb

First was the stuffing. Here someone is trimming and slicing the 'rainbow' Swiss chard.

The all the greens are sautéed until tender.

The lamb already stuffed and being tied to go into the oven.

A little bit later and the beautiful roast is done. Merijoy is slicing after letting it rest about 10 minutes

And here is the roast, with the stuffing and a pan juice reduction for a sauce. SO good!

With a side of roasted potatoes (recipe follows).

And dessert was the tart. It's not a sweet dessert, which I enjoyed. It would be really good with fresh seasonal fruit. We made 2 types of tart.

One was a large tart using a tart pan.

The other was individual tarts with hand shaped crusts.

I preferred the large tart as there was more filling. But these small ones sure are cute!


Roasted Potatoes with Garlic, Lemon, and Oregano

3 pounds baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 cup good olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
Kosher or sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 Tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Place potatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toss with oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Roast the potatoes for 15 minutes. Add the stock, toss and roast for about 10 minutes more, or until the potatoes are golden brown, crispy and cooked through.

Sprinkle with fresh oregano and serve.

Movie Review: "How To Train Your Dragon"

Last night I went to the movie with Best Friend and the Pirates. Pirate 1 and I both like dragons and we've been waiting to see "How To Train Your Dragon" -- in 3D of course!

I was a bit cautious as this is made by the same ones who made "Shreik"... and I personally think there is too base humor in the "Shreik" movies that is not appropriate for kids. So it was a pleasant surprise that there was very little off color humor in this movie. (In fact, I don't remember any.)

It was a fun movie. Animation is good, the 3D effects are quite good. There's a scene with falling ash that it looks like you could slap it away from your face! How cool is that? The one thing I thought was funny is all the Vikings have a Scottish accent!

I can recommend this one for children. It appeals to both boys and girls (the Viking woman are TOUGH). If Hanna was old enough, I would take her to see it.

Might just have to get it for her when it comes out on DVD!

Movie Review - Green Zone

While I was in Missouri, my parents and I went out for a movie. This time we saw "Green Zone". I'd had hopes for it since I really like Matt Damon. But those hopes weren't met. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't good either. Just "meh".

I found it predictable in its "there are no WMD in Iraq" theories. Five minutes into the film you can figure out where it's going and the course is straight and narrow.

If you like this sort of movie... I'd suggest waiting until it comes to the Red Box.

Little Bird Time - 7 months old

Just back from spending a week with my family in MO. Part of that visit is what I call my "Little Bird Time". Who would have thought having a baby niece would be so much fun!

I only get to see her about once a month and she changes so much between those visits. This month when I came up the stairs I saw a baby who was sitting up on her own. And when she smiled there were 2 teeth in that grin. Wow! When Himself gets home he won't even recognize her! Last time he saw Little Bird was at Christmas.



The early part of my weeklong visit, Little Bird was fighting her first honking head cold. She was feeling bad enough that on Monday we all made a trip up to her doctor. Little Miss did NOT like getting her ears cleaned out so he could check them. She might have a cold but there is nothing wrong with her lungs! Nothing else wrong with her either and we left with the doctor's advice to treat the symptoms and ride it out.

Poor baby. Even tho she felt absolutely cruddy, she tried so hard to stay happy. It was pitiful to hear her little whimpers after a round of painful coughing. But as soon as it passed, that sweet smile would come out.

However, my Mom (who takes care of Little Bird during the day) informed me that Little Bird takes her medicine just like I did - badly. Little squirrel can whip her head around fast to avoid the medicine dropper. But Mom outfoxed her by mixing it in with her peaches. Good thing a stuffed head affects your sense of taste or else those peaches would have probably been spit out!

By Thursday's visit I was greeted with bright eyes again. And on Friday she was ready for some serious playtime. I delayed starting my drive back to TN by two hours so I could sit on the floor and hear baby laughter. We had a grand time wrestling around and playing with toys.

BTW... guess who now has Little Bird's cold? But you know what... it's worth it for just one of those baby laughs!

At My Fingertips

Some of my "clutter boxes" are full of papers: pages I've pulled from magazines, brochures I've picked up, and articles I've clipped from various sources. At this point they are useless to me because they are just stuffed in those boxes. I have no idea what I have or if they even apply to my current life.

So that is one of my big projects in this taming my paper tiger. Going thru those papers and throwing out the ones I no longer need/want and making accessible the information I want to keep. The main way I'm organizing them is in project notebooks.

The largest notebook (a 3 inch binder) is for my home remodeling and landscaping. I bought dividers with write on tabs and made sections for each room of the house and for each project I'm going to work on in the yard. If I can fit the idea onto a piece of notebook paper, I glue it on (fast and easy). If it's a large page or a brochure, I put it in a page protector.

I have a similar sized notebook to hold my hobby/crafting ideas. I'm starting to think perhaps I'm going to need a separate notebook to hold my photography ideas and tips in.

I have another notebook that holds clips that relate to my "Remodel Me" goal. Hair styles I like, clothes I like, ideas for using accessories, "best" make up and skin care products, nutrition information and so on.

There are notebooks I keep correspondence from my sponsor kids (7 notebooks), writing buddies (1 for all of them), and 2 sponsored adults. There is one that I keep things from my mission team meetings.

I like the notebooks because they are easy to carry around without papers falling everywhere.

I'm using a little different method for organizing my recipe clippings. For this I'm using a heavy duty accordion file. It has 12 sections to sort with. My categories for this are: Meat, Eggs, Pasta, Grains, Starches, Veggies, Soups & Stews, Breads, Fruit, Desserts, Drinks, and Misc. That's as much as I'll be doing with my recipes for a bit. I've something planned up for a later goal...

Keeping on, keeping on!

Still rolling along with my goals from my 12 Goals plan.

"Clutter Free Me" - I'm doing constant tweaking now. The upstairs stays in good shape and I'm refining small areas like the tool box or the cleaning kit I keep under the sink. My office downstairs is always in a state of flux, as I go thru the "clutter boxes" I stashed in the garage and tackle projects like my bookshelves. Garage & shed wait their turn at being decluttered and organized... which will happen when Himself comes home. Too much big heavy stuff for me to be fooling with.

"Remodel Me" - Diet is going... Everything I've lost has stayed off, but I've hit a plateau on losing. My fault because of attitude. However, I'm working thru it. This time I'm learning instead of quitting. The organized closet is terrific and I've only worn a T Shirt in public a couple times - and those were when I was going to be doing some loading or unloading of stuff. When you work... you gotta wear a working shirt!

The bifocals just did not work out. Between getting a splitting headache every time I wore them and just not liking the way they made me see, I sent them back and got a pair of single vision glasses and a pair of prescription reading glasses. At this point, I have no issues seeing the computer with my normal glasses and what little reading I do outside of my books/magazines at home can be done with the normal ones too... even if I have to stretch my arm a bit! For serious reading, I'll slip on the reading glasses. Oh, I did have them checked and was told they were exactly as they should be.

"Taming the Paper Tiger" - Egad! It is worse than I thought! I have been doing some heavy duty sorting just to get some sort of control. I have a box with "official" papers (receipts, instruction manuals, etc), one with "home ideas" & recipes, one with letters from my sponsor kids, one with photos I run across, one with "office" papers (notebooks, note pads, envelopes, etc). I've done some culling with the sorting - enough to fill a bunch of small trash bags. But all in all, it's a LOT less than I started with. I will be able to finish by the end of the month.

Himself will be home soon. They are at the end of their cod fishing season - now working on the "state" fishing catch. It takes 10 days - roughly - to go from Adak, AK to Tacoma, WA. He's going to be so surprised out what I've gotten done. He doesn't know about the laundry room!