Supporting local businesses is not only trendy these days, but smart. I’m a big fan of unusual plants (soapwort, anyone?), so I tend not to buy from just one or two vendors. Here’s a list of seed companies that I’ve done business with at least once from all over the country, as well as seed companies in the Pacific NW that I plan on ordering from to check them out.

(Want to try growing some interesting herbs & vegies without investing a fortune in seeds? Join Folia, a wonderful online gardening network, and I’ll be happy to set up some seed swaps with you! I’m JeanneS on Folia.)

Companies I’ve Ordered From:
Victory Seeds — Great resource for finding rare & unusual heirlooms, excellent customer service, very good prices. They also sell old-fashioned candies and other nifty items, and have lots of info on their site. Based in Molalla, OR.

High Mowing Organic Seeds — Gorgeous & informative catalog, rather high prices but wide variety with some unusual stuff, good customer service. Based in Wolcott, VT.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds — Lots of varieties available including exotics you won’t find anywhere else, great prices, good customer service. Based in Mansfield, MO with branches in Petaluma, CA and Wethersfield, CT.

D. Landreth Seed Company — Great prices, good variety, very good customer service. Based in New Freedom, PA.

Seeds of Change — Rather high prices, but for a good cause (they do a lot of charity programs & seed donations). Fanciest packaging I’ve ever seen from a seed company, very good customer service, extensive gardening info on their website. Based in Rancho Dominguez, CA.

Companies I Plan On Ordering From:
Territorial Seed Company — Utterly gorgeous catalog with tons of information, good prices. Based in Cottage Grove, OR.

Nichols Garden Nursery — Prices a bit high, nice variety. Based in Albany, OR.

Ed Hume Seeds — Good prices, easy to find since they’re sold in retail locations all over the Pacific Northwest as well as online. Based in Puyallup, WA.

Whatcom Seeds — Higher prices, but immense variety and tons of exotic & hard-to-find seeds. Based in Eugene, OR.

Abundant Life Seeds — Prices look high at first, but higher quantity in most packs than other retailers, nice variety. Based in Cottage Grove, OR.

Wild Garden Seed — Prices on the high side, but interesting variety. Most are Oregon Tilth Certified Organic Seed. Based in Philomath, OR.

Horizon Herbs — Prices a bit high, but probably the most variety I’ve seen on any website (includes culinary & medicinal herbs, herbal extracts, vegetables, grains, trees, and plants). Based in Williams, OR.

But I couldn’t resist! I must try growing vegies again! The seed company I ordered from last month sent a free packet of carrots (om nom!) and now I want to grow lots of crunchy yummy food things! Despite the nasty clay soil and poor sun exposure of my minuscule backyard!

OMFGWTFBBQ, it’s a sickness!!!

At least this year I have Folia to help me, and I’m discovering that Folians are awesome people. If you garden (even if it’s only indoor plants), join me on Folia. Srsly.

Oh, and join Folia!

At the old place in SE Portland, I took pics of the raccoons that lived in the next yard over, kept the squirrel feeder pretty well stocked, and was always delighted to see the odd possum wandering through the yard. (I was less delighted to see the rats that frequently traversed the top of the chain-link fence that marked the boundary of the high school track right next door, but rats are pests. Or food for my snakes.) I tried putting up a suet bird feeder, but didn’t seem to get much traffic…perhaps it was too well-camouflaged by the trees. Or perhaps the cats frequently squirrel-gazing at the back door spooked them away.

Since moving to Beaverton a little over a year ago, I’ve seen a lot less urban wildlife close to home, but a lot more variety of it. Not long after we moved, I saw a coyote near the 217 freeway exit — the first one I’ve ever seen outside a zoo! A couple months ago, I saw a really huge raccoon a couple miles from home, and less than a month ago I encountered a pair of deer just a block from the Costco on my way to work one night!

I’ve been working the graveyard shift since August, and I’ve seen a lot more wildlife in downtown Portland, too. In the last month alone, I’ve seen 2 raccoons (one right across the street from my work building!), and both a Norway rat & a field mouse (on different nights) running along the wall of the Post Office near Portland State University. I guess the many parks and decorative water fountains in downtown Portland would help city critters thrive quite well.

It’s going to be tons of fun watching for critters when I actually move out to a truly rural homestead. Especially if we do wind up in Alaska, and there are potentially moose and bears strolling through the yard! *squee!*

On the home front, the Lyse Beast is doing well in nursing school, and Anxiety is working part time and finishing up her high school credits at an “alternative” school which is pretty darned awesome. If I’d had an option like that, I daresay I would have been a lot more successful and much happier.

My gardening attempts this year were a dismal failure. It was a seriously weird weather year, and hopefully that was the majority of my lack of success. I’ve heard from a lot of other people in the Pacific Northwest that they did poorly this year, too. The only thing I can do is get the garden ready for winter, which in my case means digging the rest of the potatoes, raking & composting the heck out of my raised beds, and planning for spring. Next year’s garden will be a lot less complicated; we’re going to stick with just a few crops, and hopefully be able to grow enough to can some of it!

I’ve been doing a lot of crocheting, especially as the weather has turned bitterly cold this last week. It’s a la nina year, too, so I suspect it will be a long and very cold season. I have around a dozen projects in progress (some of which have been untouched for months, admittedly), and no few of them are items for cold-weather wear. With any luck, I’ll have most of them finished by the end of the year.

I’ve rather given up on NaNoWriMo; I got 6300 words and then all kinds of busy started happening (including moving the eldest spawn). Eventually, I recalled what I’d learned from the last time that I did NaNo — that I’m not cut out to be a fiction writer, and that I don’t enjoy writing fiction enough to do it for my own satisfaction. Hopefully this time the lesson will stick.

I’m still on graveyard shift, and for the most part I’m pretty happy about that. With the weather getting cold & nasty, I’m afraid we might have some really stressful evenings coming up. I may need to pack an overnight bag, if things get crazy enough that they start mandating overtime. It’s really too bad that most people aren’t more willing to get themselves prepared for winter conditions and use their common sense in driving during inclement weather!

The Tualatin flood of 1996 was the closest I ever came to being flooded. Just a couple of years before that flood, I moved into Tualatin. I had to choose between an apartment literally next to the river, or an apartment further from the city center but about 100 feet higher elevation. I chose the latter apartment — and thank heavens, because the riverside place ended up flooding to a depth of over 8 feet! The only personal impact that the ’96 flood had on me was, since the post office was awash in several feet of floodwaters, I didn’t get mail for a few days. Here’s a link to some more excellent pics of the flood.

Oh, and I couldn’t take my girls for their usual weekly Happy Meal because the McDonald’s parking lot was underwater. Then-7-year-old Angst wouldn’t believe me when I told her, so we actually walked down (with little sister in a stroller) to the flooded area and took pictures. Of course, Angst wanted to wade in the water, and I had to frighten her with tales of horrible diseases that she would catch if she got a single molecule of floodwater on herself. That was possibly the most fun I had that whole week!

For about 3 months prior to my grandmother’s 80th birthday (the first weekend of May), I’ve been cross-stitching a gift for her. And not cross-stitching from a pattern, mind you, but an original design I put together myself. (NEVER do that! The math alone — and I say this as a person who likes math — was aggravating to the nth degree. Ohmigawd, what a huge pain.) I finished it a whopping 15 hours before the start of her birthday party, only to discover that the frame I’d purchased for it was broken upon removing it from the packaging. Since it was 11-freaking-pm, I had no choice but to dash back to the store as soon as it opened the morning of the party and exchange the frame. Then I remembered why I hadn’t done cross-stitch in years (about 10 years, actually…) — framing that stuff is a stone bitch. (This was, most unfortunately, before I discovered a nifty product called “peel & stick mounting board,” which I will use for my next needlepoint project.)

Anyway, here’s the finished product, which is approximately 11″x13″ (forgive the lousy pic, it was taken in a hurry under less-than-ideal conditions):

All I can say is 18-count Aida fabric can BITE ME. That’s 18 itty-bitty cross-stitches per inch of fabric! Only certifiably crazy people use anything smaller than 14-count. (Thank the gods I didn’t try 22-count. I tremble in fear just thinking about it.)

In other craft-related news, there are 6 (SIX, gah!) projects that I have partly finished, and 2 more in the works that I really need to get started on as soon as possible (which means “after the wedding”). The partly-finished include an afghan for Anxiety, an open-work tunic-style sweater for Angst, a cap-sleeved summer pullover for myself, an artsy wall decoration that I keep forgetting to finish up, and some other stuff I’m keeping under wraps for the time being.

As for the rest of Grandma’s birthday, well…let’s just say that Grandma seems to be feeling the weight of every one of those 80 years. Maybe she was just distracted and caught up in the excitement of the day. I can hope. Anyway, my girls were (of course) beautiful:

And we did get a decent four-generation pic (from left: younger demonspawn, me, my mom, my grandma, elder demonspawn):

Upon escaping the gathering, I had to give Geoffrey & my girls a tour of the town (which is nominally where I grew up, at least from ages 9-16). Drove by the house I’ve lived longest of any place in my life, only to find some white trash jerks had let the place go to hell and chopped down the magnificent tree that was the prettiest for blocks around. Maybe it’s stupid, but I really feel bad that someone killed that tree…it was right outside my bedroom window, and when I was a little kid I believed it watched over me while I slept.

My high school was also gone. The “Spring Break Quake” of 1993 (which, ironically, I missed out on, since at the time I lived about 125 miles north of the epicenter) damaged the 70-year-old brick building to the point that it was eventually demolished. Mostly there’s just a grassy park left, and part of the grounds now house the new public library (which appears to be at least 10 times bigger than the old one that I grew up with!). It’s pretty eerie how the town has changed, really. When I lived there, it was a town of maybe 3,500 people with almost nothing but sawmills, churches, bars, a greasy-spoon diner, a pizzeria, and all of two grocery stores and two blinking red stoplights (the first actual traffic signal wasn’t installed until 2005!). Now there’s a swimming pool, a skatepark, tons of new housing developments and businesses…with over twice the population it had 25 years ago, it’s no longer an isolated rural logging town, but rather a “bedroom community” of Oregon City.

They say you can never go home. And they’re right…not that I ever considered that town home, exactly. It was mostly just a place where I was miserable for a lot of years, about which now I am comfortably indifferent.

However, we also stopped to visit a place where I wasn’t miserable — in fact, a place where some of my happiest memories took place! The summer that I was pregnant with Angst, I used to drive out to the next town over to take advantage of their much nicer library. After loading myself up with a few dozen books, I’d hit the local Mexican fast-food drive-thru, and head back toward where I lived. Just about at the halfway point of the journey, on the back country roads, I discovered a perfect place to sit and read and enjoy my lunch — the Bear Creek Cemetery.

Once a week or so, throughout my second trimester and well into my third, I would stop there to have lunch, read a book, and just enjoy the surroundings. There really is a little creek bordering the small cemetery, which only has about 70 graves, no few of which are of babies or very young children. This may seem morbid to some, but I used to sit on the graves of the babies when I stopped there, and wonder about them. It wasn’t creepy at all to me; quite the contrary, it was just about the only place I felt truly happy back then.

A few years later, I developed a theory that the Bear Creek Cemetery might be where I got the Black Hole, seeing as it started “activity” in my home during the tail end of my pregnancy (and moved with me to every place I lived thereafter, so it clearly wasn’t a location-bound thing). But even if that wasn’t the case at all, it was neat to show Angst around the place:

If I wasn’t intending to be cremated when I die, I’d want to be buried there. It’s just got such amazing energy, such a cozy and soothing feel to the place.

In other news, I’m currently working on preparations for the wedding (finally got the invitations mailed out today!), and there’s still a TON of stuff left to be done before June 21st. I ordered an outfit for myself and one for Anxiety from the Pyramid Collection, only to discover that the blouse I’d chosen for myself was too large (and unflattering, to boot), the skirt I’d chosen was thin plain cotton (the catalog photo made it look much lusher), and I’d really messed up in ordering the dress that Anxiety wanted (at least 2 sizes too big). So I returned the blouse and the dress, to get a refund on the blouse and exchange Anxiety’s dress for the correct size. The skirt I kept, and I like it muchly, but I don’t think it’s nice enough for a wedding. Geoffrey and I also mail-ordered our wedding bracelets (which we’re having in lieu of rings), and thank heavens they are as nice as we’d hoped.

I’m working on not having anxiety attacks over the wedding preparations. One way or another, it’ll all be over in forty days. (Aacckk!!!!)

Our neighbor Drew, who has 4WD, headed out to work this morning and got stuck at the nearest major intersection north of us, only 2 blocks away. It took him half an hour to dig his car out of the snow to head back home. When he got to our driveway, it took an hour of shoveling enough snow to get up the driveway and get his car back into the garage. Claire’s car has over 12 inches of snow on the roof, possibly up to 16 inches. The snow drifts within sight distance of our place are easily 3+ feet in places.

Work hasn’t called me today (although they called 3 times Saturday and once yesterday, offering overtime because people called out), but I wouldn’t answer if they did. It is technically possible for me to get into work because Trimet is running (albeit on snow routes and extremely delayed) and I’m less than 3 blocks from the nearest bus stop. So if this crap continues, I still have to be at work Wednesday morning. Thank heavens I’m only scheduled to work 2 days this week — but I have a horrible sinking feeling that once I show up for work, they may declare emergency procedures and keep me there a lot longer than scheduled.

Unless we get warmer temperatures and a whole lot of snow melted, we’re sure as hell not going to Geoffrey’s parents’ house for Christmas Eve dinner.

Today’s adventure: drove to Beaverton! In the snow! Without chains or snow tires!

We had to take Fido to the vet because had another prolapse of his boy parts, and this time the vet suggested making him a eunuch, which we agreed to. (I was surprised that they asked me if I planned on breeding him — I quickly replied, “No, I don’t believe in breeding pets.”)

The drive out was astonishingly easy. I drove Lyse’s car without chains or snow tires, and it went quite smoothly. Sure, the average speed was about 20 mph (and about 15 mph coming back, since a lot more snow had dumped by then), but it was for a good cause. I wanted to do something helpful for Lyse, because all the gods know that she’s done tons for me. Her kitchen and downstairs bathroom are now spotless, and we’ll work on the upstairs bathroom and vacuuming the whole house in a few days when the weather eases up. I might even go crazy and organize her garage. *gasp!*

After getting home from the Wintry Drive Adventure, I realized there were several Yule pressies yet to be purchased (as well as grocery needs), so Geoffrey and Anxiety and I headed out to Freddy’s. That drive was terribly unpleasant, compared to the previous drive — about 5 times farther out — to Beaverton! But I think I got all the major shopping done (finally!). Geoffrey was terribly sweet and grabbed a DVD of White Christmas when I mentioned that I really love that movie; I try to watch it every year during the holidays, but missed out on it the last year or two, and have no idea if/when it will be aired this year. But we get to watch it tomorrow!

So tomorrow I will be making the spiced beef recipe that calls for marinating in spices for a week prior to simmering in water & Guinness to cook it. I really, really hope it doesn’t suck…while I often get very lucky with new recipes (even when I don’t follow them precisely), sometimes the dishes I try just bomb. It doesn’t exactly encourage me to try cooking something new very often, especially as I pretty much consider cooking to be a big waste of time.

Then again, Geoffrey made chicken and dumplings from scratch tonight and it was scrumptious. (Well, truth be told, I look upon almost any food favorably if I didn’t have to cook it. But tonight’s dinner truly was yummy! I loooove dumplings.)

Hopefully tomorrow will be a good Yuletide for our family. I’m pretty sure the pressies I picked out for people this year will go over very well. We’re going to have an Irish dinner, watch White Christmas, light up the fireplace with a Yule log, and listen to Bing Crosby sing while opening pressies. And we’ll try to stay warm, as the wind chill factor has it feeling like zero degrees out there!

Yesterday Anxiety and I helped Dustin & Angst move. From the time we got the U-Haul to the time I dropped Dustin off at his new place was 10 hours. *dies a little* You wouldn’t think it would take that long to load and haul what is essentially a cargo van’s worth of belongings a whopping 23 miles. But there were a couple of side trips: one to my place, so Angst’s stuff would be out of it, and one to a downtown apartment where a cute & very young Asian chick was moving out and wanted someone to just take away the belongings she didn’t have room for in her new place. So Dustin & Angst got a computer desk & chair, entertainment stand, TV, and VCR for free.

So Anxiety and I didn’t get home until well past the dinner hour, since we had to make a grocery store run after finishing the moving chores. My feet hurt so bad that sitting down actually made them hurt worse. Bless Geoffrey for the lengthy foot rub he gave me!

We were planning on getting Geoffrey his baby ball python today. Don’t know if that’s gonna happen, but kinda doubt it…there isn’t much snow (an inch or two, ish) but people are notoriously stupid in Portland when the pavement isn’t completely clear and dry. And since the Tropical Hut is a small, owner-operated business, they might not even open today…we’ll have to call to check, if Geoffrey still wants to go snake-shopping.

Speaking of snakes, mine finally has a name!!! The lovely and brilliant Tamara suggested “Tyrian” for the location where purple dye first came from. When I checked out the word on Wikipedia.org, I found that it’s also a label for worshipers of the god Tyr — and therefore, utterly perfect! So my little lavender corn snake (who has spent the last 2 days straight hiding under his cage substrate of aspen shavings) is named Tyrian. Yay!

Not looking forward to riding the bus to and from work for the next few days. This snow crap could stop anytime. Really.