This morning we woke up to snow and ice, so we decided to plant some seeds! Anya helped me mix up the peat moss and perlite and put the soil mixture into the seed trays. Luckily, Andy had mopped the floor yesterday, so it was nice and clean for us to put dirt all over.

I planted the seeds while Anya and Andy used the label maker to…make labels. I’ve tried all sorts of things in the past to keep track of which seeds are where (popsicle sticks, maps, bits of whatever set on top, my memory {hahaha}), but it seems like things always get mixed up. Maybe the labels will work? Andy spelled the words out, and Anya typed them into the machine. After the labels were printed, Anya trimmed them, peeled off the back, and stuck them on the trays where I pointed. She was a very good helper! She also got to plant some dill and cilantro because those seeds are big enough for her teeny fingers.

So, what did we plant?

Peppers: Alma Paprika, Sweet Bell Mix, Relleno, Espanola Improved, and Cap’n Leigh’s Dragon Peppers (developed by Andy’s father over several years)
Tomatoes: Mexico Midget, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Speckled Roman, Black from Tula, Beam’s Yellow Pear, and Crnkovic Yugoslavian
Herbs: Black Cumin, Cilantro, Dill, Sweet Genovese Basil, and Opal Purple Variegated Basil
Other: Purple Tomatillo

The newest seeds we had were “Packed for 2008.” The oldest, 2004. I threw in three or four seeds in each cell and hope that at least one will grow. I should probably just toss most of the seeds, but I can’t. They are baby plants! I can’t toss them! I could give them to people, but they are up to 7 years old. I don’t think anyone would want seeds that old when they can get new ones for a dollar. I suppose I could toss the REALLY old ones in the compost, and then they would have a chance to grow, so it wouldn’t be like I was throwing them away? Decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, the plant room (aka scary bathroom) has its first occupants. I just need to write a big note, so that I don’t forget they are down there.

What the angel does with a stinkbug’s wings, I have no idea.

Here’s my theory. The stinkbugs that survived through the winter are the strongest and know the best hiding places. If they are allowed to reproduce, the offspring will be genetically designed for surviving in our house. They must not be allowed to survive. Problem: the darned things are hard to dispose of. You can’t squish them because the stink is horrible. If you toss them in the trash, they chortle and crawl out. They can be flushed, but I don’t think we have enough water in our well to flush that often, and you gotta flush right away or they will get out. Or..at the very least glare at you when you go back in to use the toilet. In the winter, we tossed them outside and the cold got them. Can’t do that now. Now they WANT to get outside. To spawn evil devil mutant baby bugs of doom.

The best solution I have come up with is a bowl of soapy water. I figured if it works for Japanese beetles, it would work for these critters, too. So far I am correct. There are problems. The stink still sometimes wafts up out of the bowl, and I am fairly sure if I leave too many corpses in there, the fresh bugs will just use them like little rafts. But these are easy problems to deal with by emptying the bowl occasionally. The picture above is about one day’s worth. Soup anyone? Yum!

The neighbors a few houses over have two dogs, and following the tradition of these parts, the dogs are left to run wherever they’d like. It seems they like our place. I was concerned in the beginning (strange dogs running wild and all that), but after Andy went out and played with them a few times and didn’t get eaten, I felt better about having them around. I think I’ve even gotten to like having them visit. After Buddy died, it got sort of lonely outside. Eventually, we’d like to get a dog of our own, but for now these neighbor dogs are good enough. They come and visit and we can enjoy their company, but we don’t have to feed them or pay for vet bills or give them baths or tuck them in at night. They are a bit stand-offish, which I like (strange dogs running wild and all that), but they will come within a few feet and sit with us and follow us around and jump up and down and chase each other in circles.

This afternoon, Anya and I were down by the berry bed working on Anya’s Sunflower Garden. Andy had dumped a load of mulch on the square that will be the garden, and I was raking the mulch out flat while Anya watched. The two dogs trotted down the hill behind us, stopped to say hello for a bit, and then moved on. Anya starts shouting, “NO NO DOGGIE”! I look up and one of the dogs has grabbed my sweatshirt off the ground and is running off with it! I like that sweatshirt! I started waving my rake in the air and yelling at the dog as I watched it run off towards the row of pine hedges backed by a barbed wire fence leading to neighbor’s field. I felt like Sandra Bullock’s character in “The Proposal” when the eagles grab the dog and she’s yelling at the bird to let the dog go, except I didn’t have a cell phone to throw. Thankfully, the dog dropped my sweatshirt a few feet before the hedges, and then the pair of them ran off. I still don’t get it. What did that dog want with my sweatshirt?? It wasn’t his size or color. Maybe he wanted to eat it?

A few days ago I was carrying the compost pail out to the compost pile. My eyes were on the ground because I am paranoid about snakes leaping up out of the earth to sink their pointy fangs into my ankles. I was pondering how the weather was getting warmer, and those jumping snakes were probably waking up, and they were probably hungry for ankles, and I should probably pay very close attention. Then I told myself I was being crazy to worry about ankle-biting snakes when it felt like I was being watched. I looked up, and there was one of the dogs…watching me. Or, more correctly, watching the compost pail. As I continued walking toward the compost pile, I kept my eye on that dog, and then the other one showed up, and then I recalled how I often see those two loitering around near the compost pile, and I got a sickening thought. They were waiting for me to dump the pail. No, no, that couldn’t possibly be true. What could these dogs find palatable in a pile of slimey, moldy vegetables and fruit bits? Oh wait, don’t dogs eat cat poo out of the litter box. Hrm. I dumped the pail and banged the bottom of it and tried to get all the slimey bits out, and sure enough, the moment I started back towards the house, those darned dogs were jamming their noses in the slop and chowing down.

I have hesitated to name these dogs because they aren’t ours and they will probably end up as road pancakes or go rabid and I’ll have to beat them to a pulp with my rake, but today I got really tired of calling them “The Dogs,” and “that dog,” and “the other dog.” Lately Anya has been asking me to read “Lady and the Tramp,” except she calls it “Pongo and the Tramp.” Since both of these dogs are boys, I figure Pongo and Tramp are good names for them for now.

I often forget that our house has two bathrooms.

When we first moved in about five years ago, the basement was a big, ugly room, and we slept on a mattress on the floor. The laundry room was separated from the sleeping area by a louvered door; if the washer or dryer were running at night, it felt like sleeping in a laundromat. One bright spot was the bathroom. In this house that had only one bedroom and was puzzled together with second-hand parts, there was a 3/4 bathroom in the basement. It seemed strange and yet wonderful.

For the first few months after we took possession of the house, I stayed there with my mom while Andy finished things up at the old place. The downstairs was my bedroom, and I used that bathroom everyday. Sure it was dark and cold and musty, all the fixtures were probably more like fifth hand than second, and the shower had flaking paint (paint over concrete!) and was so small I could barely turn around, but it was a bathroom! With a shower!

Then one day, my mom suggested I try using the shower in the main bathroom. She pointed out the main bathroom was warmer and (while still hideously ugly) a lot nicer than the one in the basement. I resisted for a while because I felt I owed that basement bathroom something. Eventually, though, I went up into the light.

I never went back.

Since then, we’ve added a real bedroom downstairs, installed a real door on the laundry, and made things look pretty nice down there. But over in the corner, like a dark secret, is the bathroom. A sad, dried, dusty bunch of lavender wrapped with a ribbon and attached with a large paper clip is jammed into a hole in the door, a relic of the previous owners.

Sometimes when my parents are visiting, one of them will brave the spiders and ants and dust bunnies to use the facilities in times of dire need. And we used it when we were fixing up the main bathroom. Other than that, we avoid it. It’s like that door in the first (or was it the second?) episode of Dr. Who with this new Doctor where the evil creature is living in a spare room and no one knows because they don’t really want to see that the room is even there. Sometimes I’ll be on my way to the laundry room and pause and think, “Oh yeah, there is a bathroom down here.”

This spring, time will start up again in the little, lost room. I have decided to try and use it get seedlings started for our garden. To that end, I forced myself to go in and really look around at the space to see if it would work. I felt like I was walking into a (messy) dead person’s bathroom.

A metal bath caddy is hanging on a nail pounded into one of the concrete walls of the shower, rust bubbling on the bottom, a bottle of conditioner and a scrubby occupying it. The medicine cabinet holds a prescription that expired in 2006, an empty glasses case, a tooth brush for cats, antibiotic cream. The vanity contains one and a half bottles of mouth wash, some purple hair gel, my traveling kit (that’s where it went!), another bottle of conditioner, and some razors. A pair of hair scissors lies on the counter next to a pile of hair clippings (that is really, truly weird), a half bottle of hand soap, and two bottles of lotion. Favorite earrings (I haven’t worn earrings since before Anya was born) are on the shelf over the toilet with a favorite shirt now two sizes too small, a tooth brush, dental floss, contact lens cleaner, the missing thermometer. On the commode itself rests dusty reading material: two Woodcraft magazines and a book on raising chickens. And, strangely, a pair of purple and blue bar stools from the old house are tucked into the corner.

Yesterday, I decided to spend 15 minutes cleaning out the room. I grabbed a grocery bag for trash, turned around and switched it for a kitchen garbage bag. I threw almost everything out. There are a few things left that I stacked onto the shelf and will deal with later (today?), but I brought that garbage bag back upstairs completely full. Today I plan to take another 15 minutes to work on the room. Eventually, we will get rid of that hidden monster lair lurking around the corner. (Wait, does that mean the Doctor won’t visit us now? I may need to rethink that.)