i heart my bleeding heart

Cheesy title, but this is only the second year I've had a bleeding heart and I'm totally smitten. I expect the thing to tinkle like a windchime, it's so intricately delicate. This snap is from a several weeks ago, and it's put on several arches of hearts since then.

By July, it gets a lot of sun and I was sure I'd killed it until I saw little green stems poking up at the end of March, right next to our pet bunny statue (bought on the cheap from rockin' Smith & Hawken as a closeout last spring precisely for the purpose of marking where the plant was so we didn't lose it in a landscaping frenzy).

You should get yourself one of these. It's the girliest plant we own, but it's soooooo cool.

How to use chopsticks

My youngest nephew came to visit us in mid-April. He's four. He's a problem-solver, that boy, and you guessed it, full of moxie.

QE2 & me

Last night, I dreamed that Queen Elizabeth was stealth-auditioning me for a spot in her quilting circle. She pretended she knew nothing about sewing American quilts and had me over to tea at her palace one evening to provide a demonstration. As she nibbled her scone, she made all sorts of approving noises over my tiny stitches when hand-piecing, but I suddenly realized I'd accidentally sewn through three layers of fabric instead of two.

I tried to cover up the fact that I was frantically picking out stitches by nattering on about the need to take a backstitch at least every inch for a strong seam ("see? right here? here's a backstitch...oh, and let me undo this a little further so you can see -- there's another one....) I saw her give a knowing sidelong glance to her secretary, ostensibly taking notes on my "lesson" to Her Majesty, and I knew all was lost. I was politely shooed out with the Brit equivalent of "don't call us, we'll call you."

What was THAT about?!

"I want to wake up in the morning...."

Our gorgeous "PJM Compacta" rhododendron is finishing up three weeks of fluffy blooms and I wanted to share it with you. Rhododendrons are the state flower of West Virginia and I tried growing some when I lived in Georgia to remind me of home. I think it was too hot; they kept dying on me. I took a chance on this variety and had my fingers crossed when we planted it last spring. Not only did it grow a foot, it put on quite a show this year.

Rhodendrons also remind me of a sweet, old-fashioned song that the Moxie 'rents taught us kids as soon as we were old enough to sing. I did a quick Google search to find it, but alas, no dice. I'm pretty sure it has more than just the one verse and anyone who attended a West Virginia 4-H camp is sure to recognize it, but here's the gist for you non-Mountaineers:

I want to wake up in the morning

where the rhododendron grows,

where the sun comes a-peepin' into where I'm a-sleepin'

and the songbirds sing hello (hello!)

I want to wander through the wildwood

and forget my worldly woes,

and drift back to West Virginia

where the rhododendron grows.

Happy 1st Birthday, Roz!

Because we adopted our cats from the local Humane Society, we're not 100% sure of when their birthdays are, but they said Rosalind's was around April 16th, so we're going with that. Extra kitty treats for everyone!

Oatmeal Molasses Bread

Moxie Sister and her family are coming from the mothermountains to visit this weekend. YAY! Everyone is vegetarian, and I like having homemade bread on hand for the ravenous Moxie Munchkins. This is one of my favorite workhorse yeast breads –- great for everything from peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to toast. I modified the recipe a bit, including using more types of flour, which makes it easier to tolerate for those of us with mild gluten issues. If you want to bake the original, it shows up as "Rabbit Hill Inn Molasses-Oatmeal Bread" in the excellent Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook by the extravagantly-named Crescent Dragonwagon. (No, I’m not making that up.)

ingredients

• 2 c boiling water, plus a cup or so extra
• 1 c old-fashioned oatmeal
• 1 ½ tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp active dry yeast (I like the bulk kind in the brown glass jar you keep in the fridge, but make sure you bring it to room temperature before you use it)
• ½ c lukewarm water
• ½ c darkest molasses
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 ½ c whole wheat flour
• 1 ½ c unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 c spelt flour
• 1 c dark rye flour

instructions

1. In a large bowl (I like using the KitchenAid mixer bowl), pour the 2 cups of boiling water over the oatmeal and butter. Cover and let stand 30 minutes.


2. Pour the lukewarm water into a small glass bowl, add a generous pinch of sugar and stir. Sprinkle yeast over the sugar-water mixture and let stand until dissolved, about 5-10 minutes. Make sure all the yeast gets wet; if some is still dry after a few minutes, give it a quick stir. A brief sidebar: I find watching yeast activate interesting and soothing. Sometimes it sinks to the bottom and slowly bubbles up from the middle like a sluggish volcano, sometimes it forms a foam like the head on a lovely pint of Guinness, sometimes it turns murky and barely seethes. This is a good recipe for watching yeast, but you’ll want to measure out the other ingredients ahead of time.


3. Add the yeast, molasses, and salt to the bowl of oatmeal and stir well. Crucial tip #1: you've heard the phrase "slower than molasses in January?" Take that extra cup of boiling water and put a metal 1 cup measure to soak until it's good and hot. Take out the metal cup, shake off the excess water, and immediately pour in the molasses. Let stand for 1 minute, then pour into the oatmeal mixture. The hot metal ensures almost all the molasses will drizzle out effortlessly, and the remainder only needs a quick finger-swipe to finish off.


4. Add enough flour so you can knead the dough –- or use the bitchin’ KitchenAid dough hook. If you’re old school, lightly flour a surface and keep at it until dough is elastic, about 8-10 minutes. Crucial tip #2: do not knead this bread dough on a cold counter (e.g., marble, granite) or it will take forever to rise. If you’re new school, the dough hook method will take you half the amount of time. In either case, you’re likely to need extra all-purpose flour at hand because the wheat flour will keep things sticky.


5. Butter a glass or ceramic bowl, pat the dough into a ball, drop it into the bowl and flip it so the oiled side is on top. Cover with a clean, smooth dishtowel and let rise until double, 1 ½ - 2 hours.


6. Butter two 9” x 5” bread pans. I like the dark metal kind because it cuts baking time and creates a more crisp bottom crust. Punch down the dough, divide in half, and roll the dough into loaves, still avoiding any cold countertops. Place into the pans, cover again, and let rise until double, about 45 minutes.


7. Thirty minutes into the second rise, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake the bread until crusty, about 35 minutes. Tap the top of each loaf lightly; a hollow sound indicates they are done. Turn the loaves out of the pans onto a wire rack and let cool until you can't stand it anymore and have to cut yourself a slice. Slather with real butter.
   
   Makes 2 loaves.

drip. drip.drip

I spoke too soon. The master bedroom window is still leaking, albeit less than before. *sigh* Back to trying to schedule a crew to come and fix it. Wish me luck.

Don't try this at home

Two days ago, a team of contractors finished a series of repairs in, on, and outside of our house that now essentially makes it waterproof once again. I’m game for almost any DIY –- especially if Moxie Dad is assisting –- but identifying a roof leak that caused water to stream out of a canister light and run down the walls in 3 distinct places is not something I want to take on. Not to mention the several window frames that drip-drip-dripped every time we had a light shower lasting more than 20 minutes. And the hurricane that came through the west top-most window every time we had a thunderstorm. And the sheets of water that sluiced down the back of the house in a heavy weather and tore the window screen right off the master bedroom window. Nope, I like to think I’m smart enough to know when my derriere would be kicked.

Luckily, the man who built our house was the contractor for a neighbor’s addition during these stressful times. I’m not ashamed to admit that after one particularly bad storm in November, I stood in the hallway at 11 P.M. and sobbed on the Boy Scout’s shoulder that we surely had mold growing inside the walls and the ceiling was going to cave in and we had to fix it because I was sick of it and couldn’t he do something, please-God-anything to muffle the incessant trickling of water into all those buckets and bowls?

Boy Scout sent the builder an email that night. I think my small melt-down scared him a little.

After we explained the problems, the builder felt so bad that he sent over crews to fix our soggy issues – for FREE. Did I mention he is a nice man? And that we don’t mind too much that it took 4 months and close to a dozen guys to execute the work, guys who tripped the house alarm twice while we were away at Christmas and shut one of our cats in a spare room for such a long time that we had to clean up a mess when we came home and she’s forever going to scramble pathetically for the nearest hiding place whenever several men -- loud, laughing men speaking Spanish -- come stomping up the stairs? But. It was FREE.

The list of repairs?

• caulking around at least 8 leaking windows and repairing/painting frames that started to split
• ripping out a chunk of ceiling to pinpoint the roof leak, and replastering/painting ceiling after said roof leak was addressed
• repainting damaged water-damaged walls and door frames
• pulling up our stone roof deck, plugging all holes, laying down more waterproofing fabric, and putting all the stone back – plus sweeping new sand into the cracks again
• installing 14’ of flashing along our roof deck’s gutter to address a 1.5” gap between the edge of the roof and the edge of the gutter – 40+ feet off the ground on a day with 20 mph gusts
  
  These guys rocked. I’ve heard that the hallmark of a good contractor is that he takes his shoes off before coming into the house. Every crew member did it every single time. Still, we’re really glad to be done. I still wouldn’t have wanted to do any of this myself.