Bike to work week

Bozeman has a pretty hard-core biking community. By that I mean folks who mountain bike, road bike (despite MT's narrow-ass roads with no shoulder) and are die hard bike-to-workers. Like, they bike to work through the winter in the snow.

I'm not that hard core.

The Bozeman Bicycle Advisory Board sponsors Bike Week every May, in which they arrange for a number of local coffee houses, restaurants and other merchants to offer prizes to people who stop by their shop while riding their bike to work.. You take your helmet in, get a sticker and a free coffee or something.

I've mentioned before why I occasionally ride my bike to work. I'm not as committed as some people. But this week I pedaled my way to work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, despite a forecast for rain. Since my husband and I work together, I can always throw my bike in the back of his truck and catch a ride home at 5pm if it's raining. My real motivation for biking to work this week has been to be able to go for bike rides for exercise. It's so much more fun than running or going to the gym to ellipticize.

I've learned a few things this week while riding to work:

1. I'd need to have a stash of important things at work. Specifically, coffee, creamer and sugars. It's not easy to ride with a coffee mug, and I can't afford in cash or calories to go buy coffee downtown. 
2. Even if it looks cold out, wearing a jacket is usually too much. Even at 35 degrees. My hands get cold, but pedaling the bike keeps my core temperature up. It's weird to arrive at work both sweaty and cold. 
3. Along those lines, a toiletries kit with deodorant, makeup and other touch up necessities would probably be a good idea for keeping me looking professional. 
4. It is possible to ride your bike in a skirt. I did so on Tuesday in my Mountain Hardwear skirt and on Wednesday in a Banana Republic dress with a really full skirt. It seems the key to not flashing everyone is a full or A-line skirt. No mini's (obviously, since I'm headed to work) or tighter pencil skirts. 
5. It takes a while to break in your "saddle" after a long winter of other activities. Ouch.
6. Knowledge of safe bike routes is key. No need to put yourself, and uncertain vehicle drivers in danger. You can use the City of Bozeman's interactive GIS map to find bike routes. 
7. A good commuting bag is a must. It's impossible to ride a bike with a purse, and really, I'd make fun of you for it. I have a North Face hip pack with a cross-body strap, which was a gift from my dad 10 years ago. It's fine, although maybe not big enough. I like that it clips around my waist since it keeps the bag from sliding around on my body. And I'm to cheap to buy a new one. 
8. Pack light. Duh. Specifically, taking leftovers stored in a heavy glass container for lunch is probably not in your best interests. Not the end of the world, but no need to haul around extra weight. 
9. Have a bigger wallet; one that could double as a clutch purse if necessary. 
10. Give yourself extra time. I'm usually a go-go-go-go-GO bike rider. Why go slow? But when you're wearing work clothes and don't want to arrive to work drenched, it's sometimes necessary to gear down and ride at a more leisurely pace. 

Will I bike to work every day this summer? Probably not. This week just happened to coincide with nice weather and a lack of evening meetings, meaning I could ride home with DJ if the weather changed. It's kind of fun though, and a nice to get outside in the sunshine every day. 

Why retail is dying

A friend of mine commented last winter that retail is dying. It took me until Saturday to really get what he meant.

We hosted a BBQ on Saturday night, and while the wind kept everyone inside, I still wanted to wear a party dress. My favorite black summer dress is just a little too boob-y to wear when there will be kids around. Heck, it's too boob-y to wear pretty much anywhere. Thus, I was going to justify to myself purchase of a Patagonia dress I've had my eye on for, oh, eight years or so. The Morning Glory halter top:

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I planned to pick up the dress while running some errands on Sunday morning. We live in a sporty, athletic town, and I've seen this dress in practically every shop for the past 10 years. Checked REI first; they only had the pink one in my size. Went to Chalet sports; they didn't even carry the dress. Went to Barrel Mountaineering; nope. Went to Northern Lights; nope. Called the Bozeman Angler, a flyfishing shop, for christsakes, where I'd seen the dress before; they only had an extra small left. 

I struck out in five different places. In trying to find a dress I've seen everywhere for a decade. 

And then I figured out what Ben meant when he said retail is dead. Why spend two hours running around town not finding what I want, when I can order it online, have it shipped to my door within 24 hours, try it on in the privacy of my own home and in some cases ship it back for free if the item doesn't work?

Well. If you already know what you want, and you don't want to wear it that afternoon, then yeah, ordering stuff online is just easier. And less time consuming. Shopping isn't all about the hunt for me; I'm a buyer. If I see what I want, I buy it and be done with the process. Hunting online, where I can read reviews and price shop while drinking my morning coffee, sounds like a much more enjoyable process. 

Four years

Four years ago I returned from graduate school in Kentucky, happy to be back in the Big Sky state and certain of a bright future. It was a great, meandering trip back, with stops in Madison, Wisconsin and Bismark, North Dakota. Driving across the northern great plains in May is beautiful with green grass, blue skies and a lot of bugs.

I arrived home, car loaded down, to my aunt and uncle in town for my cousin's graduation from Montana State. Zack was the last of the three of us cousins, Blake, me and him, to attend MSU. Both Blake and Zack played football for dad; Blake as an All-American Tight End, and Zack as an outstanding center whose career was cut short by bizarre injuries and happenstances. 

The Tuesday after graduation I interviewed for my First Professional Job. On Friday afternoon I took a phone call while at the temporary job at my mom's medical office, in which I was offered my current position. Elated, I hung up the phone, finished my shift, walked down and told my mom the happy news, and went to Target to buy myself a celebration gift. I remember being on the phone with a friend, standing in the card aisle, and listening to a downpour of a spring thunderstorm. 

I couldn't get a hold of my dad all afternoon. My dad is not a phone guy, so I didn't really chalk it up to much. Target purchase in hand, I walked into the kitchen of my parent's home to find my dad leaning against the counter.

CK: "Have you talked to mom?"

Dad: "Yeah... (with a gentle resigned look on his face)"

CK: "I got that job with the City!"

Dad: "That's great kid; I just got fired."

And nothing has really been the same since. My mom came home, clutching the mail she'd picked up on the way in. A thick packet from their retirement investment advisor had arrived. Mom threw it on the table with a "well guess that's trash now."

My sister arrived home an hour behind my mom. In a fate which still makes my heart freeze up, she heard the news about dad being fired from a good friend of hers, whose dad had been MSU's basketball coach until he was fired the previous year. 

"Oh Gretchen, I'm so sorry," said Mikeala.

"For what?" Gretchen asked.

(and this is where I get really, really angry that an institution to which my family gave so much couldn't have the dignity and grace to at least give my dad 24 hours to notify his family before offering a fucking press release just in time for the 5pm news. You stay classy MSU.)

I made margaritas. No one drank them. 

We sat there and stared at each other. Shocked. Hurt. Angry. Upset. Livid. 

And though I try, and it gets a bit easier every year, I still have a hard time moving past those emotions.

Especially knowing that four years later, on May 17, 2011, my parents are still pretty unsettled. 

Knowing that this episode has taken years off of their lives. Added years to the length of time they'll work before being able to retire. Added lines and wrinkles and worry and stress and weight and hurt and scars on their hearts that will probably never really heal. 

I'm proud, or maybe more astonished, that my family has made it through the past four years. It has not been easy; it won't be easy moving forward. But life can't be easy, and if I was to learn that lesson, better at 22 years old than later, right?

Personally, the last four years have been pretty darn amazing for me. Successful job, relationship, marriage, dog, health, career, etc. And I'm grateful to have found a guy willing to take all of that on. It's a lot of baggage; this bitterness towards my alma mater (which happens to be my husband's too). I'm working to let go of it, but damn this bitterness is tough to rinse from my mouth. 

We are alive. We are resilient. We have bounced back. 

And damn if I'm not already looking forward to October 29: the date Idaho State University plays in Bozeman against Montana State. I'm challenging ISU to throw for 500+ yards of passing. 

Spriiiiiiiiinnngggg

Last week's vault into actual spring weather left us itching to get outside. The pupperoni enjoyed a number of walks. 

Someday I'll have a camera better than my blackberry or crummy Nikon Coolpix. But right now I'd rather spend the money on travel. So until then, enjoy photos like these:

The poor blackberry couldn't even deal with the reflection off of Harlow's fur.

And seriously, could we get some action shots? This is so distorted, but a fun two part photo!

Its a good thing I have patient (mostly) subjects.

Even if I do sometimes drive her to drink. (kidding PETA! She likes to chase around empty plastic bottles, this one just happened to be Segram's Seven whiskey...)

But man, the weather last week; made me stop and smell the flowers.

And enjoy the sun in our hair.

And love the one's we're with.

Spring makes for happy dogs.

WIND

A brutal east wind has been buffering Bozeman since Friday afternoon. I'm talking gusts up to 50 mph. It's coming over the Bridger mountains where the remaining snowpack just serves to air-condition the wind. 

Instead of a weekend of gardening and landscaping and bike riding and chuck-it throwing and BBQ hosting, we've been hunkered down in the house. We still hosted a BBQ last night (fun!), but no one could go outside. Gah. Gross. 

I took two Tylenol PM Friday and Saturday night to fall asleep, as the wind surely would have kept me awake. Probably not the brightest idea after 5 mojitos and two glasses of wine on Saturday night, but whatever. I wouldn't have slept without it. I woke up a few times, thinking that the giant north-facing window in our bedroom was going to be blown in.

This is nuts. DJ and I are both pacing inside the house wondering what the heck to do with ourselves today. Read? Going to the gym will only kill a few hours. Go shopping? Meh. Study up for Europe? Finish the last panel of curtains for the kitchen? 

Darn it. This sucks. 

Mom and Dad's flowerbed

I first experimented with gardening in Montana nearly 10 years ago, when I designed the landscaping for the house my parents built in the fall of 2000. We moved in the first weekend in November, with only sod down in the front yard. I borrowed books about gardening and landscaping from the library, and tried to guide my parents about what plants to install and how to landscape the yard. 

My folks have always landscaped their own yard, rather than paying someone else. This time they paid someone else to lay sod in the front and seed the back grass, and install a sprinkler system. Maybe to also install the black rubber edging, I can't remember. But the rest we did ourselves. My parents are farm kids; they know how to plant things. 

Ten years later, the yard looks like something planted by farm kids. I say that lovingly. After we built our house, the neighborhood suddenly got a lot fancier than we thought it would be. Prices suddenly shot to double what my parents paid, and people don't purchase homes for that price without the property being professionally landscaped. 

The lots are pretty big too, about 7,500-9,000 square feet, or 150% of the 5,000 square foot lot my house is on. All of the neighbors have big landscaping beds, raised hills with trees on them, and a lot of bushes and shrubs. My folks? Grass. lots of it. Cheap to install. Easy to maintain, even if it meant taking over an hour to mow the lawn. 

My mom put the house on the market in June 2007, within three weeks of my dad being fired. For various reasons, the house hasn't sold. They're putting it back on the market this summer though. Maybe the fates are telling my parents to keep it and retire back to Bozeman? It's a great house in a great neighborhood, and I wish we could afford to buy it from them... 

Either way, as the house has been rented for the last two and a half years, what little landscaping there is could be spiffied up. I volunteered to handle the front flower bed, a spot reserved for my mom to experiment in gardening. My mom is a busy lady, and between two kids, a husband who wants to spend every waking minute at the lake and a very demanding job, she didn't have the time she wished to garden. So now I get to, and I'm really excited about it. I have a $150 budget for the roughly 15' X 15' space.  

My first purchase will be 10-15 bags of soil pep as a mulch. I realized where my mom gets the "do not mulch" thing from when visiting Whitman County last week; no one there mulches. They all just hoe out weeds from their flower beds. Um, who has time for that? And furthermore, a good layer of mulch will keep weeds from getting started. And retain moisture, thus requiring less water. And soil pep works to amend soil, breaking up clay soils and making gardening easier over time. We use it in our flower beds, and I'm obviously a huge fan. 

The flower bed isn't totally bare right now. Well...  let me amend that. My dad "trimmed", aka scalped, the bushes when he was here last weekend. Mike is not a man of finesse when it comes to landscaping. To his credit, the bushes were terribly overgrown and they will grow back, eventually.

There are three spirea bushes against the porch, and three barberry bushes arced against the curving sidewalk. And some other kind of ground cover that the tennant put in. And some kind of grassy thing in a circle that the tenant put in. A few spring bulbs, which never really got going, are scattered through the space. So that's about what I've got to work with. 

My first order of business will be to pull up the spring bulbs. I believe the crocus, which I've never actually seen bloom at my parent's house, has been a delicious source of nutrition for deer in the neighborhood. They're also right where I want to plant something else. Ditto for the single bulbs of tulips scattered around. I'll relocate both bulbs to just beside the porch step, where they might get munched but at least won't be in the way. 

As for new plants in the space, I'll install a mix of perennials for long-term effect, and annuals for show this summer. 

First will be two clumps of feather reed grass against the bare garage wall. This perennial grass grows 3-5' in height and offers green grass in the summer, and great yellow grass heads in the fall. They add good winter interest too, if left untrimmed. 

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In front of the grasses I'll plant three purple asters, which are a fall-blooming plant. They grow 2-4 feet high and the purple will offset from the gold of the grasses behind nicely. 

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I'll leave the little circle of grass (whatever it is), for now. Within it I'll plant additional perennials. Possibly three pink or red daylillies, as they survive despite being ignored. They also bloom in mid-summer, which will add nice color interest to the center of the garden. 

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Outside of the circle, I'll plant a blue/purple lupine or two, which will bloom a bit before the daylillies. They have great horizontal spread, and offer excellent vertical flowers. 

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Behind the lupine, and between the spirea, I'll plant Autumn Joy Sedum, which will turn a really great rust-gold color in the fall. 

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Either that or Black-eyed-Susan, which would offer a bright yellow through fall until the first hard freeze. 

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As for annuals, and where to plant them, I'll probably stick with the Kramer favorite petunias. They're indestructible, and bloom brightly until the first frost. Can't compete with that! Probably in white or pinks to give the area some bright color. 

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I'm going to let whatever this stuff is continue to grow through this summer. For now it's a good ground cover, and keeps weeds back (kind of). It also slows erosion, so I can't really complain. 

May 13 Friday Farming

It must be something to do with Friday the 13th, but Blogger was down for about 24 hours last night and this morning. I wanted to write this post last night and have it up early Friday morning, but couldn't get into Blogger until after work on Friday. 

Oh. EM. GEEEEEEEEEEEEE it's been beautiful out since Wednesday. I become positively giddy when spring really finally arrives. I rode my bike to work on Thursday and Friday, and would have on Wednesday if not for a seminar I hosted. BEAUTIFUL. I want to roll around in the green grass and never wear shoes again. 

I went for a bike ride Thursday at lunch, in the 65 degree heat. Apparently my spring giddiness sucked out all brains, as I forgot the cardinal rule of spring at high altitude: Your pasty-ass winter white skin will burn quickly. 

A year ago, pre wedding, getting a tan line like that would have made me upset. I've always been a little neurotic about tan lines, but especially when I was spending big bucks on photography. These days? Meh. I just feel foolish for getting burned at all!

Of course, all of this good weather is beneficial to the Farm. 

My daffodils near the front porch bloomed on Thursday night. 

The tulips are about to do the same.

The muscari is abloom all around the house. 

DJ was able to install the hardware for hanging baskets on the front porch on Thursday. I can't wait until sweet potato vine, petunias, and white lobelia comes spilling out of these things! 

The clematis vine is snaking upwards, and the hosta we planted at the base of the clematis, to shade the ground and keep the clematis roots cool, is coming back. This is after I was sure the dog had eaten it. 

This tuft of grass, I think fountain grass, between the utility boxes seems to have not made it through the winter. I suspect I trimmed it back too far in the fall. I learned last winter to leave dried grass standing through the winter, as it provides winter interest and also offers insulation to the plant. It gets trimmed in the spring. 

Oh well, I already know what I want to replace it with; Russian Sage:

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The thing I love the most about gardening is how foolproof it is, for the most part. I literally threw these plants in the ground last fall, right before the first snow, and then watched them wilt. I was pretty certain I'd be telling Jane that they all died this spring. So far? all but 2 out of 40 have come back! I was shocked to notice the greenery and flower bud! on this plant Thursday night:

I have no idea what that plant is, other than growing. 

Same with this ferny ground cover. I really thought it was dead!

Guys, the raspberry sticks are alive! And sending up new shoots! 

I need to do a bit of work around them; mostly just peeling back the weed mat so they can send up new shoots like this one:

Onto the edibles! 

I made a mistake on Thursday morning, and it appears I'll pay for it. DJ and I debated if I should leave the clear plastic top on the inside-started plants when I put them on the front porch yesterday. We left the top on, thinking that more heat would be good. Sadly, doing so wilted and killed the marigolds, the purple basil and the snapdragon starts. Only the eggplant, which notoriously loves as much heat as it can get, made it through the day unscathed. 

I'm bummed, as I was about a week from transplanting the marigold outside. But, I'm learning. Not much to do about it, other than reseed and hope for the best. I can always purchase these starts at a nursery. 

Many other things are going well though.

The spinach in the front pots is beginning to form actual spinach leaves. Guys, call me a crappy farmer, but this is the farthest I've gotten with spinach. Last year it didn't even come up, or the gophers snacked on it. 

The renegade cilantro in the front pot is similarly doing well. I wish there was more of it; I love cilantro! Hopefully the spinach and cilantro "come in" before Memorial Day weekend, after which I'll plant peppers in the front pots.

Out in the in-ground garden, things are coming up nicely too. The sugar snap peas are finally up. 

As is the bibb lettuce. 

And spinach. 

I planted potatoes on Tuesday. I didn't want them to miss out on the warm weather at the end of this week. I purchased red and Yukon gold potatoes on Saturday. The internet recommended slicing them into 2oz sections, with each section having multiple eyes, and then letting the cuts scab over in a paper bag for 48 hours prior to planting in the ground. I let them scab for 72 hours, and now have nine plants of red and nine of Yukons planted; one plant per square. I hilled them up already and will continue to as the plant grows. 

The transplanted lettuce (bibb?) is doing well.

The transplanted broccoli is struggling a bit. Probably because it's a teeny tiny plant and is overwhelmed. I'll let it go and see if it recovers. 

And across the back fence, the gophers wonder how they can get to the food:

I might re-seed the sunflower, as after a bit of digging I couldn't find a germinated seed where I'd planted them. 

I've seen hide nor hair of the asparagus. There is some kind of nasty red grass growing in the asparagus bed. I'm hesitant to really get in there to yank it out, as I don't want to damage the grass. 

Here's my to-do list for this weekend:

Weed the beds

Finish planting gladiolus corms

Plant sweet peas

Square out 2nd terrace and plant shallot onions