I'm back from my trip to Northern Ontario. Mostly for work, but some fun in there too. In spite of all the tomato-eating and greenhouse-dreaming, I did not actually do anything too creative. I brought a bunch of hand sewing to do but it sat there all week in the hotel looking sad and abandonned. I appreciate that it kept me company, at any rate.

The other thing that kept me company was actually the Food Network. It's not a channel that I've watched much in the past. I'm not sure why, since I like cooking. Well, I do and I don't. I do like cooking for company - planning a menu and making hors d'oeuvres and finding exciting and new things to make. But I don't like cooking every day, I think mainly because I'm really slow. My husband can look in the fridge, see "ingredients", pull it all together, chop, dice, and sauté and make a "meal" within 30 minutes. I, on the other hand, see "stuff" that despite all my wishing, just won't make itself into something nice. I stand in front of the open fridge for about 15 minutes wondering if peas go well with bacon (they do!), or if salami can be the main ingredient in a meal (sometimes? but mostly no). When I can think of something to make that's a real meal, the process goes a bit like this:

• find the right knife (usually dirty in the sink)
• wash knife
• wash the veg
• put on some high-heeled sandals since the counters are so high in my kitchen
• find better sandals that go with my outfit
• start cutting the veg, wonder if I'm cutting the veg the right way
• run to laptop to look up videos from cooking experts on correct way to hold knife when slicing
• go back to the fridge to see if there are better veg like the ones I saw in the videos
• run over to the fire alarm to wave a tea towel frantically at it to shut it up since the boiling water set it off and I forgot to put the stove fan on
• turn on stove fan on HIGH
• open window
• throw veg in steamer
• refill water in bottom of steamer since the water all ran dry because it took me so long to cut the veg
• wait for water to come back to a boil because I just filled the hot pot with cold water
• wipe my glasses because I just filled the hot pot with cold water
• remember that steamed veg isn't really a meal, go back to fridge to find meat or some other main ingredient
• ....

I think you get the point.

Anyway, last week I watch several episodes of French Food at Home with Laura Calder. She's totally odd and I'm completely in love. She had me as soon as she talked about cooking comfort food for her friends who were out hiking. Not because I love hiking, but because I loved the way she said the dish reminded her of being in the Auvergne in France. She strikes me as a totally anglo slightly-uptight and prim lady with deep undercurrent desires to frolic naked through the countryside of France having trysts with the baker's son behind the Roman ruins. Yes, this is what came to my mind when she was talking. Perhaps I was projecting.

It was my friend Emily who told me I should watch the show. She had made a few things, most recently her lemonade recipe, or "Citron Pressé". I had a glass of it at her house, and it was superduper. So, last night I made some of the lemonade and I've been drinking it ever since, which is probably not a good thing since it's got quite a bit of sugar in it. But it's really yummy, and perfect for this mini heat wave we are currently having in Ottawa. Basically you boil together equal parts water and sugar with lemon rind to make a syrup. Keep the syrup in your fridge for any lemonade emergencies you may happen to have. To make a glass of it, you put some ice in a glass, pour a tablespoon or two of the syrup on top, add the juice of half or a whole lemon (which ever you like), fill the rest with water, and add a sprig of mint if have it. Lemony! With a je ne sais quoi!

I'm still in my hometown in Northern Ontario - the weekend was for fun, but the week is for work :( I'm pretty swamped in all my work stuff and am sitting in a hotel room overlooking an indoor swimming pool, so I'm dreaming of my father-in-law's tomatoes again. I'll be stopping by tomorrow for another steal off the vines.

I was looking through the pictures from the weekend. I have always dreamed of having a greenhouse like this. And when I went to the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in 2004 and saw this, it nearly made by brain explode with delight. My thoughts and dreams of a greenhouse are a little ambitious. So what's a girl to do? Um...nothing. Seriously, nothing. I'd built up my expectations of a backyard greenhouse SO high, that there was no way that I could have ever have built something that was just right.

And then I saw the one that Stan built. He built it with his pal in an afternoon with some 2x2s and some plastic sheeting. But, it's got everything the other greenhouses have, everything you need in a greenhouse - shelter, light, air, controllable temperature. The plastic sheeting gives a really nice light inside the house - kind of like overcast days gives you better pictures just because the light is even. The roof is adjustable up and down to adjust the temperature. The shelves inside give enough room for delicate plants. And the plants inside are indeed delicate. Since they aren't blown around in the wind, or pumelled by rain, the leaves on the plants are like tissue - so soft to the touch. These are the peppers that were on the shelf this weekend, but they've had tons of veg in there all summer. Yum!

So, lesson to me: don't wait for the PERFECT greenhouse, or the perfect garden, or even the perfect space to sew in, just jump in, get the essentials going, move forward, and the prettification can come later!

I'm currently sitting outside in my father-in-law's garden admiring the vegetable harvest. Well, maybe more than just admiring - more like partaking. Every once in a while I get up and steal a tomato straight off the vine. They are warm and delicious. The smell of the tomatoes and vines is making me swoon. Unbridled natural greeny harvesty goodness. I could not be happier!

I don't have my own garden yet, which I'm sad about. We moved to a new (to us) house last year and we are just now doing some things in our backyard - figuring out where the veg gardens will go, in with the flower gardens, gazebo, dining area, firepit, and all the things one needs to help one relax. Our soil is pretty much just clay - it's really hard to even get the spade in the ground. I'll need to bring in a bunch of good soil and put it on top.

I had a great little garden in the house we rented when we first moved to Ottawa. I just jumped in and dug it up without a plan and put in tomatoes, potatoes, corn, squash, cucumbers, peas, and beans. It was really fruitful - we were giving away bunches of veg by the end of the summer.  I loved being out there, no matter what the weather. Super hot and humid days with sweat dripping off me, or colder foggy mornings wandering around picking lettuce for lunch salads. Either way was good for me. It made me feel alive.

I love digging - not sure why, but I always have. My husband wanted to get the garden roto-tilled, and I refused. I dug the whole thing by hand. I'm not sure if either way is better in the end, but it was so completely satisfying to dig the soil, spadeful by spadeful, until it was a perfect bed for the little seeds. It really felt like I had created that garden completely from scratch. I sat out in the garden much of those summers, watching the vegetables grow. And one summer, I sat out under the umbrella writing my Master's thesis on the laptop, surrounded by plants. Heaven!

I'm not sure why I stopped gardening. We had another house for a while and we focused on the flower gardens and deck. I had a small garden for veg but it wasn't half as great as the first one. Then we had a place out in the country and there wasn't any land that was particularly good for a garden where I wouldn't be digging into the septic field.

So now we have a place in the city that is big enough for a garden, and I'm itching to get going. Soil will be ordered and arriving in the next few weeks and I'll be knee deep in dirt and seeds next spring!

I spent the weekend at the Trois Rivières Grand Prix. Not the most handmade-project inspiring place in the world, you might think, and you'd be mostly right. My husband is involved in amateur touring car racing and was there on a team that was racing in support of the NASCAR and Star Mazda races. If you know me, and most of you do, except for the really lovely new people I've met over the past couple of weeks through the blog (hi!), I'm not exactly the most girly-girl, but I'm definitely fond of ye olde feminine pursuits. I'd definitely fit in with the Bennet family in Pride and Prejudice - wandering around in cleavage-enhancing dresses, doing embroidery, and pining over boys, especially if they are Colin Firth. Or Hugh Grant. Wait, that's Bridget Jones. Sorry, I'm totally off-track now.

So.. anyway. Being at the track is a bit difficult for me in that there's a LOT of car-talk, and sweaty mechanic-types lying under cars talking a different technical language that I'll never fully understand. I do love the d-i-y grassroots aspects of the race league my husband is in, and I'll probably talk about that one day, but today is for another kind of RAH. I did bring some embroidery to do this weekend, and actually sat in the shade of the trailer and created some cute flowers on linen coasters, all while surrounded by drive shafts and torque wrenches!

Yesterday, I spent some time with my friend who I haven't seen in while. I absolutely adore her kids who are independent, funny, crafty, loving, and generous. I've received countless beaded necklaces and earrings and cute cards from them over the years. The youngest (15) had a question about their sewing machine which she had pulled out of the basement for something to do on a hot summer's day. I took a look at it (in between being served drinks from her mother), and showed her how to thread it - it's an older vintage 1940s Kenmore. She was thrilled and I went back to drinks with mum on the porch. Within half an hour, she had made a couple of things. Now, these items were perhaps not the most well-made, nor the most useful items - they were, of course, just experiments in using the sewing machine. But they were just little things that had been created. Quickly and without any analysis. The picture shows mum showing off her new purse. Yes, the strap is just one strand of thread. Yes, the purse does not actually open. But who cares? Her daughter had just jumped in and created something fun. She learned how to use the machine and was just happy to have spent 30 minutes doing something creative. The end product wasn't the point. Totally inspiring to me!

So all of this to say: you can create handmade stuff whenever, wherever! I sometimes get caught up in the process, and the context of the process, and the context of the context - ie. I can't make anything until my craft room looks good, I can't make anything until I learn everything there is to know about the history of thread, I can't make anything until I get the right shade of blue because crafting CANNOT continue until I have the right shade of blue! Yes, occasionaly I am crazy.

Just create!