Unique...

You know those get-to-know-you games where you tell something about yourself that you think no one else has done?  I have a new one.  In addition to (1)I have milked a goat, (2)I have been kissed by a giraffe, (3)I have sat in a queen's throne, (4)I have hot tubbed with buffalo, I have now (5)been spat on by a sun panda!

(1)We had neighbors when I was a kid (no pun intended) who had goats, and I did milk them once.
(2)For my eighth birthday my brother took me to the zoo and a giraffe leaned over the fence and swiped me from chin to hair with his big black tongue.

(3)We lived in Spain when I was small and we toured many castles, one of which was in Segovia, where Queen Isabella and Kind Ferdinand (who sent Colombus off) lived.  I sat in her throne.
(4)When B and I were dating, we went for a visit to my friend and Boss BW, up at Flagg Ranch.  We cross country skiied to some hot springs, which were surrounded by a herd of buffalo (it being the only ground free of snow for who knows how far).  They fell asleep while we soaked.

(5)My new niece ST gave our family a zoo pass for Christmas!  We went to check it out.  The sun panda's exhibit includes a tree that crosses the path, and it was right above us.  He stuck out his little pink tongue, and some spit fell on my face!  It was cool...

Favorite Bulbs...

Get your carpal tunnels ready!  Autumn is around the corner, and that means, for those of us living, for once, in a place that has winter, bulb planting!  My sister and her wonderful yard were requested to take part in a botanical garden tour next spring, so I just sent her a list of my favorite bulbs.  Here it is:

Awesome!  Congratulations!!!  Better get serious about those bulbs... 

So for tulips, you can get amazing results by planning for three "seasons".  Pick a general color scheme (salmon, magenta, pink; or if you want to go classic, red, yellow; anything you want.)  We used to cut out pictures from a catalog and mix them around to find great combinations.  Then pick an early (March), a middle (April), and a late (May) of each color, and plant them all together, then as they get done, the later ones are blooming past them and it makes all sorts of lovely combinations.  As a general rule, smaller tulips bloom earlier, bigger later.  I will list my favorite tulips, which are almost all late.  Triumph tulips are a variety that has lots of color variation, but they are not known for being terribly perennial.  These pictures are all from vanengelen.com, which is a site that I ordered from in the past.  They have good info and descriptions.  Mix the tulips with daffodils and other bulbs.

Darwin tulips- my favorites:

Akebono

Apricot Impression

Daydream (my favorite tulip of all...)

Silverstream

Single Late Tulips:

Blushing beauty and Blushing Lady.  Actually hard to tell apart, though not in this picture...

Menton

Renown

Dordogne

Temple of Beauty

Oh, I love them!  These are all late (mid-April to mid-May), sturdy, tall, solidly perennial.

Next,

Species tulips:

bakeri Lilac Wonder (not lilac, pink)

Double Early Tulips:

Montreaux

Now for the daffodils.  These also have different "seasons", but they are all earlier than the late tulips.

Marieke

Little Gem

Topolino

Delibes

Segovia

Hawera- my favorite FAVORITE daff

Cragford- ok, I forgot about this one.  This one is great too.  Very fragrant.

Minnow- and this one.  These three are essential.

Other bulbs:

Hyacinthoides hispanica excelsior.  Go big on these.  Do not under any circumstances plant muscari.

Camssia- Idaho native, nice plant

Galanthus (snowdrops)

There.  My favorite bulbs.

Around the World (Halfway at Least...) in Sixty Days... (Part 2- The Flight)

Ug.  Just to start off, I hate flying (commercial that is; with B in a little plane is awesome).  Even by myself, even short flights.  I just don't like it.  To get off Guam requires a trip that is almost a full 24 hours, and I had all three girls, AND I was by myself.  Not. Fun.  Oh, and we were flying United, which does NOT have the cool individual touch screen tvs full of the latest movies and fun games.  That would be Delta.

We flew from Gaum to Hawaii.  Here are the girls all ready for takeoff, all excited...

We got to Hawaii at sunset, I think?  Not sure which day.  We ended up having two Fridays and two Saturdays, so it's all a big blur...

We flew from Hawaii to California, and the deal was that we would ALL SLEEP on that whole flight.  I even gave them dramamine.  They all laid nicely down...

Aaaannnd...  didn't sleep a wink.

We had a killer layover in LA, which was killer not because it was long, but because I had time zones mixed up in my head and kept expecting to get on the plane any minute, then kept having to wait another hour...  But a nice man played soccer with the girls while I muddled around in a haze of sleepless confusion.

Another flight to Idaho, and we were done!

I was VERY relieved to be on the ground.  I think from here on out it's all road trips for me until I absolutely have to fly due to crossing an ocean.

Around the World (Halfway at Least...) in Sixty Days... (Part One- Leaving)

We made it!  After two months and an estimated 13,000 miles, we have arrived in Virginia!  Just in time- I'm feeling very ready to be settled.  Here is a rundown of our trip:

First of all, saying goodbye STINKS!  Our church friends threw a party...

The kids got to dance and draw and party, and the grownups visited.  The men, of course, over the grill...

Our squadron had a "hail and bail", a navy tradition to welcome and say goodbye to people coming and going, and the officer spouses club had a bail for me as well.  My friend C even made us a book.  In general, lots of wonderful people said how much they love us and would miss us and it was all terribly depressing...

The girls said goodbye to lots of friends, like Miss S...

And Miss K...

And Mr. J...

I wish I would have taken pictures of everyone...

Then the mover guys came and packed everything up...

I like the way stuff gets packed for overseas moves.  They pack for space and don't worry about how heavy things are.  Instead of taking everything out of dresser drawers for instance, they leave it all where it belongs and stuff it with packing paper.  So when you unpack, you just pull out the paper and everything is where it should be!  (Of course, when we unpacked from the move to Guam, everything smelled pretty funky, so I ended up washing all clothes, bedding, and everything anyway...)  They tetris everything into big crates, caulk around all the edges- except one, which they leave open so if a crate goes in the ocean they can "drain" it, and yes, they say this does happen fairly often...- and load it into a container and then onto a ship.  Crazy, huh?

Then the "boonie furniture" arrived, allowing us to live in relative comfort for our last few days on Guam...

We used our last week to visit some of our favorite spots.
We had to say goodbye to the glorious Guam skies...

To the lovely tropical flowers, like these heliconia outside our front door...

And to our friends the anoles.  We will so miss these...

And, of course, the ocean...

Recipe: The Cornbread...

The Cornbread, because in my mind, there will be no other!  This is not healthy.  It has an unreal amount of calories in every bite, but it is sooo worth it.  My friend Sarah gave me this recipe I think.

2 c sugar
2 c yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 c wheat flour
1 1/2 c white flour
4 t baking powder
1 t salt

-Mix these dry ingredients in a big bowl.
-Spray a 9x13 pan and put 1/3 c butter (from ingredients listed below) in it.  Stick it in the oven so it gets all melted.

1 c butter (divided into 1/3 and 2/3 of a cup)
4 eggs
3 c milk

-Beat eggs in a medium bowl.  Add milk.
-Melt 2/3 c butter in a small bowl, add to other wet ingredients.
-Add liquids to drys and stir, but not too much.
-When butter in the pan is melted, take the pan out of the hot oven and pour the batter in.  The melted butter will come up over the edges and sort of fry the corn bread (yum!).
-Bake at 375 for about 35 ish minutes.  Check often.  The middle should not be jiggly, but barely golden brown.

Recipe: Thin Pizza Dough...

This is from The King of Grilling, Stephen Raichlen.  Except I think I triple his or something.  This makes a lot...  We usually make these as personal size pizzas.

3 c hot water
3 T yeast
3 t sugar
2 T sea salt
1/2 c white cornmeal
1/2 c wheat flour
3 T olive oil
8 c white flour

-Mix.  Preferably in a kitchen aid.
-Pour more olive oil around the dough in the bowl (so nothing sticks to the bowl).  Let rise.  Punch down and roll out thin.  You'll need a floured surface, and more flour on the dough as you roll.
-Grill or bake!  Do them for a few minutes, then top and finish off.

Recipe: Thick Pizza Dough

This is my Mom's pizza dough recipe, and I usually double it.  Without doubling it makes a normal cookie sheet sized pizza.

1 T dry yeast *
 1 t warm water **
 1 t sugar
1 t salt
2 T vegetable oil
2 1/2 c flour
-Put yeast, sugar, salt, and oil in a bowl, then add hot water.  Stir it up, then let it sit a minute until the yeast starts to get fluffy.
-Add flour and mix until combined.
-Spray a cookie sheet in the middle, I usually leave it unsprayed around the edge so the dough sticks to the side of the pan.
-Let rise, then pick it up (you may need to sprinkle it and your hands with flour to keep everything from getting sticky), and put it on a cookie sheet.  Squish it around until it covers the cookie sheet.
-Heat oven to 350, then bake the naked crust for five minutes.
-Top with whatever, then bake about 12-17 minutes more.

* I, following my Mom's example, always keep my yeast in a jar in the freezer, and I've never had any problems having it not rise.
**  The water should be hot enough to still touch but too hot to comfortably wash your hands in.

Douglas Family Vocabulary: Rasters...

Friends and acquaintances of our family may be perplexed by our use of certain words...  For many reasons (one of which is my upbringing by a somewhat taciturn and emotionally stifled mother- sorry Mom, but it's true) any words referring to ANY parts of anatomy covered by a swimsuit or suggestive of having to do with the forbidden "s_ _" word were simply NOT MENTIONED!  I don't agree with this at all.  But let's face it; decades of brainwashing are very hard to overcome!  So, it comes down to this- I have a hard time saying the words "butt," "bottom," or anything of the kind.  Sooo...

When I was pregnant with Miss A, our first, I was working full time as a gardener.  I attended a landscape conference with a co-worker, Eric.  I attended all the fun classes about ornamental flowers and grasses, and he got to go to all the boring stuff about turf.  Afterwards, I had him brief me on the classes he attended.  Our conversation went something like this:

Eric:  Well, I learned that we can identify Japanese beetles by their raster markings.
Me:  What did you just say?
Eric:  We can tell if we have Japanese beetles by looking at their raster markings.
Me:  You totally just made that word up.
Eric:  No!  I didn't!  Look.

He then showed me an illustration similar to this:

And it's true, you can tell what kind of beetle you're in for by looking at the nasty white grubs' little slimy backsides.

So when little Miss A was born, a few weeks early (pre-eclampsia), and only weighing 5 pounds 14 ounces, her little hind end was so pointy and skinny that the term "raster" just seemed the only way to describe it!  (Although, thankfully, without any hair...)  And the word has stuck.  So, if you're ever at a playground and hear Miss R (age 2) fall down and cry out "I hurt mine raster!," you'll know what she's talking about...

Quote I Like...

From General Stanley McChrystal:
"A leader isn't good because they're right.  A leader is good because they are willing to learn and trust."
(Heard on the Ted Radio Hour, npr.)