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Best birthday evah!
March 22nd, 2009 04:45 pmI'm now 26, and it is now spring.
For once, the NW weather conspired to give me a gorgeous, precipitation-free birthday. Erik and I took a picnic and drove up to the Hamma Hamma. It's an interesting time to go play in the Olympics; the thick temperate rain forest vegetation is dormant, so you can walk straight through groves that would normally be impassible with undergrowth. That's good, since the other route away from the road is the river itself, and late March is still too early to wade comfortably.
Of course, there was a little wading to get to a good isolated spot, and I did fall in a little bit. It's just as well, since I'm not capable of walking near water and not paddling my feet at least a little bit, and this got it over with right at the beginning, so my socks and jeans had time to become merely soggy instead of drenched.
Had a lovely dinner with E, my family, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
madalchemist, who continues to enable my video-game habit, and today Erik took me to the bark'n'garden center for my birthday present.
It is so obviously spring.
The weather doesn't know it yet, but my insides do, and they want GROWING THINGS. It's hard, because it's still cold enough up here that I'm afraid to plant anything but peas. Erik, in his wisdom, decided that I needed houseplants. He then waited patiently for a good two and a half hours while I ran about discovering tropicals.
I learned about gardening from helping Mom; Mom likes English cottage-garden type plants and refuses to have anything tropical in her yard*. Because of this, I know absolutely nothing about tropicals and I've never successfully kept a houseplant. I'm also immediately attracted to the things that require the most special care (it was probably lucky that the store didn't have a dwarf citrus, which was what I had my heart set on). I ended up with a Dracaena marginata, a Radermachera sinica, and some species of bromeliad.
The bromeliad wasn't labeled, but it was tantalizingly deep red, and beguilingly alien.
After I got home, I spent half an hour reading about bromeliads, and I'm afraid it will either die a sad and pitiful death after having one flower, or leave me in appartment filled to bursting with bouncing baby bromeliads, which are inexplicably called pups. One of the other bromeliads had a label which said "DO NOT PROPOGATE", so either bromeliad pups are voracious and will eat my room-mate and pee on the carpet, or they're some kind of controlled substance. I may have let myself in for deep red bromeliad hell.
But for now, I can haz a jungle!
*The first plant I bought when I moved out was a stargazer lily, followed by some asiatics. It was a mini-plant rebellion.
For once, the NW weather conspired to give me a gorgeous, precipitation-free birthday. Erik and I took a picnic and drove up to the Hamma Hamma. It's an interesting time to go play in the Olympics; the thick temperate rain forest vegetation is dormant, so you can walk straight through groves that would normally be impassible with undergrowth. That's good, since the other route away from the road is the river itself, and late March is still too early to wade comfortably.
Of course, there was a little wading to get to a good isolated spot, and I did fall in a little bit. It's just as well, since I'm not capable of walking near water and not paddling my feet at least a little bit, and this got it over with right at the beginning, so my socks and jeans had time to become merely soggy instead of drenched.
Had a lovely dinner with E, my family, and
madalchemist, who continues to enable my video-game habit, and today Erik took me to the bark'n'garden center for my birthday present.It is so obviously spring.
The weather doesn't know it yet, but my insides do, and they want GROWING THINGS. It's hard, because it's still cold enough up here that I'm afraid to plant anything but peas. Erik, in his wisdom, decided that I needed houseplants. He then waited patiently for a good two and a half hours while I ran about discovering tropicals.
I learned about gardening from helping Mom; Mom likes English cottage-garden type plants and refuses to have anything tropical in her yard*. Because of this, I know absolutely nothing about tropicals and I've never successfully kept a houseplant. I'm also immediately attracted to the things that require the most special care (it was probably lucky that the store didn't have a dwarf citrus, which was what I had my heart set on). I ended up with a Dracaena marginata, a Radermachera sinica, and some species of bromeliad.
The bromeliad wasn't labeled, but it was tantalizingly deep red, and beguilingly alien.
After I got home, I spent half an hour reading about bromeliads, and I'm afraid it will either die a sad and pitiful death after having one flower, or leave me in appartment filled to bursting with bouncing baby bromeliads, which are inexplicably called pups. One of the other bromeliads had a label which said "DO NOT PROPOGATE", so either bromeliad pups are voracious and will eat my room-mate and pee on the carpet, or they're some kind of controlled substance. I may have let myself in for deep red bromeliad hell.
But for now, I can haz a jungle!
*The first plant I bought when I moved out was a stargazer lily, followed by some asiatics. It was a mini-plant rebellion.
