Let me preface by saying that I have very little experience with gardening, unless you count the few years using my three Aerogardens.  Last year I branched out and bought some herbs, potted them, and managed not to kill them.  The rosemary and oregano even managed to survive the winter.

This year I decided I wanted to try growing some vegetables.  We have a 1.25-acre lot, so there’s plenty of room for a garden.  The former owner of the house even fenced off a large area where he did his gardening.  He was retired, and was therefore able to spend the time necessary to tend such a large garden.  It has since become overrun with raspberry bushes and weeds.  Al and I have been talking for a couple years now about ripping out the existing weed garden, cutting it in half so is more manageable for the employed.  This is the year we’ll finally do that.

I ran out a few weeks ago to pick up some books on gardening.  It turns out that planting a vegetable garden requires a lot of planning!  I was hoping we could just rip up the old one, throw down some seeds, maybe add fertilizer, and water it.  It takes more time than that to kill the weeds, test and prepare the soil, etc., etc.  So we’ll get some of the prep work done this year, but the planting will have to wait till next spring.

Meanwhile I’m getting my feet wet by doing some container gardening.  I bought a seed starter kit several weeks ago and planted peppers, tomatoes, green beans and strawberries.  Then I ran out looking for the appropriate containers.  Everywhere I look, it seems, people have these half-barrel things in their yard with plants growing out of them.  I love those!  I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find them.  It would have helped if I knew what they were called.

I finally found a place where the salesperson knew what I was talking about: whiskey barrels.  I still thought this was just a term.  I didn’t realize they were actual whisky barrels which have been cut in half. I grabbed a couple, loaded them in my SUV, and drove home with the smell of whiskey filling my vehicle.  Thank goodness I didn’t get pulled over!  Do whiskey barrels count as open containers?  When I got them home, I was amused to discover where the barrels came from:

So hopefully my veggies don’t end up tasting like JD.  Okay, okay, I know that’s unlikely.  No one gets a buzz from eating salad!  (Do they?)

We were fortunate to have some fantastic weather this past weekend.  It managed to get up to 94ºF on Saturday – not bad for April in New England.  I was excited to get outside and transplant my little seedlings.  I had no idea playing in the dirt could be so much fun!

Well, the weather is still beautiful, but it’s Monday.  So I’ll be sitting in my cubicle all day anxious to get home and play in the dirt some more.  Hopefully my little sprouts grow big and beautiful and produce some tasty treats one day!

So, for reasons I won’t get into, I was looking up Christopher Lee on IMDB.com today.  I neerly peed my pants when I saw that he’d be playing the Jabberwock in Tim Burton’s production of Alice in Wonderland (due out in 2010).

First let me say that Lewis Carroll’s Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There together make up one of my all-time favorite stories.  I’ve read both books innumerable times, as well as The Annotated Alice.  Needless to say, a Tim Burton take on this story is going to pique my interest.

As if that news isn’t exciting enough, Johnny Depp will be playing the Mad Hatter!

There are actually several of my favorite actors in the cast – Alan Rickman as the Catterpillar, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter as the White and Red Queens, and Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts.  With a cast like this, hopefully this movie won’t disappoint!

Now if only I didn’t have to wait till 2010 to see it…

A couple months ago I decided to sign myself up for a cake decorating class.  It wasn’t a fancy one where you learn to pipe icing and make rosettes, just a fun way to make your cakes look extra nice without stressing out about it.  Or so I thought.

Yesterday was the big day.  I’d had two months to get myself psyched up for the class.  I thought that if I enjoyed it enough, I might sign up for others.  This one was relatively inexpensive – under $100 if you don’t include the cost of parking in Boston – so it was my “test” class.

I will not be signing up for more classes there.

To begin, I misunderstood the course description.  I maintain that it was poorly worded, but that is neither here nor their.  I’d driven an hour to get there, parked ($18) and paid for the course in advance.  I figured I might as well make the most of it.  Heck, it could be fun!

Essentially I paid about $100 to take home a few mediocre cake recipes peppered with typos.

There were about a dozen people in the class, and we were divided into teams.  I was paired up with a woman who knew what she was doing.  (Thank goodness!  Most of the others there admittedly couldn’t boil water.)  Our team was assigned the flourless chocolate cake with ganache.  Sounds yummy, right?  I wouldn’t know.

Another team was working on a bundt cake.  One girl from the team decided to check how her cake was doing.  She pulled the rack out of the oven far enough that the two cakes started to slide forward.  (Guess who the second cake belonged to!)  She managed to save her team’s bundt from falling onto the floor.  I watched helplessly as our cake slid out, flipped, and fell upside-down onto the dirty floor.

The instructor said to go ahead and make the ganache anyway.  She had some chocolate wafer cookies and we could make sandwiches out of them.  Wow, thanks.  That’s really getting our money’s worth.  For those who don’t know what a ganache was, it’s just melted chocolate blended with cream and sometimes butter.  Nothing to complex.  Nothing I’d drive into town and take a class for.

There were also some strawberries available, so we dipped those in lieu of making sandwiches.  We didn’t learn much (except maybe to not waste our money on any more classes), but the strawberries were delicious!

By the way, I purposely avoided mentioning the school by name.  If you were planning on taking a cooking class in the Boston area and want to know who it was (presumably so you don’t waste your money), you can leave a comment on this post or use the Contact Me link on the right.  I’ll send you the name by email.

Being that I turned 29 (again…I’ve had years of practice) yesterday, Al took me to Boston to celebrate.  I’ve never lived more than 45 minutes away from the city, but this was the first time I spent the night.  Specifically we went to Quincy Market and the North End.

It was so much fun!  We started out getting a drink at Durgin Park.  The bartender was talking our ear off about horse castration and other equally disturbing topics, so we quickly finished and went to the Union Oyster House.  That was a much better experience!  If you want the best chowder (no, I will not call it chowdah!) Boston has to offer, that’s the place to go.

After walking around and doing some shopping, we got dinner at Strega.  I don’t think I’ve ever had bad food in the North End, but Strega is by far the best I’ve had!  We only just managed to save room for dessert at Mike’s Pastry.

When we first arrived in town I left my camera in the car.  I’ve been so many times I didn’t think it was worth lugging the darn thing around.  Also, it was gray and overcast.  I didn’t think I’d be inspired to photograph much.  I immediately regretted my decision.  I tried taking a few photos with my cell phone camera, but that just didn’t cut it.  I went back for my DSLR and got a few decent shots in before I’d had enough of carrying it.  I went back for it when night fell and got a few more decent shots in.  I won’t bore you with the whole collection, but here are some of the better ones.

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Perhaps later I’ll see if any of my cell phone pics are worth sharing.  I should also take a picture of my beautiful birthday present!  We’ll see…

I was playing around with Scribbles some more.  This time I worked from a photo of Al.  I spent a little more time on the shading with this one.  It’s hard to see some of the detail in the image below, so you can click on it to see a somewhat larger version.

Okay, I’m having a little too much fun with this program.  I’ll try to talk about something a little more exciting in my next post…like what Al has in store for me.  Tomorrow is my birthday.  Check that…I just noticed it’s after midnight.  Today is my birthday then.  Al’s taking me somewhere to celebrate, but he’s given me no clue other than that it will involve an overnight stay.