FuoriBorgo

two years in the life of a rosemary

I only realized how much my rosemary bush had grown during the last summer, when I noticed that it had started brushing against me when I walked past it to reach the far end of the garden.  I originally planted it as a tiny baby bush (beside the watering can in the photo below) almost two years ago, in May 2010:

During its first sumer, it grew tall and strong enough to survive the winter (if you can call the dusting of snow we had last year "winter"!).

By the beginning of last summer, it already looked like a very respectable rosemary bush (on the right of Ms Scarecrow):

Since then it has continued growing:

By the beginning of autumn, it was taller than Rebecca:

Then, two weeks ago, a weather front blew in from Siberia, dumping a hundred centimeters of snow on the first night, with more in subsequent days.  The next morning, Rebecca looked out the window and said: "Mamma, it's all nice and flat out there!"  She was right: where our cabbages, parsley, radicchio, and chard had once filled the landscape, now there was a thick, even layer of snow.  The rosemary bush was nowhere to be seen: 

The Siberian snow is melting ever so slowly, and this weekend we saw the first sign of our rosemary bush: a little green branch, trying to rise towards the still, wintry sky: 

Is my rosemary bush well?  Is it still alive?  We really hope so, but I'm not sure.  I'm going to wait until the Arctic winds and temperatures, with their load of snow and ice, have left us before I help him out of his protective snow blanket.

American sewing

I'm the mood for sunshine today - so although we actually haven't done any beaching or sewing recently, I'm posting some photos taken just before the harsh winter hit.

I hadn't used an American sewing pattern for many years, the last one a Simplicity Taekwondo outfit that I adapted to matching pjs for the boys when they toddled (that dates it!), and during the last several years of struggling and making do with somewhat incomprehensible (to me) French and Japanese patterns (here and here), I'd forgotten all about the, indeed, simplicity and comfort of sewing in a language that I could understand. In fact, this particular oliver + s pattern, After-School Shirt, which comes with very detailed step-by-step instructions that even a beginner could easily follow, and with clearly marked and traceable patterns, sewed like a breeze.

As an American pattern, though, it uses inches as unit of length.  Of course, inches!  Now, please tell me that I'm not the only non-English/American/Canadian who has problems with non-decimal units of measure?  Using inches, and all those intimidating fractions (like 11⁄4"), is a stretch for my mathematical abilities far beyond what I'm normally prepared to do when sewing.  (Don't forget, I have a high school boy and middle school one, and I need to reserve my scientific brainpower solely for those moments when I have to at least pretend that I'm following what my boys tell about the algebra, physics, and mathematics they're studying - so no complex arithmetic when I sew, please!)

Anyhow, I didn't bother to measure the eleven fourths of an inch.  One thing I've learned with Japanese and French sewing is that sewing allows a fair bit of scope for creativity and interpretation, and although my fractions of inches are certainly off, Rebecca's After-School Blouse, with its cute two buttons at the front and two buttons at the back yoke, turned out just lovely.  

even when it blizzards

When it snows, it blizzards ... is there such a saying?  If not, there should be!  It blizzarded heavily in our little corner of the world (more ice and snow storms are expected to hit the country, but I choose to ignore that for just now), and as I sit down tonight with a cup of tea, and look back at the last couple of weeks, I wonder at how much has happened in such a short time.  Let's see:

-    When we got snowed in, the provincial highway department trucks cleared and salted the provincial road leading up the hill, so that the municipal trucks could clear and salt the municipal lanes in the village, a procession that took several hours, and sometimes the whole day.

-     The provincial trucks pushed the snow onto the municipal roads, and the municipal trucks pushed the snow onto our dirt lane, where it still lies.  By now it's a huge mound of ice, which blocks the way to our wood barn and the house. 

-    We're out of wood already (!), the lane is blocked, there will be a lot of hauling firewood this weekend (this is also something I choose to ignore just now).

-    Our girl has been sick, and there have been trips to the doctor and to the hospital.

-    There's been a clogged toilet.  Now - you may ask - how's a clogged toiled related to the snow?  Well, once upon a time there was an evil steamed cauliflower core, well past its "best by" date, and a tired, stressed-out mamma alone in the middle of wintry woods with her three children.  One snowy day, she was walking around the house talking on the cellphone to a friend, pouring out all of her worries, while absently carrying the bowl with the evil, smelly cauliflower core, half-wondering what to do with it, given that the compost pile was under a meter of snow.  That mamma thought the best solution was simply to be rid of it, and to flush it down.  Guess what?  The very evil stinky cauliflower core had its revenge.  

-    There were temperatures as low as -12C, fallen trees, power failures, burst water pipes and telephone and internet lines cut.

But as I sit here with my hot cuppa tonight, I know that all of the above and more happened, yet it doesn't seem real.  Because what really counts is that Tom's back.  All is well now, even when it blizzards.

offline

The ice storm that has paralyzed parts Europe has, among other things, knocked out our Internet, and I'm offline at the moment. There won't be a Corner View tomorrow - it will resume next Wednesday.

an olive bough

Several trees in our valley fell or lost some limbs during the heavy snowfalls and strong winds of the past few days.  Sadly, many were olive trees.  For days, I looked out the window at Tom's olive tree - almost entirely buried in snow - and worried that its young trunk would be too slender to sustain the weight of all that snow, and would snap.  But although the tree bent, seeming to shrink and curl up in the bad weather, its branches disappearing in the snow, it never gave in during its fight against the elements.  It did lose a limb, though.

I couldn't bear to leave a bough from Tom's olive tree, all by its lonesome self in the snow.  So when the storm eased, I climbed through a meter of snow up to the terrace, dug it out, and brushed off the encrusting ice.

And I brought it back to the house with me.

snowed in

This is what our neighborhood and my car (in the last photo) look like when we're snowed in:

Do you know how much shoveling that means?

Corner View ~ light

Corner View is a weekly appointment - each Wednesday - created by Jane, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. If you'd like to join in, please leave a link to your Corner View post in the comments below, and be sure to visit other participants too.

I'm out and about early in wintertime, and get to watch the day break: light over darkness, each morning unique!

The theme next week is "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" (an American wedding custom) and comes from Debra. 

Happy Corner Viewing! 

just in time!

Winter came late this year, but when it arrived this weekend, it came in full force, bringing with it an army of stormy winds, copious snowfalls and icy temperatures.  Fortunately, I'd finished Rebecca's flannel pajamas just in time.

For the top, I used Anna Maria Horner's Loulou flannel and the Chemise de Nuit pattern I made last year, except this time I cropped it a bit.  I like the elasticized neckline and cuffs of this design: so easy for mamma to sew a perfect fit, so easy for girl to slip on and off!

To make the pants, I'd bought plain flannel in solid gray, and to liven it a little I did some rows of simple running stitching at the bottom, trying to match the color of the embrodery threads with the print of the top.  I really like how it came out - such a quick and fun handstitching job - and I'm thinking of getting some plain flannel to make PJs for myself, and just brighten the fabric up with the same trick.

Winter and its cold army is apparently going to linger on for the whole week, but my girl will have warm and comfy nights in her new flannel pajamas.

and then the snow came

I went to sleep worrying about the snow that had started to fall, and whether I'd made the right decision when I allowed the boys to sleep over at friends down on the coast, instead of picking them up while the roads were still clear.  I woke up in unusually white light for a winter morning, and knew it had snowed a lot.  Oddly, though, I felt relieved. 

We're snowed in, an event that I dread each and every winter.  However:

-    Rebecca is not sick
-    for once, I've just stocked up on groceries
-    we have a barn filled with firewood
-    we still have electricity and phone lines
-    the boys are certainly having a lot of fun on their prolonged sleep-over (thank goodness for nice and flexible friends!), and I'm sure I'll be able to pick them up long before springtime 

True, we're snowed in.  But there is not one thing I can do about it, so I'm going to stop worrying.  Instead, I'll try and relax, and have some fun with my girl!

just now

I just finished some sewing, and I'm planning a little embroidering.

-    my brother was in India
-    all natural in the bathroom, by Riana  

Happy weekend!