flowery daydreams

As the idea of buying a house starts to look more like it might become a reality for Bunny and I in the next year, more and more of my daydreaming energy goes towards what I would do to make a generic house into our home. Some of it's simple stuff: print out and frame our favourite pictures, dust off and hang our art, get our furniture out again to enjoy, maybe new dishes in the kitchen and just general decorating. Finding display places for the model cars and motorcycles Bunny's working on. All that's the easy stuff.

But we also want outdoor spaces. We want a garden. Gardens, actually. Nevermind the fact that I'm allergic to springtime, I can deal with a few sneezes. We're both pretty set on having a productive vegetable garden, growing squashes and beans and peas, potatoes and beets and carrots, lettuce and spinach, tomatoes (for Bunny) and brussel sprouts (for me). Asparagus and some berry bushes, because both are delightful and perennials make life easy. A big pot overflowing with our favourite fresh herbs.

There's something about being connected like that to the food you're eating, you know? About putting your time into cultivating something and getting to enjoy the fruits of your labours. When children eventually come it's also a tool that we'd like to use to teach them about food, and about the value of caring for the land and work. Plus I have a handful of childhood memories that sneak into the back of my mind and remind me just how delightful peas fresh of the plant are.

Friday though I got sucked down the flower-gardening rabbit hole. Since I felt crummy and wasn't up for much more than sitting around reading listlessly between trips to the washroom I somehow started googling how to grow lilacs from cuttings. Because those lilac trees I mentioned loving at my mom's house? I fully plan on cloning those to grow in our yard.

As much as I want vegetables I'd also love to be surrounded by the pretty colours and scents of flowers. The lilacs, of course, but also other plants that bloom later into the season. Given that we plan on focusing on growing vegetables, I'd prefer to focus my perennials than annuals. A handful of rosebushes artfully spaced around the front and back yards. A lily bed, hopefully with a variety of early and late blooming varieties. Lilies are, after all, my favourite. Daffodils for their bright yellow colour and trumpeting blooms, and tulips. While they're not my favourite bulb flower, a field of tulips is rather stunning and I love the history of tulips in Canada. A tulip bed is also a little bit of a shout out to Bunny's family history, so there's that.

Do you garden? If so, what are the most rewarding plants you grow?

brain vacation

Evidently, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. After a week spent browsing the MLS listings, I've gone down another track and have been looking at travel sites. Not serious travel, the cultural places that I absolutely must go before I die. Pure vacation and relaxation travel: the sort that has me spending a week on a white sand beach in the sun and coming back with a temporary change in skin tone.

Right now my brain is in St Maarten after I found a resort chain there that just sounds delicious. I've made up a few details in my head, like the swim up bar that I wouldn't really use anyway but I'm also pretty sure doesn't exist. There are days doing nothing but floating on water and falling asleep in the sun, days spent snorkeling, kayaking and visiting tourist areas with Bunny. "Fancy" restaurants whose dress codes state shoes are required. Couples massages and merengue lessons. Visits to a local market. I may be in paradise.  Sunshine that never ends.

In my head I'm lying on a tropical beach. The sun is hot shining down own me, drawing beads of sweat out of my skin. It's lulling me almost to sleep. I have an itty bitty bikini on because if I'm in the Caribbean I'm not going to get all body conscious about enjoying myself, and I've got a big straw had and my sunglasses on. On the horizon I can barely tell the difference between ocean and sky until the sun starts to set and the skies darken. My mind is a beautiful place.

This is actually our target next vacation: tropical beachy and all inclusive. It's not how I'd want all of our vacations to be, or even many, but because my idea of "vacation" in the past has been band trips to Disney World and New Orleans (which are school vacations and only partly count, plus I managed to get terribly sick on both of them), camping, and a couple of trips to visit my grandparents while they were snowbirding in Florida more than two decades ago it seems like a start. It's been almost a decade since I've gotten on a plane and gone somewhere "out there" and I've never had that sheer relaxation vacation. It's the place I want to start.

First, I want to know what it's like to see white sand against deep blue waters, stretching out into the horizon. Even in my dream vacations budget is an issue, and tropical paradises seem strangely accessible. One day.

What's your dream vacation? What have been the best vacations you've had to date? Let me live vicariously, at least for a little while longer!

if we were rich ...

As always we did our "Valentine's" late. I'm not fussed about a holiday designed around big Romantic Gestures, I more care that he's sweet to me every other day of the year and I love how he'll bring me caffeine in bed, opens the car door for me every time, puts my glasses away at the end of the night and oohs and aaahs over my craft projects even when he doesn't know what he's oohing and aahing over. But hey, who can say no to an excuse to a dinner date out of the house?

We ate at one of our favourite places in town, a Thai restaurant with great decor and (mostly) amazing food. It's kind of confusing because the pad Thai there is patently awful, but everything else is phenomenal. The tom yum soup keeps me coming back, and we've enjoyed every other dish we've had there. This visit we split a divine lemongrass beef stir fry where the beef was unbelievably tender and Sambal noodles that were sneakily spicy and full of flavour with lots of vegetables added in. The meal as a whole was so spicy my nose and eyes watered and I blew my nose so hard in the bathroom I popped my ears.

But that pad Thai thing got us thinking on the way there. How it's really too bad that the best Thai place in town has terrible pad Thai and it's too bad that we can't enjoy that dish there every now and again. Which started the conversation if we were rich what would we do? This is the dreaming we whiled away our Valentine's on.

If we were unbelievably rich we would be able to say "I want pad Thai" and hop on a flight to Thailand. Since we're already there, we'd head over to China for dim sum the next day and then go get some pho in Vietnman for dinner. We'd spend a day in India eating curries and then stop in Japan for a sushi dinner. Oh along the way we'd stop and see all the amazing cultural sights too, so we'd probably spend more than a day or two there but let's be honest we're going for the food. (Or at least that's Bunny's motivation).

If we were rich we'd fly to Spain for paella and tapas and make sure our trip coincides with the Catalunya MotoGP race. We'd pop through France for some authentic bistro food and to eat things covered with divine sauces. We'd grab a cafe au lait at a coffee shop then wander through some museums. We'd head on a train to the Netherlands and have some of those awesome Dutch pastries whose names I can never remember but are almondy and so damn good. We'd jump over to Italy and eat pasta and risotto, stare at the Sistine Chapel and have a morning espresso before heading to Germany for some beer and to grab some sausage and potatoes in Poland. We'd stop by England on the way home for a proper tea with scones, a big breakfast and then some more curry.

Maybe the next week we'd head to Montreal for poutine, then fly to the east coast for lobster. We'd head down south for tacos and stop at million barbeque places on our way up home for Bunny. Stop over in New Orleans for the beignets and pecan pie.

If we were rich we would eat so much.

places like home

Bunny and I are looking at venues next week.

Or rather, venue. We are looking at the one venue we have seriously considered for the reception ... and if we don't like it I'm going to be concerned. I'm kinda iffy as is, because I don't 100% know if it will even work. It seats 30 people (max), or 20 comfortably. I'm not sure that it would leave us any space for dancing afterwards, and there are some discussions we have to have there - but that we'll work out.

I'm nervous to go. This is the only venue that Bunny and I have seriously considered for a wedding. It's a separate room at a restaurant that friends own with a celebrity chef. The concept behind their every day dinners is magnificent - it's a four-course chef's menu and it's always been spectacular. Even when menu has foods I dislike on it, they tend to be prepared in the most fantastical ways. As well, they do a family-style service, which feels so homey and welcoming to us. It's one of those things that just feels right when we think about it.

So I'm scared. What if we don't like it? We know we like the main dining room - but we want a private space, and we've never seen this room. We've both been planning our wedding in our heads at this restaurant since the words "wedding" and "marriage" first came up. If we don't like it, that's back to square one.

The thought of having the wedding there feels like hosting a party. We like that idea a lot. That's the feeling we want behind our venue - somewhere personal and special.

Maybe I'm just borrowing trouble. I hope so!