dragons can be quirky....

i woke up this morning and pulled open the curtains, only to confirm that we were at the start of yet another week of cold, grey, overcast misery. then something amazing happened, and i do not mean the cup of coffee that i actually remembered (for once) to drink before it went cold.

me: there is a big, fat bumblebee with his head shoved down the mouth of a snapdragon. i am smiling very hard. 
him: nice.

the snapdragon is one of the few flowering plants that i usually do not mind tucking into the empty nooks of a vegetable garden. zinnias and bunching sunflowers—the kind with clusters of small flower heads that can be used as cut-flowers—also share the rare distinction of being endorsed by me. in fact, there is a variety of sunflowers called "velvet queen" that ranks incredibly high on my list of favorite things. trust me... things have zero value until they land on said list.

where was i again? oh, yes... snapdragons.

not only are they pleasant to look at, these flowers are also an excellent source of pollen for the bee population, hence the early-morning visit on this waiting-to-rain kind of day. that spray of yellow dust is pollen, which means that the bumblebee probably paid this flower a visit while i was still fast asleep.

snapdragons are a common sight in Summer gardens, mainly because they are such an attractive and interesting plant. they are also super-easy to care for, and extremely low-maintenance. it is the perfect accent plant for the lazy human being.

the flowers come in almost every color, except blue... because that would make me too happy. they grow clustered in stalks and the flowers open in succession from the base the tip. this variety has rather short stalks—laugh if you must—but you can see that the flowers at the bottom of the cluster are already withering, while the ones at the top look freshly-opened.

[random aside: you see the same pattern of blooming in the gladiolas that florists try to sneak into every floral arrangement ever made. i am convinced that the tradition of the dozen roses was started by someone who was trying to convince a florist to put down the gladiola for Pete's sake.]

where was i? oh, yes... 

snapdragons earn their names from two things... their appearance and a peculiar quirk that they share. bet you never knew that dragons can be quirky.

the flowers bear a resemblance to a dragon's head. yes, i know... the dragons probably look a bit different where you live. check out that profile. it definitely looks dragon-ish.

as for the other part... when you place a finger on either side of the flower and press lightly—as though you were squeezing someone's face by their cheeks—the center of the flower pops open to reveal the mighty "mouth" of this ferocious beast. i especially like the way this looks with the darker-colored flowers where the pollen-coated inner bits (yes... i do know they are called stamen) look like teeth. admit it... you are shivering with fear.

methinks this dragon needs a tube of toothpaste.

where is the snap, you ask? just squeeze to open...
 

and when you release the flower, it snaps shut again. SNAP!!!

think of it as a cheap magic trick with Mother Nature providing the only prop you will need. yes.... i am easily amused. most of all, it amuses me to know that the bees have already found my garden, so they should be around when my tomatoes and peppers start flowering... which will happen if the sun ever shines again.

then my mind started wandering, which is always a dangerous thing.

me: when we get through the Marvel movies, can we watch the Transformers movies next? i love that cartoon. 
him: the Michael Bay ones? no way. they are an atrocity.
me: come on. i want to watch Bumblebee—which he did not direct—but OCD requires me to watch the rest of them first. 
him: we can try, but i bet you give up halfway through the first one.
me: that is why beer was invented.
him: uh huh.

so now i will be subjecting us both to a series of bad movies, all because of one pollen-plundering bumblebee. luckily, i have set myself on a beer-sampling adventure, so that should provide any necessary buffer on those bad-movie evenings... but i will talk about that bit of absurdity some other day.

** i am editing this to add that we ended up watching Transformers later in the day. it was disappointing, but that is usually the case when revisiting the happy things we remember from our childhood. best part was, i got through it without resorting to beer. we did, however, have to pause a whole lot to engage in mini-rants about things we found infuriating (seriously... what reason would the military guys have for putting their trust in the Autobots when their only experience with the Transformers involved them nearly getting killed in the middle of the desert? and how do you have the main bad guy show up with like forty minutes left to go in a move that was almost two-and-a-half hours long???). the cats slept on undisturbed through the whole thing, as they are used to that kind of nonsense from us. a good time was had by all.**

what is the point...

after what was without doubt one of the most soul-draining Winters of my life, i was really looking forward to the arrival of Spring. it seems to finally be here.

him: uhm... Spring happened like two months ago.
me: that is adorable. 

then i just shake my head in pity that he thinks this is what Spring is meant to feel like. 

still, while it has been mostly chilly, wet, and grey with hardly a trace of sunlight to distinguish night from day, the temperature has remained above freezing for a few weeks now. i think it is safe to call this season Spring.

i am not abandoning my warm blanket just yet though, especially not with an "aggressive cold front" in the forecast. and, no... i have no idea what makes a cold front "aggressive", but that sounds like a meteorologically-polite way of warning us that it will feel like "not quite Spring".

this is the time of year when my fancy usually turns to thoughts of gardening. we are going to try something a bit different this time around. there is only so much space to be had when your garden consists of however many containers of soil you can squeeze onto a (moderately-sized) balcony. as a result, for every new thing you add to said space, you have to abandon all plans of growing some other thing.

i usually scoff at the idea of growing flowers. you know... all those brightly colored plants that serve no purpose other than to be pretty and to bring joy. yuck! however, i allowed myself to be talked into giving it a try for this year's balcony garden project. so, off we went to the garden center, and home we came with an assortment of pretty, colorful things.

see that?

it is called a dahlia, and it is beautiful. now, i ask you... what is the point of such a useless thing?

we also picked up a variety of small annuals, which i planted in a couple of the troughs on the railing. the troughs are mostly symmetrical, except one has red snapdragons...

 

and the other one has yellow snapdragons. OCD may require me to run out in the middle of the night and remedy this kinda sorta but not quite symmetry.

there are also flowers in one of the ten-gallon containers that would otherwise be holding edible things. i expect them to explode into a lovely display of color... should we ever get anything resembling actual sunshine.

i did manage to squeeze in a few tasty things for future culinary adventures. so far, we have three types of tomatoes, two types of peppers, and an assortment of herbs.

oh... and i also bought a few strawberry plants which i will add to the remaining trough before the end of the day. strawberries usually do pretty well in containers, and i look forward to the dramatic effect of them hanging from the railing. naturally, there will be many frustrated reports of damage-by-squirrels in the coming weeks.

[i transplanted the strawberries and grabbed a few pictures before pressing the "publish" button, so i will insert them in here for your viewing pleasure.]

if you look at the center of a strawberry flower, you will see the start of a tiny strawberry. i call it... future strawberry.
 

while i do feel a touch of sorrow at having lost the rest of my precious... precious... garden space to pretty, flowering things, we do have a few indoor plant adventures planned for the near future. that should keep me distracted for a while. then there is the furniture to be reupholstered... teaching him to sew... and a couple rooms that (still) need to be painted.

this would be a good time to sit back, have a sip of my coffee, and look out at the pretty, useless things. i can get used to this.

not quite ruined for life...

i was talking to mom on Sunday.

mom: what are you doing?
me: nothing much. just sitting here, watching the falling snow.
mom: it's snowing again? every time i talk to you it's snowing. 
me: oh, it's even better than that. we went from rain to freezing rain to hail to snow, then briefly back to freezing rain, and now back to snow... and that was all in the past hour alone.
mom: wow!
me: indeed.

to give you a sense of just how crazy this Winter has been, the city of Montreal exceeded their snow-removal budget... several weeks ago! meanwhile, we have another month (or two) of deep-Winter weather to look forward to.

so... yeh... i am officially done with all the cold.

i had planned on wrapping up my week of daily posts with a meal of homemade pork-and-vegetable dumplings on Saturday. then we changed our plan for the day, and we ended up being out-and-about until late into the evening—which sounds far more exciting that it actually was, trust me.

so, homemade dumplings became our main meal on a meteorologically mixed-up Sunday afternoon.

we do a lot of dumpling eating around here. they sell a wide variety of frozen (uncooked) dumplings at our local Asian grocery store, and we usually have a bag or two of them in the freezer ready for a quick and tasty meal.

it is still nice to make a batch from scratch every now and then (although i did cheat a bit this time around, which will become evident shortly).

how i we make lazy homemade pork-vegetable dumplings:

1. charge the camera battery.

2. gather an assortment of veggies.

3. chop/grate them as needed.

4. place the ground pork in a mixing bowl.

5. add the assorted veggies. we also added a splash of flavoring (soy sauce, ground black pepper, etc) at this point.

6. combine thoroughly.

here comes the cheating bit...

7. grab the frozen dumpling wrappers you purchased at the Asian market. these particular wrappers contain a bit of pumpkin, hence the color.

8 and 9. dip your fingers into water, then apply a daub of water around the edge of the wrapper to aid sealing. add a small portion of the meat mixture to the middle of the wrapper.

10. begin sealing at one end, using a pleating technique (if that is part of your culinary skill set).

ta da!!! congratulations. you just made a dumpling.

now repeat that as many times as is needed. this was the first half of our batch. they went into the freezer on a lined cookie sheet and were left to freeze completely. they were then placed into a ziploc bag and returned to the freezer for some future lazy-day dumpling eating.

the second half of the batch became our meal.

we filled both layers of the larger bamboo steamer, but there were still two leftover dumplings, so he went digging in the back of the Cupboard of Requirement (which is a standard feature in most kitchens) to find the mini bamboo steamers. so intensely cute.

all that was left to do was to place the steamers over pans of boiling water.. and wait. i used a wok for the larger steamer and a small frying pan for the smaller one, and i added a splash of hot water from the kettle when either one was in danger of running dry.

i also made a dipping sauce while the dumplings cooked.

i really like the flavor the bits of ginger and green onions add to the sauce.

finally the dumplings were done. so steamy. i love it.

we designated these two as our sampling dumplings.
 

this was my first time using the pumpkin wrapper. i did not detect a pumpkin flavor, but i like the color, which became even more pumpkiny after cooking.

we then placed the double-stacked steamer onto a plate, grabbed some chopsticks and the bowl of dipping sauce, and went off to enjoy our meal.

i should point out that we had the same conversation we usually having when cooking most things these days. what if it turns out to be even more delicious than the dumplings we get from the market or from any of the restaurants in the area? then we will be ruined for life, because we could never go back to eating dumplings that we did not make ourselves.

it sounds a bit crazy (and borderline obnoxious), i know, but we have already had that happen regarding quite a few of our favorite takeout food items. and it usually leads to the same conversation. take, for example, the tom yum soup which he has absolutely perfected over the course of the past year or so.

me: wow. that is amazing. it is better than the soup at [our go-to Thai restaurant].
him: i know.
me: so now i can never order that again because i know you can make even better tom yum soup.
him: i know. we are ruined for life.
me: i almost want to take a bowl of it over there to make them taste it, but they will probably ban us from ever ordering food again.
him: i know.

so, just how good were those dumplings? let me put it this way. we are not quite ruined for life. not just yet. the key to making that happen would be to make the wrapper dough from scratch next time around. i like the convenience of purchasing frozen wrappers, but they have nothing on freshly-made dumpling wrappers.

problem is, that tends to be a bit time consuming, which is why dumpling making is something i do once every couple-few years. kneading dough, then rolling out many little wrappers, then making the filling, then stuffing all those bits of dough is a bit much for me. however, i did make a recent discovery that should make it a bit easier the next time around.

turns out, he is actually quite useful when it comes to filling and sealing dumplings. i did have to give him a crash-course on how to make those little pleats, but he got the hang of it soon enough. i am not going to point out who made which dumplings (but if you squint a bit, you may see some subtle difference between them).

the best part of the thing was that we had a whole lot of fun... and the weather had undergone a few more changes and was back to snowing (again) by the time we were done. not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

deep in the heart of Ironforge...

where was i? oh, yes... that lovely storage case. i bought this mainly because i fell in love with the closure. yes, i am very easily swayed.

open this one to reveal... a hot mess of random bits. clearly my OCD was on hiatus that when i packed this case. the kitty is looking away in utter disgust. 

this one houses assorted spools of wire, a small selection of thread for beading, and an assortment of clasps, crimp beads, bead caps, and other random metal bits (all of those tiny metal parts are collectively referred to as "findings").

it also houses (most of) my collection of wire cutters and pliers...

and my favorite wire-working tool, a mini anvil and hammer set. i like to imagine myself deep in the heart of Ironforge when i am using this thing. perhaps i have said too much.

there are also several tubes and baggies of seed beads in a relatively tame assortment of colors.

this bag of beads came from a necklace that i purchased for a buck from our local Salvation Army. unfortunately, the necklace broke shortly after i got it home, and i had to scramble to collect as may of the tiny beads as i could. i probably lost half of them to the vacuum cleaner.

there were also a few projects i had completely forgotten about.

this necklace features a large number of small beads and even smaller quartz chips that had to be individually wired before assembling the piece. i wanted to add a tiny pop of color to the smoky-grey palette, so i included a couple red faceted quarts beads in the body of the necklace, and i echoed that with a single red bead that is meant to dangle at the back of the neck. i have never worn this thing.

then there are the other projects in various stages of doneness.

i intended to add some different shaped/colored beads to this bracelet, but i never go around to it. it also needs a clasp, as it is being held shut by a small piece of wire.

this necklace also needs a proper clasp, but that has not stopped me from wearing it a few times.

this simple necklace has an adjustable hook and chain closure. however, i cannot bring myself to wear the thing as it is a little too rosary-like for my personal taste. i will have to give it a tweak one of these days... maybe.

oh, and i made that adorable s-shaped hook myself from a short length of wire, and i got to use my tiny anvil to give it a few thwacks to help harden the metal, so it does not get bent out of shape easily. i really enjoy that part of the craft.
 

my most frustrating project to date involves a lot of little plastic beads that were repurposed from another Salvation Army find.

i spent many hours wiring them up in little groups of two or three beads.

the plan was to arrange all of those little groups into some sort of necklace. i tried out a few designs, but i was not especially excited about any of them. if all else fails, i can string all the little loops onto a length of leather or hemp cord, and wear it like that.

my most-worn project to date has to be these earrings. they are my go-to accessory in the Summer.

i also have a few simple bracelets, which i do wear every once in a blue moon.

i made this one back when i was attempting to give myself a crash-course in wire-weaving. it is currently being held closed by a twist tie i found in the bottom of a kitchen drawer, but he expressed some interest in it, so i may add a proper clasp and pass it along to him.

there is also this silver and blue necklace, which is another go-to Summer favorite.

and they all rotate between being buried in the box or hanging on the nifty little jewelry display/storage mannequin. it was a gift from my mom. thanks again, mom.

sorting through all of that has left me eager to get back to making pretty things... which will most likely end up being stashed away in a storage container, never to see the light of day.