babybloomr

But I’m not complaining– because as usual, springtime has hit Tennessee like a psychedelic Disney parade and I am enjoying the sunshine and the colors and the blooming trees and flowers so much that I am *mostly* keeping my allergy misery to myself. (Plus, hello– NETI POT!) Honestly, I have more energy at this time of year than all of the other 12 months combined. Nothing seems impossible, and I find myself Googling things like “Do-it-yourself arbors” and lying in bed at night with visions of heirloom tomatoes dancing in my head. Luckily for everyone I live with, this initial burst of ambition does wear off, usually around the last two weeks of school when I am too busy chasing my tail trying not to forget anything vital to launch into a big ol’ home project.

Here’s just a taste of what has gotten me all happy and sneezy… (OK, wait. I just realized I totally embody 2 out of 7 dwarfs.  And when you think about it,  I’m also kind of Sleepy and Dopey. I have no idea where I’m going with this.)

Anyhoo. Here’s what’s inspiring me around here these days:

**So far this is the only deck decoration I’ve gotten around to, but isn’t that color glorious? And see those empty pots in the background? They’re gonna be filled with herbs and more flowers soon.

** Take a closer look…

**One of the things I hated leaving behind at our old house was the 100 year-old wisteria vine that I rescued after the tree it was wrapped around came crashing down in a storm, squishing my car and wiping out our balcony railing. I planted this one last summer, and it seems to be budding out beautifully so hopefully it will be here in 100 years. And not, you know, FALL DOWN.

**This is going to turn into a pot of  exotic deep red lilies. I think.  I yanked them up after they withered last year because I thought they were dead, but maybe not. They’re volunteers!

**My mint bed also just sprang up! I call it ‘my mint bed’ though actually it is just this weird little corner of my yard where I stuck a couple of leftover mint plants I had that wouldn’t fit into the big pretty pot of mint I planted. That of course, is long gone, but this is thriving. And I am not going to even let myself think about the fact that my dogs like, actually pee in that yard. NOT, I feel sure, anywhere near my mint bed however.

**Looks like some of my strawberry plants survived the winter. Only got two strawberries last year mostly because Madi’s dog, Thea Medea, ATE them as soon as they started getting red. That is one weird little dog.

** I did manage to get my two front porch pots planted, mostly because Bossy was coming last weekend.

** This is the bird feeder I tucked away behind the hedge right outside of my bedroom window. Placement is crucial– I need to be able to see it from my bed when I am sitting up with my coffee and computer first thing in the morning. Sometimes one of those dang evil spawn-of-Satan squirrels jumps on it and starts scarfing down birdseed as fast as it can cram it into its nasty little mouth and then I have to interrupt my peaceful idyll and bang on the window and swear at it. Not very effective, but always makes me feel better.

**Every year I totally forget we have a dogwood tree. It is not a very old one, and it is wedged between two kind of show-off-y Bradford pears trees that bloom all over the place. Then just when they are starting to calm down, this lovely little dogwood shyly says, “Um, excuse me– I just wanted to let you know that I DO have these white flowers and whatnot…” And then I’m all, “OMG, we have a dogwood tree!”

**Sometimes less IS more, don’tcha think?

So… what is springtime  like where YOU are?

So way back in the dark ages of the intrawebs when I first discovered blogs, I read all kinds of them.

(Actually, I think it was My Nephew The Computer Genius who initially told me about these newfangled ‘blog’ things and I believe my exact words were, “Who the hang wants to read online diaries of total strangers? Sheesh, get a life already!” Oh, the irony.)

Mommy blogs, cooking blogs, travel blogs, do-it-yourself blogs, Christian blogs, non-Christian blogs, entertainment blogs, writer’s blogs, gardening blogs, local blogs, Americans now living in foreign countries blogs, lumberjacks who like to knit blogs and ad infinitum… You name it, I probably skimmed it. I was intrigued by the diversity and I was blown away by the quality of the writing I occasionally ran across– there were such definite, distinct voices out there! One of the first blogs I found was called iambossy.com, which captured my attention with the brilliant, poignant artistry of her Barbie Theater posts. Bossy is this tall, willowy, tech-savvy blonde lady with lovely cheekbones and really good hair that moves** who lives in the  Philadelphia area and has two kids, a husband and a wicked sense of humor. So right off the bat you can see that on the surface, we don’t seem to have very much in common. Well OK, maybe the two kids, the husband and the sense of humor part, but it kinda ends there. Or at least so I thought, until this past weekend when Bossy her own self came through Nashville on her “No Book Tour” and stayed at my house.

{ASIDE: If this was an Academy Awards speech, this would be the place I thanked all the little people who made this past weekend possible. And by little people I mean Russ and the girls, who helped facilitate the possibly-hormone-driven-spring-cleaning-overdrive mode I clicked into when I found out Bossy (real name: Georgia) was coming. I have no idea why I do this, but since Russ has been married to me for a frillion years and by now has experienced this many, many times, he just kind of shrugs and goes with it. Apparently I temporarily lose my mind and decide that this would be the perfect time to do a few little things I’ve been wanting to get around to, like, oh I don’t know, knocking out walls and building furniture from scratch.}

Not really. But I DID do this:

1) Bought a kitchen table for $140 off of Craigslist and then decided to butt it up against my kinda skimpy kitchen island and have a marble top cut for it and the ledge above it so that even though I can’t afford to totally finish off the island by converting my cooktop to gas AND having all of my countertops redone in soapstone like I’m dying to do, I would at least have this beautiful marble workspace/table addition to the island which satisfies something deep within my kitchen-loving soul. This took a lot of my saved-up kitchen fund money time and legwork, and I still have to paint the whole thing so it will look all-of-one-piece, but loooooooook how pretty–

I may or may not have made out with it right after it was installed. It’s all kind of a blur.

And also I… 2) Had my laundry room painted the same color as my kitchen, because I never had changed it out in the 4 years we’ve been here and the color was kind of a muddy, taupe-y, off-brown color that really reminded me of what you would find in a baby’s diaper and was not at all conducive to making me want to go in there and do load after load of laundry. I also ‘shopped my garage’, and came up with a bunch of great teapots I used to collect, an old wire basket, a beautiful photograph of Portofino, Italy that Gloria Gaither gave me years ago and various and sundry other things that I had never not yet unpacked but were quite festive once I placed them all around the laundry room.

(This might be a good time to mention that in the fleeting handful of hours that Georgia/Bossy was actually here at Chez Taff, she spent a total of about 20 minutes in the kitchen–at night– and never even SAW the laundry room… But I’m still doggedly sticking to my excuse of “having to get ready for our guest” to justify the whirlwind of activity that went on around here last week. Which will hopefully keep my slave labor family from stabbing me in my sleep.)

Ahem. Anyway, then I… 3) Had the painting guys move a big humongous armoire out of the aforementioned guest room down into the garage and put it next to my freezer so now I have an extra pantry-type thing! For canned chicken broth and diced tomatoes and my crock pot and all of those dishes I keep collecting occasionally find! (No picture of that because, hello, boring and also- my garage, it is scary messy.)

And of course, one must… 4) Change out the bedding in the guest room by ordering a Pottery Barn duvet off of ebay and then sweating bullets hoping it will come in time…

…and will also coordinate nicely with this well-worn but charming little painting I picked up for a song one time in Nolensville, TN.

So, all of that to say I managed to rally the troops and get a lot of things done around here In The Name Of Bossy that I have wanted to get done for months. And now I will wipe that self-satisfied smile off my face before the troops see it.

Speaking of Bossy?  I just adored her! She arrived late in the afternoon, and we barely had time to get ready to leave for… *trumpet fanfare* A LIVE TAPING OF “PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION” AT THE RYMAN!!!  A wonderful woman named Kat Breshears generously offered tickets to Bossy and so another local blogger Rebecca, and I were able to go, too. I am a huge Garrison Keillor fan, so this was a very big deal to me, and I was unabashedly thrilled.  One of the first things I loved about Bossy was her equally un-cool level of excitement about everything she was experiencing. She was not jaded and ho-hum about any of it, God bless her, which made it all the more fun. She couldn’t believe she was actually standing out in the alley behind the Ryman listening to honkytonk music blaring out of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, and while she grabbed her camera to capture it, Kat captured this:

Isn’t she cute as a bunny?!

The show was incredible, everything you’d want a live performance would be– and when I finally heard that oh-so-familiar voice intone, “Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon…” I had to physically restrain myself from leaping onto the stage and hugging that sweet weird bespectacled writer genius so hard that security would have to come drag me off of him. Thankfully for all concerned, I did control myself, though admittedly this would have been a WAY more interesting post if I had given in to my baser instincts. Here are some shots:

*Georgia, Rebecca and I, ready for the show! (Calm down, Tori, you’re looking a wee bit Unabomber in this one.)

Awww…

*The next two are courtesy of Kat and her vastly superior photography skills.

*Those famous red shoes and socks

*Artsy photo of Georgia, loving the show

When it was all over, we jumped in Georgia’s *sponsored* ride, a lovely Fusion hybrid she named Harrison Ford, and drove to Bosco’s to meet up with some of Nashville’s finest bloggers which are pictured here by way of a couple of clever one-armed shots I totally stole from Bossy’s site but am totally giving her credit for and hoping she won’t launch an ugly lawsuit because like I said, I LOVE HER and also SHE PROMISED TO COME BACK. So, anyway:

The long and the short of this whole weekend is that once again *cue the violins*  I realized how very much I love the blogging world, more specifically, the women I meet in it. Say what you will– and Lord knows I have– about some of the divisive, snarky, unkind things floating around out there in cyberspace, my experience with the bloggers I have been lucky enough to hang out with has been overwhelmingly positive. Georgia was an absolute case in point. She is a remarkable woman. We went from total strangers to real friends in the course of several hours, and that is a rare and wonderful thing. I feel very blessed by it.

(Georgia– you will get used to that kind of ‘blessed by it’ talk the more you hang out in the South. Don’t let it throw you.)

(And come back real soon.)

**Tori’s Useless Trivia Alert: totally random line from the trailer for a 1988 Garry Marshall movie starring Bette Midler called ‘Beaches’ (which introduced the ever-popular/world’s-smarmiest-anthem “Wind Beneath My Wings”.) You’re welcome.