My Southern California Pot Garden

April 21, 2015 / Jennifer / Leave a comment

That Is… What to Grow… In Pots

When I was growing up, we always had a lush garden in the backyard. My mother has the greenest thumb I’ve ever seen, and now that I have my own family and home, I want to carry on the backyard tradition with my own children. However, with a yard the size of a postage stamp, I have to be strategic in my use of space; I want to garden, but still need to leave most of the grassy area for my kids and our dogs to play on.

I decided to start with a few large pots on the patio with vegetables and herbs. Since I wasn’t sure what would grow well in pots, I started small, with a few herbs, and tomatoes. The more I was successful at growing anything, the more I wanted to try something else. Today, I have 17 pots and 2 hanging planters as the start of my garden, and have since added three raised-bed boxes, in addition to using nearly all the rest of the available (non-grassy, play area) space in the yard.

What Grows Well In Pots

Nearly everything I have ever grown has done well in a pot. In some cases, as with mint, it is better to grow them in a pot, as they may otherwise take over the entire yard. So far, I have been able to grow: Continue reading →

The Watcher

April 10, 2015 / Jennifer / Leave a comment

I was walking through my garden the other day, and bent down to look and see if any of the squash was ready to pick. As I pushed the leaf aside, I saw a little gray, scaly head looking up at me. It might have been a lizard, but I saw the S-curve that made me believe it was a garden snake of some sort, so I let the leaf drop back in place, and went inside to get my husband. A few minutes of investigation on his part showed that, whatever it was, it had gone. Nonetheless, I put my shoes on before I went out to the garden again.

That experience provided the inspiration for this short story. If you sit outside on a quiet day in late summer, you might be able to see the same things.

The Watcher

Large droplets of dew slowly made their way in crooked trails down the enormous squash leaf overhanging the edge of the garden, while long fingers of mist pulled the fog into the yard from the valley below. He sat there under the umbrella of leaves as he waited, observing the activity in the damp yard just beyond his den. It was a great spot from which to watch, shaded from the hot sun for most of the day, and hidden from keen eyes that searched the garden for invaders.

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It’s Just a Game

April 9, 2015 / Jennifer / Leave a comment

The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth (game on IOS)

I’ve been playing a game on my iPad for almost two years. Those who know me are already well aware that I’m a geek, and although I don’t have the constitution to play God of War or Mortal Kombat, I can get into slower paced games that involve teamwork, building, and collecting. In this case, I play The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth.

As part of the growth of the game, I built a city and joined an alliance. Alliances are important, because when you are part of an alliance, you can share resources that are necessary to build cities and train soldiers, you work together to defend each other or attack enemies, and you can send your resources and gold over to another ally if another player is coming to attack you. Aside from that, members of an alliance often talk, strategize, and enjoy a certain level of camaraderie and friendship. In my case, I have belonged to several alliances. In each case, I quickly moved up the ranks to serve in an Officer role, and in some cases, Vice Regent and Regent, which are the top leadership positions available in an alliance. I have always attributed this to my tendency to teach and encourage. In each case, my alliance merged with another alliance to form a bigger, more powerful, more competitive alliance, where I learned more advanced game techniques, made more friends, and rose up through the ranks again.

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Hello World

April 9, 2015 / Jennifer / Leave a comment

[First published March 24, 2015]

“Hello world!” seems a good enough title to begin a new blog. Welcome to Up the Downs Staircase, a place where I will be able to record some of the random and no-so-random thoughts that engage my brain on a daily basis. Topics are likely to vary from inspirational stories, memoirs, pet peeves and public service announcements, things I find funny on the Internet, things that make me go “hmm…,” and anything I didn’t mention here.

Those who know me will understand the play on words in the blog name. The obvious explanation is that I took it from my name, and it implies that the content of the blog will include snippets from my journey as I travel up my own staircase to my unknown destination. This is true, and is probably an excellent description of what you will find here.

Another explanation for the title comes from the meaning of the phrase “up the down staircase,” which implies rule-breaking and going against societal norms. I hope you will find content that fits this description as well.

Years ago in my high school Drama Club, we put on a production of Up the Down Staircase. Of all of the productions in which I was involved, this one was the most unusual, as most of our productions were musicals. This one was a drama. The play centers around Sylvia Barrett, an English teacher at an inner-city high school, her passion for classic literature, and her desire to inspire her students. As one might expect, she is quickly introduced to the reality of educational bureaucracy, disinterested students, and other, even less interested teachers. Disillusionment leads to discouragement, and she considers leaving the public school system. Until she realizes that she really did inspire her students and make a difference in their lives. The novel on which the play was based is told through notes, memos, essays, lessons plans, and other forms of writing that might be found in a school setting.

I remember one day while we were rehearsing and working through brand new sets, two of our main characters were running through a key scene that they had been having some trouble with. It started off quietly, and then little by little, all of the activity on and off stage came to a halt, all eyes on the two actors in the small corner of the stage. It was real. It was raw, and it was emotional. Our leading actress finished the scene with real tears, feeling real trauma from the experience that had ceased to become just a story to her. It was powerful.

I don’t expect to leave you with that much emotion, but I promise to be real. Occasionally, I hope to be powerful. Mostly, like Ms. Sylvia Barrett, I hope to inspire.

Thank you for reading.