Aileen Jeffries

Growing edible plants in Portland is easy, almost sinfully easy, compared to growing food in northern Saskatchewan. It never fails to amaze me that under the first foot of dirt around here there is MORE dirt, not bedrock. Our last average frost date is April 3rd, with a “safe” (read: tomatoes) frost date of April 23rd.

So, this being March, I’m busy getting the garden ready. I’ve already seeded peas and fava beans (delicious with a nice Chianti!). This morning, with Kea’s “help,” I dug a trench for some brown, wizened asparagus roots and tossed them in, ignoring the Internet’s insistence on the importance of manure. Asparagus is a fickle plant and I’ll have to wait until next year, assuming it even takes, to harvest.

There’s not much exciting about a covered-over asparagus trench so I also treated myself to some container assemblage. I love container gardening because the problem set is tightly defined. My two new front-step containers feature Daphne (blooming in the most miserable part of winter with the most heavenly scent), anemones which I love for their vibrant, floppy, almost garish flowers, yarrow (ground cover) and black mondo grass which is swiftly becoming one of my favorites.

I like to think the efficiency of a household can be judged by how quickly all the clocks are adjusted after the start or end of daylight savings. The night before? That Sunday? Never, because eventually the time will be correct again?

Further, I imagine one spring or fall, someone is going to come to my house and check to see if I got all the clocks. This person will probably be FLOTUS Michelle Obama or possibly Martha Stewart herself. It is this sort of thinking that motivates me to open the car manual to figure out how to change the dashboard clock and summit the creaky kitchen chair and incidentally reveals the depth of my neurosis.

Anyhow, back to making neat, even vacuum cleaner plow lines in the carpet…

First, let it be said that I hardly ever win anything. This may, just possibly, be due to the fact that I don’t enter many contests. The odds are rarely good and the prizes not worth the taxes. But, a couple of weeks ago, an opportunity fell into my lap that seemed tailor-made for me. The prize? Two minutes to spend $2,000 on bluefly.com.

For me, this is like Christmas. Competitive Christmas. My mornings begin with perusing the sales on sites like Rue La La and Ideeli. I spend all day camped out in front of a computer, ostensibly earning a living but in reality perfecting my clicking and typing skills, preparing for this very moment. I was born for this.

I had about a week to prepare. The contest was set to place this morning at a local radio station, 103.3 KKCW. This introduced a host of maddening unknowns – the operating system, browser, Internet connection speed, etc. I also wanted to maximize my allotted $2,000 – I could just get one item close to that price but that would ruin the fun and wouldn’t be as enjoyable as getting many less expensive items. But, every item added to the cart cost me time; time to find the item on the site, to select size and color, to add to the cart. Precious seconds. I hit upon a strategy, to search by keyword. Searching for “Odessa” leads straight to a gorgeous pair of Due Farina boots and is far faster than browsing to the boots through categories.

Throughout the week, I trained in a series of heats – refining my list of items and keywords. This morning, I arose early to confirm nothing I wanted had been sold out.

The guys at the station running the contest were laid-back and friendly and not nearly as giddy as I. Clearly, they do not spend their free time hunting online for the perfect jersey knit dress to transition into early spring. They took pictures and tried gamely to turn the mundane process of e-commerce into an exciting radio segment. I had trained for distractions and someone (in my mind dressed as drill sergeant or my 7th grade gym teacher) unplugging the Ethernet cable at the 2:00:00 minute mark but of course the reality was far less dramatic.

In the end, I can fairly assess that I made the most of it. The final total came to $2,002.47 (the overage I happily paid). A handbag for my friend who told me about the contest, three pairs of boots, two jackets, two dresses, a sweater, a pair of earrings, tights and some frilly unmentionables. Now, to wait in eager anticipation for my loot to arrive!

I do not pine for olden days. This is by far the best time and place to be alive in human history. To defend this stance, I need only mention a handful of inventions: anesthesia, birth control, democracy, the Internet.

Simply put, there was no “Golden Era” of anything. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements. If a particular population had it good during a decade of yore (consider white men in the 1950’s or, oh, ever), it was at the expense of someone else.

That said, not everything about history is terrible. There are exactly three things I’d like to revive and incorporate into my otherwise contented, modern existence.

1. Wallpaper.

2. Desserts made with gelatin. Even in our modern times, gelatin is derived from the collagen inside animals’ skin and bones. There’s something satisfyingly thrifty about making food with scraps. My favorite is panna cotta topped with cherries. Made with cream, yogurt, almond extract, and honey. And domestic animal by-products.

3. Silhouette portraits. Popular before photography, I imagine the process originally involved a flickering candle as the only light source and tracing the shadow on a barn door or traveling circus tent with a lump of charcoal from the campfire.

Digital cameras, electricity and Photoshop make silhouette portraiture easier these days. Squirming, unruly subjects – in my case a toddler – add just enough challenge to keep it interesting.