Pruning Time

Mid Febuary and your reading a blog about gardening. Well, now is the time of year where you need to spend time in the garden to make sure your spring and summer gardens will look good.

Traditionally, you should prune your tea roses on Presidents Day. Because it's so close to Valentines Day, I wait until I get a nice day so I'm not pruning in a downpour. But the absolute limit is when pitchers and catchers show up for spring training.

Today's salt & peppers are rose buds. Kind of the theme of the blog, if you haven't noticed, that's the point.

We have had some awesome weather in Pacific City this week. I cut the grass yesterday and plan on tackling the roses today. I don't have as many as I had when we were in Lake Oswego. There I had about 20 tea roses and 3 climbers. Here at The Craftsman B&B, I have half a dozen and 2 climbers. All in the back yard as the deer love roses.

Do not compost your rose cuttings! You all know I like to be as green as possible, but roses are the first plants to get funky disease, mold and other nasty illnesses you don't want spread all over your yard via the compost. You may have seen a lot of vineyards with roses at the end of the rows. They do this as a gauge of the health of the vineyard. A rose will show the signs of black spot and other diseases first, so the problems can be addressed before the vines are attacked. Farmers are smart!

If I have time, I will also prune the fuchsia down to the ground, I do this every other year. The ornamental grasses get whacked to the ground and the apple trees get any branch growing vertical pruned.

Then it's chipping time. I grew up in Denver where nothing grows, now I live where you need a chipper to maintain a basic small garden. So get out there and prune your roses down to a few strong canes. Cut just above an outward facing bud and if your roses have already started like they have here on the Oregon coast, don't worry about cutting off some growth. Remove dead canes too, you want a nice vase shape when your done.

If you don't have roses, go get some. Bare root are the best, soak them in a bucket of water overnight and plant. Some come in a box and you plant the entire box. Check out Jackson & Perkins for ideas, and you can get J&P roses at Costco.

Presidents Day

Happy Presidents Day! Yeah, I know, it's not an exciting holiday. Unless your in school or work for a bank. But a lot of people have the day off so it's a holiday none the less. Being the day after Valentines Day was a help to a busy weekend at The Craftsman B&B.

Back to the Salt & Pepper collection and today's are new to the collection. A fellow Oregon Bed & Breakfast Guild innkeeper, Debbie Lusk of The Pfeiffer Cottage Inn in Albany wrote a blog about an antique store and posted a picture of these S&P's. I, of course had to comment on them and after a few days, they were in my mail box.

I rarely buy S&P's, they have to be real ugly for me to think about them. My collection has grown from nice people giving them to me. I like to challenge my friends and family to find the ugliest ones they can. I get my share of cute ones too.

What can you find?

In Box Surprise!

We have returned from our vacation only to find 256 e-mails waiting to be answered. Over the 2 weeks we were sailing in the Caribbean, I checked my e-mail at Internet cafes, just for reservations. I replied to those and added them to my calender, 20 bookings!

I have spent the last few days sorting all the e-mail and opening them by groups that send me e-mail, The Oregon Bed & Breakfast Guild and our local Chamber of Commerce got first attention as I am on the Board of Directors. Yesterday I was caught up and then today I got an e-mail from LanierBB.com titled "Congratulations on your LanierBB.com Award!"

A while back The Craftsman B&B won Best of the West from BedandBreakfast.com so another award sure was nice to hear about. The BedandBreakfast.com award was about our service and reviews. This award from Lanier is about the Best Period Restoration in their Guests’ Greatest Picks Award program out of 8,500 B&B’s world wide!

We spent 2 years restoring this house and it was a lot of work. We love our house and the Craftsman style. We spent so much time deciding how the B&B would look and researched endlessly to be accurate with our furnishings and fixtures. Our goal was for the guest to open the door to 1921. Everything you see in the house would have been in a house of this era.

It's gratifying to see that not only is our service award worthy, but also the work we did to make the Craftsman B&B a special place for our guests too.

Boat Drinks

What's better than sailing for two weeks? Boat drinks!

You know what I'm saying:
Umbrella, check.
Rum, check.
Fruit garnish, check.

Here is our salt & pepper shaker of a boat drink.

The umbrella gracefully sits atop the drink. Fortunately none of our guests at The Craftsman B&B have picked this up and had the umbrella fall off. This is the most dangerous S&P we have, not only is it balanced, but enough boat drinks in real life can strike without much warning. We know you've been there.

The ship we are sailing on has a drink of the day every afternoon, of course last year we had to try them all. I was fond of Planters Punch and the classic, Pina Colada, the more coconut, the better.

If Jimmy Buffett sings about boat drinks, you know it's an essential part of any warm location vacation.

I gotta go where it's warm!

Even Innkeepers need a vacation!

It's one of those funny things us humans do to ourselves. We like to travel and we are innkeepers. So that really limits us to being able to travel. As most of you know, Laura has her own business and with that, she travels a lot in support of that business. Sales calls all over the United States and she is in Hong Kong a couple of times a year. So while she is able to keep the travel urge under control, I'm here at The Craftsman B&B helping my guests with their travel plans.

So when do I get a vacation? Well, the last 2 seasons, May - September, each year I had only 2 days where I didn't have someone checking in. That doesn't give me a full day off as I do breakfast and clean the rooms, but it can be a nice break. I'm happy to be busy because I know the winter will slow down a bit. The first 2 years we were in business, we had no guests in January, so we decided to take the time for ourselves. Here is a Salt & Pepper to give you a hint of what we did.

That's right, sailing. I have always like to sail. I'm no expert, but pretty good a following directions. Show me what to do and tell me when to do it and I'm the best crew member there is.

Here are the S&P's apart. Each sail is a shaker and the boat is the holder.

Last year our vacation was spent sailing the windward islands of the Caribbean. We started off in Barbados, sailed north for 4 days, then back south for 3, a week on the water.

Here is a shot of Laura in the rigging.

We were on the 439 foot, 5 masted Royal Clipper. It was an awesome experience, so much so, we are headed back next week for a 2 week sail. Now if I can only find my pirate costume.

Which came first?

You all know the classic debate: Which came first, the chicken or egg? Well here at The Craftsman B&B, we think beyond those common ideas. We ask the question: Which came first, the chicken or egg racer?

The egg, an ovoid shape is one of the strongest. Ever try to break in egg in you hand by crushing it in your fist? Not even "The Governator" could do it. Race cars need to be strong too. Not only to survive a crash, but to hold up to the power and cornering loads. A famous work of architecture, the Pantheon in Rome, Italy is in common with the egg. This monument has survived for nearly 2,000 years because it's shaped like a three-dimensional arch, a domed, egg-like shape that's one of the strongest architectural designs in the world. When an object is placed on top of it, no single point in the dome supports the entire weight; instead, the object's heaviness is carried down along the curved walls to the dome's wide base.

So here is the driver, outside of the cockpit. The ratio isn't perfect for a Salt & Pepper Shaker, but this is built for speed, too many feathers would slow it down.

Not only is the egg strong, it's also very aerodynamic. The shape of the egg is very stable in the wind. It will want to point itself into the wind. Living in Pacific City, Oregon, the wind has taught us a few things. Like only open one car door at a time, otherwise all the contents of your car will blow out and be replaced with sand.

So come to The Craftsman B&B and over breakfast, you can debate the egg, chicken, racer issue.

Art, or is it?

We have all heard "beauty in in the eye of the beholder." That expression is used for a lot of things, including art. I have a friend that doesn't think any art he could create is art. For example a painting that looks like a bunch of paint splatters or paint that was whipped and smeared onto a canvas with a rag is not art. I have learned that the subject matter isn't the most important thing in fine art, I like great technique. We have a few oil paintings here at The Craftsman B&B that from a distance looks like a picture of a forest in the Spring. When you look close, it's just a bunch of tiny dabs of paint. I've seen the Dutch Masters in museum shows and the portraits, clouds, trees are photo-realistic from 10 feet away, up close they are paint splatters or paint that was whipped and smeared onto a canvas, sound familiar?

That leads us to today's Salt & Peppers. Is it art? Well I think these are the creation of someone who took an art class at the local community center. Where they learned to make jewelry.

First off we have the typical diner S&P's you can buy at the dollar store. Then we have the wire and "jewels." Hot glue the jewels and wrap wire around them. I think these are ugly, just like I look for. But wait, there is some fine technique. The twisting of the wire to hold the dangling jewels is very well done.

Is this the work of a master or just an average person using the skills learned in one class?

It's art, you be the judge.