I may have mentioned this before

Go team! Now there are four of us signed up as a team to walk in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer on August 19 & 20. Click this link, select 'Search for a team' and enter 'Sisters for Sisters'.

We had our first team meeting yesterday to plan fundraising and to figure out a day we'd all be able to get together to walk.

W-hoo! Want to help us save the world? Come walk with us, or make a donation (or BOTH!) It's going to be great.

Are you ready?

Noah says his chocolate chips are singing a song called, "Are you ready for happiness?"

I think I'm going to have to write that song. Stay tuned.

P.S. I bought six more packets of seeds the other day.

I could stop anytime

Hi. My name is Candace. It's been 16 hours since I last bought flower seeds.

It's my sister's fault. Brenda wanted Carnations, so I had to find seeds. Then I saw the Johnny Jump Up seeds, and the English Daisy mix, and the Dianthus Double Pinks, then the exclusive offering from Mr. Fothergill's for Comedy Mixed Violas (only 99 cents!!). How could I stop myself?

But I can't really blame Brenda.

Dad has to bear some responsibility as well. He got us kids into gardening young. It started with picking rocks, sowing seed, then soon he had me started on my own flower garden.

Over the last 20 years or so, when we lived in apartments, I suppressed the urge to garden, but when we bought our house in 2004, I started thinking about peat pellets, soil amendments, plant cages . . .

So here I am with a huge inventory of seeds, and the frightening realization that if one package of Sweet Peas covers half a table, then the 37 other packages of seeds are going to fill my house with seedling trays.

Oh. My. Goodness.

37 packages. I need help.

Have any room in a south-facing window?

Happy Valentines Day

I hope you have a lovely Valentines Day. (These aren't rank ordered.)

I love Steve. I love Noah. I love my family. I love God. I love my friends. I love that my sisters live so close. I love my friend, Alison's blog. I love chocolate. I love doing work that will make the world a little better. I love my garden. I love the colour of my kitchen (Green Balsam). I love a good night's sleep. I love a hot shower. I love the smell of oranges. I love good writing. I love candlelight. I love the smell of clothes just out of the dryer. I love singing. I love warm socks. I love lemon marmalade. I love tidy, organized places. I love lists.

How does your garden grow?

I've lived in the Lower Mainland for 20 years and am still a little surprised when cherry blossoms start appearing in February. This is my first spring with my own garden, and I am just blown away that there's already life in my flower garden. Some of my rockery plants are evergreens, and are now flowering, yes, flowering.

Part of my disbelief is because I'm originally from Prince George, and am used to the garden being under two feet of snow at this time of year. My in-laws are skiing, and I'm trimming back last year's perennial growth and sowing seeds.

Isn't it WONDERFUL?!

I'm sowing tons of extra seeds this year since I'm planning a plant sale as a fundraiser for the Weekend to End Breast Cancer.

Any suggestions for favourite flowers I can grow from seed?

Task avoidance

Yesterday, Steve comes home from work and says, "Wow! The house is really clean. . . Do you have a deadline?"

Who'd have thought that polishing the kettle with baking soda (it is SO shiny!) would be an indication of a looming deadline. But it is. Our house was never as clean as when I was doing my B.A. and had exams or papers to prepare for. When I was facing a 5,000-word report on the history of psychology (one of the reasons I dropped psych as a minor), cleaning the fuzz out of the fridge's vegetable tray looked appealing by comparison.

Of course, Steve speaks not only from observation, but from experience. We had an incredibly-productive garden the year Steve was (supposed to be) writing his master's thesis.

I'm sure the four of you who read my blog would prefer that I procrastinate by writing blog entries (which I'm doing now), but if you could see your face in my kettle, you might just change your mind.

Bad blogger

Bad, bad blogger.

Yeah, pretty pathetic that I haven't blogged since Noah's birthday. Even though I had to bake three birthday cakes, host two birthday parties, two grandparents, and two nephews that week, and since then have been assessing Passion 4 Action's marketing tools, hosting two nieces, and a Bible class, not to mention spending two days on computer upgrades, and attending a half-day brainstorming workshop, I really should have spent some time blogging.

But then there was the weather.

How much grey can one person stand? I'd say about half of what Lower Mainlanders lived through in January. Blaargh.

So the sensible thing seemed to be to sign up for the Weekend to End Breast Cancer. Seven and a half months to transform from slug to fundraising athlete. Here I go.