onthemazewall

[onthemazewall]

Interesting Interest

So recently, mortgage rates have dropped really low, like zero and negative digit low. Naturally even though we’ve only owned our house about a year and half, we decided to refinance. It’s been a very interesting process. The first time we did it through our bank, so they had a really good idea of what our finances were. This time we’re looking at different banks, so they want all sorts of information. There are thankfully no institutionally racist/classist/arbitrary and insecure credit bureaus here, so instead they ask for all sorts of information about your expenses to get an idea of how likely you are to keep paying your mortgage. It feels very weird, but way better than the credit score method. I am wicked excited at the prospects. We currently pay 1.5 percent interest on our mortgage, which is low, but still amounts to a good 200 dollars a month. We're looking to switch to a zero rate with one bank and another one we’re hoping for a negative interest offer, imagine that? How crazy would it be to have a negative interest rate! We’re obviously only looking at fixed rates, because we’re not gamblers, but crazy global economy can sometimes lead some very enticing deals.

In other mundane financial news, we switched to a electricity union that does all the research and haggles to get the best price with providers. They only do 100% renewable, so not only is our electric bill going down, we get to feel good about it. I don’t know why such things don’s exist in the U.S. it seems like a really clever idea. 

Lastly I’m thrilled that Trump has changed his mind about visiting Denmark. I’m still affronted that he was considering purchasing Greenland, like this was 1840 when the wealthy still bought and sold people like commodities and swapped land around like nobody lived on it. The world has changed. I think the birth and early years of Israel may be the last instance of claiming land by winning a war (albeit still extremely contested) and land swapping nationhood without the consent of all the inhabitants. We just don’t do that anymore. 

[onthemazewall]

This is an extra strip that’s going to go in the Infinite Trouble book.

[onthemazewall]

So these are the earliest Mere strips I have on my computer. I have to look back at the books and see if she came in earlier, but then those strips are archived somewhere else. As you can see I darkened her hair and let it down, I kind of wish I’d gone with the original design. I like getting to see my old technique, kind of makes me want to do more with hand drawn clothes texture. FYI these ran in Seeking Shelter vol. 2. You can still get the PDFs of all the strips for Seeking Shelter on Gum Road for a dollar each, or if you’re interested, I can sent you the print volumes for $ 15 a piece. ^_~

[onthemazewall]

I’d like to tweak the hair a bit, but overall I’m very happy with this new promo image for Just Ducky of Burn and Louis.

[onthemazewall]

Kids colored one of my comic book assets

[onthemazewall]

Moving to My Own Website

Hey, thanks for supporting me on Tumblr, but I’ve decided it’s just not the platform for me and am migrating to my own website:

http://onthemazewall.com/2019/07/25/Book_1_-_001_Ducks.html

You can read blog posts much more regularly there as well as my new webcomic about raising ducks.

[onthemazewall]

Exciting News

So, my daughter is finally consistently sleeping through the night and sleeping in till 5, sometimes even 6 am, the result is that while I’m still constantly tired, I’m not exhausted and I feel much more myself, much more creative. I decided to look back over Infinite Trouble and realized I actually had a solid 200 strips, so I’ve been going through and editing them for a book. They need a lot of editing and I think I may need to draw a few more before I’m satisfied that it’s ready for print. I don’t know if I’ll be doing a Kickstarter for it or save it as an add on for the Kickstarter for Just Ducky. 

What’s Just Ducky? Oh yeah, so after many failed tries, I have landed upon an idea for a new comic with sticking power. It’s autobiographical again, but instead of having the amorphous, all encompassing theme of child rearing, it instead about life with ducks. Much more compact, I’m thinking this is maybe a 400 strip story, but we’ll see where it goes. I’ve already done pencils for a good 15 strips, inks for 9 and have four completely done. I just need to run them by my copy editor now. The comic is going to run three times a week and I’m not going to start it until I have 12 strips completely ready to go, since having a solid buffer goes a long way towards a reliable comic, but that should be happening soon.

I’m also working with my husband on making a static page for it on Git Hub. Tumblr is free and I appreciate that, but I can’t archive my works and it just feels too impermanent, so I want to move Just Ducky to a home where people can find it and read it from beginning to current strip. It also will work better for my currently dormant Mail Chimp list and cross posting to social media. So, yeah, I’m wicked excited about that. It’s been fun to go back and explore time in Pembroke that I never got to with Infinite Trouble and more importantly, like cats, I just really enjoy drawing strips about ducks. What can I say? I’m an animal person!

This is also good news for the subset of you who are more interested in the blog posts than the comics. I’ve just never been able to feel comfortable with myself as a blogger, but I totally dig putting a blurb under each comic. So this new project means consistent thrice a week posts about whatever is on my mind, so I hope this is a win for everyone. I’ll keep you posted, there probably won’t be any blog posts in the interim, but I’m thinking 1-2 weeks before I do a soft launch here on Tumblr and about a month til the comic is housed on its own page. 

Happy Summer everyone!

[onthemazewall]

Seasonal Food

I used to have a strict budget of 5$ per person for dinner, since it was just my husband and I this translated to $5 for meat and $5 for vegetable, starch and spices. The kids are still small enough they don’t count as a full third portion for dinner, so I still use the same formula. However, last year I decided we didn’t have enough disposable income and since food is our biggest expense, I decided to give myself the challenge of no more than 20KR ($3.5) for the meat. This has meant that we go from eating sort of seasonally to aggressively seasonally. It’s not just waiting for when asparagus is down to 10 KR ($1.8) a bunch or brussel sprouts are cheap again, we eat what meat is heavily discounted. Some times of year that’s chicken or pork, what’s surprising about right now is that it’s mainly ground meat...and dairy. I never thought of cheese as having a season, in general I just thought of eating a dairy meal vs. a meat meal as being too expensive, since good cheese usually costs more than chicken filets, however, I guess summer, perhaps when newly matured cows, goats and sheep are being milked, ends up being dairy season. It’s very novel and quite fun. I’ve been doing breaded, fried eggplant with tomato sauce and fresh buffalo mozzarella. Tonights is ricotta and zucchini pancakes. I did a goat cheese and marscapone cheese sauce with mushrooms and spinach just last night. It means my repertoire being expanded and while it’s a little heavy on the fat, it’s a pretty exciting diet shift for a few months. Admittedly, I’m still patiently, but eagerly looking forward to autumn and wild game season!

[onthemazewall]

Tan Lines

I’ve always loved tan lines. When I was little, they reminded me of the Thunder Cats, how you’d end up all dark on one side and light on the other...today I think they’r particularly cool for how they show your lifestyle. I’m not particularly fond of the kind you get from lying like a lizard in the sun, an activity that has always bewildered me. I mean, I get it after a really cold swim in the ocean or one of those days when the sun is hot, but the air still pretty cool, but to just roast in the sun and this weird thing where you’re trying to make every inch of you dark, like changing your skin tone is just weird to me.

This year my family has particularly neat tan lines. I’m as dark as I’ve ever been on my arms, but the last joints of my hands are still winter pale from clutching the handle bars on my bike. I have a pale triangle on my next from the shadow created by my chin while I ride and my legs are shades behind my arms. When I was a teenager, I used to have dark legs so much that in a bathing suit it looked like I had stockings on. That was from all the sailing. My daughter is quite dark now, with her shoulders and back significantly more than her front. This is from squatting on the beach making sand castles. My son is similar, but paler from being swathed in sunscreen at børnehave. They must put the strongest stuff on his face, because it is much paler than the rest of him, an amusing effect I’ve noticed in all the børnehave kids. My husband actually has lightly tanned arms, something he never got in the U.S.

All in all, I love that our tans are testament to our new carless lifestyle and how much time we get to spend not just playing in the sun, but simply living outside.

[onthemazewall]

Motocykles and Sweetgrass

I’ve mentioned before that I listen to a lot of podcasts that are not actually made for my demographic. One of them is Medicine for the Resistance, which is Canadian and targeted at First Nations and people of African descent. It is one of the few podcasts that I listen to that I have to actively remind myself, is not made for me, because well, it isn’t and there are times I really feel it. On the other hand, sometimes I am introduced to true gems of knowledge and culture that I never would have found otherwise. One of these was an interview with the author/playwrite/generally talented man, Drew Taylor Hayden. After listening to the interview, I picked up both of his novels, the first a delightful little slice of life vampire tale take takes place on an Anishinawbe reserve that reminded me greatly of rural Maine. The second, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, takes place on the same reserve, but is a much larger story. It touches on residential schools, loss of culture and the difficulties of being a Native person in modern Canada, but that’s really just the backdrop. The main stuff of the book is this delightful romp focusing on the people’s trickster demigod coming back to shake things up. If, like me, you know nothing of Anishiawbe (also referred to as Ojibway) culture, it’s maybe even more fun, since you have no idea what to expect. I admit when I first started reading it, the residential schools gave me nightmares and the idea of a people having been so stripped of their culture that they don’t even have a connection to their traditional foods anymore was disturbing, but as the book went on, I could see the humor of a god coming back and finding out his people adored baloney or that everything was deep fried. I loved how the trickster god, who dressed himself up in a Scandinavian looking skin, kept changing his eye color, because you ever notice how light color eyed people are always splitting hairs about if their eyes are green, blue or hazel? I admit I differentiate between my black eyed and brown eyed child, but at the end of the day there are light colored eyes and dark colored eyes. Anyway, it is a really fun book, with a lot of depth. I’d recommend it to anyone, because how can you not like a book with a raccoon army? 

[onthemazewall]

Life Goes On

So I deleted Twitter off my phone, Politico.com from my browser bookmark and have just generally shut myself off from American news. In general, I feel if all you can do is bare witness, you have an obligation to do so, but hey, I moved and I’m paying taxes to a country that freaks out because a five year old at a deportation center isn’t allowed to eat mushy toddler vegetables instead of the US now, so I did my part and consider it now my privilege to turn a blind eye on the country I was born into.

As a result, I’m in a much better mood. The 18 hours of sunlight a day help and I’ve always loved summer. I’ve instead focused on things like moving the duck coop (it’s a 6x6 metal frame covered in chicken wire, quite easy to migrate around the yard) to a place that makes it easier to coral the ducks, so easy in fact that my son did it himself and I didn’t even notice. I’ve started collecting seed pods for next year. My favorite 81 year old neighbor is watching her lupins like a hawk waiting until the pods are ready for harvest and another neighbor just snipped her exotic purple poppy pods for me when I asked her where I could get that variatal. 

I’m again contemplating what comics project I want to do best. It will take a few more days to see if this one has legs, but I am forever hopeful. Admittedly this would require my daughter letting me get enough sleep, but we’re installing a ceiling fan in her room today, so that should hopefully make a big difference.

I was struck by the funniest thing at the beach the other day. It greatly saddened me when I moved here to learn that thanks to American media’s insidious creep into global culture, in many places Danes do not bathe topless at the beach any longer. Everyone, including the police, assure me it’s still totally OK, but I haven’t seen a single bare breasted woman on the strand. Even most of the kids are sporting bathing costumes these days. I haven’t been brave enough to buck the trend, though I encourage the kids to enjoy a clothes free beach experience. In fact, this is a current refrain to my daughter when she strips down in some random public place “Hey, Beatrix, this isn’t the beach!” My son loves saying that to her. Anyway, the funny thing is that while people seem to have adopted this American norm, it’s clear that nobody gets the underpinnings of body shaming, lust averting and innate modesty that are supposed to fuel it. It was hard not to laugh as I watch a family strip the kids down to the skin and then realize they didn’t have the bathing suits ready, so the children, maybe ages 6 and 8 were running around buck naked until the parents had prepared their beach niceties to cover them up. I saw an elderly lady sunbathing, top untied, who when she got up seemed to have no interest in doing the intricate modesty dance to secure her top immediately without giving the public a view of what was underneath. As an American, I find it almost as funny as the fact that Danes seem convinced that Halloween is 90% about decorations!

[onthemazewall]

Sad

Today I woke up at 4:30, not particularly pleasant, but chronic sleep deprivation has been a part of my life since my daughter was born. Eventually she’ll start sleeping later or at least get old enough that she can self entertain until I get up. I decided to end my Twitter hiatus of the last 8 days, because I didn’t have the concentration for a book, concentration, oh yes, that’s what I discovered, that the country I am a citizen of, the country I was born into, that my parents and grandparents were born into, has full blown concentration camps. I was confronted with reminders that Anne Frank wasn't gassed, she died of disease in an overcrowded and unsanitary detention facility. I was faced with news articles about children in squalid conditions taking care of smaller children. I don’t need to go into the details, you’ve all read the articles. 

The thing is, I realized the other day, that I feel more uncomfortable saying N word that ends with a ZI than I do N word that ends with an ER. Not that I don’t think the latter is a heinous word, but growing up where I did, I’ve only ever heard it used in media by one black person to another, or maybe my 80 year old Scottish neighbor casually referring our mutual Congolese friend that way in totally banal contexts. The former, despite being a word that is bandied around all the time is one I never actually say out loud and has lost none of the venom it seems sapped of for so many people. So I say with the most sincere horror that as Americans we are all Nazis. There are concentration camps in our backyard. Sure, the good people in our country are appalled. Sure, we’re telling our government officials and I am now truly baffled as to why Nancy Pelosi hasn’t started impeachment hearings, but it’s not enough. We need to be out in the streets protesting like Hong Kong and we’re not. As a country, we are just going about our daily business, maybe a little sadder, but going about our business, living our daily lives and pumping tax dollars into a system that is facilitating the murder of refugees, the murder of children and innocents who were legally seeking asylum. 

Edmund Burke’s quote “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” never felt so true, but it’s the difficulty that to do something collectively, because unless we are in a position of power, being a single voice carries no weight, is so incredibly hard. Maybe it is simply the inevitable fate of humanity to arbitrarily single out groups and persecute them, to repeat the ugliness of history again and again and again. And so I am sad, so very very sad.

[onthemazewall]

Language Apps that are Great

Khan Academy has put out a small child app. It’s free, has piles of content and my kids adore it. They haven’t been into their iPads for months and suddenly are happily wiling away their down time with nursery rhymes and early reading exercises. 

That said Originator’s set of learning apps are still nearer to my heart. They have a pretty hefty price tag for an iPad app, ranging from 9-15 dollars, but they are lovingly made, with beautiful graphics, a well thought out format and exceptional teaching capabilities. I own several of the reading ones and their numbers app and attribute my four year old’s far above average abilities to playing them for hours.

Value for money, Teach Your Monster to Read would still be my favorite. You get to choose the design of your monster and it has far more hours of evolving game play than I ever expected. I’m still not sure there is an end point and it is a game my son keeps returning to again and again. 

And for basic phonics, I’d recommend Super Why Phonics Fair. I find Super Why I fairly mediocre show with ugly art, but they made a great app from it. The games do a great job of teaching this quite important skill.

In other news, I’ve learned the best thing to do with roses that are trying to turn into brambles conquering my walkway is to cut roses for my dinning room table. They’re pretty, fragrant and the rose canes pop back up once they are no longer under the weight of so many blooms!

[onthemazewall]

Father’s Day

My husband and I don’t do Father’s Day or Mother’s day, because at 2 and 4 we feel like the kids show their appreciation for us every day and we don’t need a special day to confirm either their love or the family’s appreciation for our tough jobs. 

I must say I was relieved when I had kids to be freed of my Mother’s Day and Father’s Day obligations to my parents, because between that, their anniversary and their birthdays it was just too much. Too many presents to think up, too many nice gestures, just too much pressure. It especially got bad in my 20′s as my relationship with my siblings eroded and the onus to get a group present from the three of us became increasingly fraught, since it meant there were three of us who didn’t know what to do or get, who then had the coordinate with the other two in what felt like a bigger headache every year. By my 30′s we’d just given up on doing things as a unit altogether, which was less stressful, but I felt wasn’t as nice for my parents.

Anyway, even though I don’t celebrate it for my husband and I’m told as a parent myself I don’t have to do anything for my own father, I’d just like to take a moment to say how great he is. My siblings always called me Mini Dad and I can’t think of a greater compliment. My father taught me to be strong, a go getter, to reach for the stars, to innovate and be assertive. I’ve often felt I don’t fall into many of the traps women find themselves in during their careers, because my father raised me how to do business just like does. 

In more concrete gifts my father gave me, aside from a very high metabolism, slim frame and an ability to tan to the color of caramel, he taught me to ski and sail, the former I’ve long given up and the later a lifelong passion, both something that makes you feel one with the earth and exhilaratingly free. Daddy encouraged me to travel the world and always stop to sniff the flowers, which only once resulted in me stepping in a red ants nest (I was five, it was Florida, the flowers were literal...) and this also taught me even if it gets you in a scrape, it’s worth having the adventure. 

Daddy taught me the joy of debating and that in the winter you may curl up with a book, but summer is for being outside in nature, be it buzzing around the harbor in a little motor boat or exploring the woods. I learned the names of all the trees so young, I don’t even remember when he taught me. 

I don’t celebrate a specific day for my father, because every day I am happy he exists and raised me. I have been very fortunate in life, but certainly one of the earliest and most enduring gifts fate has given me are my parents.

[onthemazewall]

Lawn and Nature

When I lived in Pembroke, MA we had an entire acre. It was a beautiful piece of land with a sunken circle in the very front surrounded by oaks that was in the early stages of being a magical garden (I had only gotten as far as having rented goats to eat all the poison ivy), the backyard was huge and fenced. I had three raised veggie beds, plans for berry briar patches, blueberries, a nascent wild flower field and a place for an orchard. We only lived there three short years and while I don’t think I have ever missed our little cape, the land it sat upon fills me with sadness. There was so much I wanted to do, so much I had planted and never will that be fulfilled. I don’t fool myself into thinking the woman who bought the house had any interest in doing anything but the most conventional of landscaping, enslaving the land to whatever artificial style is in vogue these days.

So now we have a new house with a new yard. I love the house. It’s 25% bigger than the old, with large common spaces and small private spaces, lots of light and a graceful flow. While our plot of land is smaller, more urban and not so gloriously wild, it’s grown on me a lot. The trees are not towering and free like in Pembroke, but the two apple and pear give wonderful fruit. The ornamental cherry is lovely, the tallest arboreal decoration in the yard has big bean pods in the fall and lovely trailing yellow flowers this time of year. We even have a contorted hazelnut and bushy pine that make a glorious fort for the kids and ducks! Oh yes, and while it’s smaller, it’s still large enough to support a small flock of ducks, especially with the invasive and quite plentiful snails everyone gets in their yards. 

The previous owner was quite a gardner and there are a lot of mature plantings. The whole yard is fenced in with arborvitae, a good eight feet tall, which give the yard a sense of seclusion. She had a fondness for roses, I think we have more than 10 varieties of various sizes and while I generally consider them too fussy, the blooms they give off are amazing (plus they’re mature enough not to really need managing). We have an army of lavender, some lilac, a forsythia bush and two yew right by the house.

The lawn itself is amazing. After last year’s months long drought, it has repopulated itself with innumerable varieties of small flowering greens. There’s the recognizable Danish lawn daisies and clover, but also lots of little yellow, pink, and purple flowers coming up. I even have random pansies in a few spots and something feathery and white.

My big contribution has been reclaiming the paved areas. The who front court yard was brick, there’s an unusably narrow stone driveway at the far end and an annoying concrete ramp to no where next to that. The bricks I’ve been taking off in rows, throwing on some top soil and planting with wildflowers and vegetables. I now have an explosion of daisies, bachelor buttons, poppies, radishes and carrots. There are all sorts of flowers there for which I know not the name, mixed with turnips, peas, onions and shallots. I even threw the remains of a butternut squash I gutted for dinner and it’s sprouting like crazy. A good friend told me monoculture gardening is bad for the environment, so I’ve taken the concept of mixed vegetables and run with it. Next year I plan to attack the old driveway, pull up the stone hexagons and fill it with lupins. Once I figure out how to build a terrace from scratch, I’m going to fill in the ramp with hollyhocks, mullen and whatever else grows weedlike round here, maybe get grapes and hops to climb up the sides.

My husband long ago thought maybe my gardening obsession was misplaced maternal instincts. Now that I have two kids, I can safely say, no, I just really like putting things in the ground and watching them grow!

[onthemazewall]

Lot’s of Activity

So the past week has been terrible for taking pictures, but great for making meaningful memories. Me and the kids attended our first political demonstration on Sunday. Some family members were concerned this could endanger our residency permit, but when I called immigration, they told me not only was it my constitutional right, they encouraged me to attend. It was an event to push for more adults in daycare centers, so a very good cause in any Dane’s book. There were piles of free demonstration gear: T-shirts, paper megaphones, flags, giant signs, plastic clapper hands and sunglasses. It was a lot of speeches the kids obviously weren’t interested in, but parading around town with everyone felt really good. The kids now have yellow shirts with a Superman like logo in the middle that instead says #where is an adult?

For the record there’s been a lot of talk nationally of later about places with unacceptable pedagogs or ridiculous child to adult ratios. That is not in anyway my son’s nursery school, but I stand in solidarity with all the other parents who aren’t so lucky.

On Wednesday we went to our very first Eid feast. It was hosted by my West African friend who has lived in Denmark since she was 14. I got to learn all about “African Time”, unlike “China Time”, which is 15 minutes early or “Bryn Mawr Time”, which is 15 minutes late or “Danish Time” which is exactly at the time you said it’d be, “African Time” was like 3 hours late. I have a good Danish friend in Slagelse who has a Bengali wife who was also invited, so we met early so the kids could play. When we showed up at our host’s apartment, she was no where near ready, so offered to take her daughter to the park where the feast was going to take place. Out she came with a friend, so we were two adults and five rambunctious children ages 2-6. My Danish friend correctly assumed that our host would not be along in a few minutes like I had been told. In fact, at the one hour mark, I finally agreed with his plan to go to the grocery store for snacks, since the kids had eaten through all of my reserves and it was an hour and a half later that our host appeared. 

It was totally worth the wait. She came bringing sweet plantain fritters and what I know of from Puerto Rico as Amarillos to hold us over while we grilled the meat. The kids all attacked the juice boxes and snacks that we’d got at the grocery store. The weather was hot and lovely. More children kept appearing, but their parents were all still at the apartment getting ready. It was a relaxing lovely day. Me and the kids had to leave at 3:30 to catch our bus home. It was pretty funny. I’d been urging my Bengali friend not to work on Eid, because it’s an important cultural holiday and from my Jewish standpoint, if you start working on the high holy days no one will take your culture seriously and you are fast tracking the disappearance of your traditions, but as it turned out, even getting there after her job, she beat most of our host’s family! It was both a wonderful celebration and a big lesson to me in time keeping!

[onthemazewall]

Birthday Presents

One of the differences between living in the US where anything important costs an arm and a leg (healthcare, education, childcare etc.) and anything trivial is dirt cheap (electronics, clothes, toys etc.) and living in Denmark where the opposite is true, is that birthday party invites suddenly fill me with panic. I don’t know where to get affordable gifts. This is compounded by the fact that the two toy store chains were owned by the same company that went out of business this year. Aside from the grocery store and one boutique healthy wooden toy store in town, there is virtually no where to get kid presents. The selection isn’t great, the prices aren’t great, and, oh yeah, like the U.S. children seem to already have everything under the sun. Sure there’s the internet, but there is no Amazon in Denmark and ordering from Germany takes time. Using thebookdepository  also takes about a month’s lead time. So you’re either spending another 5-8 bucks on shipping or need a month’s notice, which most people, unlike me, do not give.

So, below I’ve decided to list my new go to gift ideas for children under 10. I believe they are both applicable for the Denmark, the U.S. and plenty of other countries.

1. Children’s Cookbooks:

Kids love getting messy and creative in the kitchen and even by age two, they are old enough mix and appreciate the process. I have been compiling my own and printing it on Lulu. For me, it’s great, because I already have a personal adult cook book and a lot of boring American foods are exciting here. However, there are plenty of cook books already extent that are great kids and like other types of books, you can never have too many!

2. Seeds:

Radishes, Turnips, Peas, Beans, Sunflowers, spinach and Carrots are all the type you can throw in the ground and forget about. They’ll come up no matter how weedy the dirt is, they don't require watering and they are all super fun. They taste delicious fresh and are fun to watch grow. Radishes if you don’t thin them won’t create bulbs, but they make zesty little bean pods that my kids prefer. Carrots and radishes both come in rainbow packs and you can make a fun game out of guessing what color the root will be before you pull it.

3. DVDs of TV series:

There is a lot of mediocre TV out there, but also some truly amazing shows now for kids. Depending on the family’s viewing preferences, it’s likely the birthday child has not been exposed to Doozers, Ready, Jet Go, Wild Kratts, Blaze and the Monster Machine or something of that ilk. A DVD doesn’t create clutter, can be a gateway to a whole new hobby and provides hours of entertainment. It’s a marvelous value for money.

4. Plants:

Like seeds, they offer the fascination of something that grows and changes and lasts a long time. For indoor plants, succulents are best, because they want very little water, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting them for a couple weeks. Jade plants cloning properties are particularly fun.

For outdoor, if they’ve got a yard, a tree is an awesome gift. I also like hosta plants for shade and lupins for sun.

5. Apps: 

Figuring out gifting apps can be a bit of a headache, but like DVDs there tends to be a lot of good stuff people don’t know about and the value for money is fantastic.

Think Rolls, Pedersen’s Inventions, Busy Shapes, are some that come readily to mind.