Tag: Gardening

Recipe Roundup and Concert Pictures
Gardening · Life Posts · Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup and Concert Pictures

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My week got all thrown off by a concert and being still sick. I did go to the doc yesterday and don’t have bronchitis, just really severe asthma flares. I have a stronger version of my meds, so hopefully that will help me kick this. In the meantime, I have been trying to get through it.

We saw Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling with a full orchestra and they were both amazing! Here are a couple of pictures.

It was really hot, but definitely worth it.

I haven’t been wanting to cook or eat, but we did have a couple new recipes this week.

We had chef’s salad with lettuce from the garden! We have so much lettuce right now. It’s been very hot, so the salad was nice and cool. Today it’s already 75 and I’m going to stay hiding inside. My lungs aren’t handling anything well.

We also had a new brand of all beef hotdogs.

They were the Teton brand from Costco and were pretty good. I have to be careful with hot dogs. One of the all beef brands was still in natural pork casings, which wouldn’t have helped me.

I had a friend’s kids over for Lego time and made tacos with homemade tortillas. We had taco meat leftover, so I made a beef taco soup.

I roasted peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes and threw everything in the crockpot while I was at work. It turned out good. I like using the leftovers.

We had baked chicken with garden herbs on Thursday, but ate separately, so I have no pictures.

Speaking of the garden, it is growing very well. I do need to water the herbs a little more, but I have lots of tomatoes started!

The zucchini plant won’t even fit in a picture. 🙂 I keep seeing new blossoms on it too, so we’ll have to see how many squash we get.

Here’s the lettuce:

A bunch of the pepper plants have flowers and buds too, so I’m Excited about that. Everything is growing much better than it was in pots!

Well, I’m going to see if I can sleep some more. Hopefully I’ll feel up to doing some sewing, baking, or canning today. For now, I’m content with not coughing quite as much.

Have a great day!

Simple Sunday
Gardening · Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

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“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.” — Rudyard Kipling

“Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes.”                – Unknown

“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” -Sigmund Freud

“Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun of them. You’re always learning.” – Helen Mirren

 

Sew Much Fun!
Crafty · Gardening · Sewing

Sew Much Fun!

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Ha! Sewing puns…. They go well with my sewing machine leggings!

I was so excited to finally get these made. I now want all the leggings fabric though… It’s cool to have leggings just the right size for me. 🙂

We went to our good friends’ house for J’s birthday party over the weekend and while the Husband played Halo 2, I sewed along with his wife. 🙂 I was super productive and ended up making 2 pairs of leggings, one regular and one capri length, and a new woven shirt.

The shirt is a flamingo shirt. Printed cotton front, black cotton back.

I’m going to wear it to my teen group on Monday. I don’t think they quite believe me on how much I like flamingos. I modified my regular shirt pattern for it. It’s the same as the Castle shirt. I’m trying to convince my friend to try wovens and I think this might have helped win her over a little. 🙂

Here are the leggings:

They don’t look terribly different, but I assure you, they are different sizes. 🙂 They are made with performance fabric/ athletic knit from Joann’s. I’m still working on my waistbands. The measurements on my pattern seem off. The pants part don’t stretch as much and I haven’t quite figured out the correct length yet for it.

They are very smooth and nice to wear. They aren’t see through at all and stay up. I wore the capri ones to do a spot of yard work on Sunday and they were nice and cool. We, of course, did a bunch of yard work and then couldn’t leave it alone even after cleaning up. I took down a tree wearing my lace trimmed tunic and flip flops.

I was super proud. 🙂 Fancy was very excited to help us take care of the rest of the tree.

She broke that branch off by herself after peeling all the bark off and snapping all the dry branches off. She was quite excited.

It rained a bunch on Saturday, so I did some more work on UFO’s. The rainbow railroad quilt is done! I don’t have a picture, but it’s backed with a brown doggy print fleece that was hiding in our guest room where I promptly forgot about it. Darn safe places!

I do have a sneak peek picture of a present for a friend that was finished on Sunday.  I saw the fabric and couldn’t resist. I hope she likes it too!

We’re seeing our friend soon, so I’ll show you the full picture after that. 🙂

Staying up late to sew had a lovely ending this morning, although I was very sleepy. This fabric really wanted to be a flirty, twirly dress, and now it is!

It has a pocket! Just one because I wanted to get it done. It’s big enough for my phone and keys. I will be fixing the sleeves, they are tight. It makes me feel super cute though and I love how it looks on me. There are more twirly dresses in my future!

I’m going to try to get some more of the in progress projects done. It’s lots of fun to make new things, but I’m kind of forgetting about the things waiting to be finished, which is a bad habit of mine.

The basement work area desperately needs to be organized again. Perhaps I will have an organizing day on Friday. If you don’t hear from me over the weekend, I’ve been eaten by a fabric monster. Send a search party!

With that said, I hope you have a great night!

Simple Sunday and the Birthday Rose
Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday and the Birthday Rose

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I thought that I had posted a picture of my birthday rose, but it was apparently eaten by the interwebs. The featured picture this time should be it. My poor Dad was very sad not to have seen it. Sorry Dad!

We did some more gardening prep today. Fancy was extremely excited to help us dig and is currently passed out next to me, simply exhausted by all the smells. Here’s some gardening quotes to go along with our projects.

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If a tree dies, plant another in its place.”
— Carl Linnaeus

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” – Douglas Adams

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” – Audrey Hepburn

Yearly Review- Canning and Gardening
Canning and Preserving · Gardening · Monthly Review

Yearly Review- Canning and Gardening

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Hello again! I thought I would separate out my canning list from my recipe list to try and make it not so long. I probably have one more review post and then it will be back to the normal posting schedule.

We were going to go to the zoo today, but I woke up with a sore neck and shoulder. Too much relentless partying! 🙂

Canning Review:

So I wanted to get more canning done than I actually was able to do. I still have the whole canning tomatoes in the freezer. I think I’ll just chop them up and use them whole.

Here is what I did get canned this year.

Apple sauce, two batches from The Ball Blue Book. I have no pictures of the second one for some reason. One batch of applesauce was canned and one is in the freezer. The Husband only likes the second one. The first one was too smooth. It works very well for cooking though and I like it, so all is not lost.

Tea Blends! I’m going to count these as canning because they are in canning jars. I made them for my vending event and when they didn’t sell, my craft ladies  happily snapped them up for Christmas. It was so much fun to put them together and I still have a bunch of the materials, so I would like to make some more up for me as well.

Pickles from The Art of Preserving. I didn’t like this recipe, but the ones with extra garlic went over very well. I will try more pickles with a different recipe for next year.

I also had my first burst jar in the canning pot. It was scary, but not as messy as it could have been.

Rhubarb marmalade from Taste of Home Canning 2012. This was delicious. I quite enjoy it on toast and on yogurt.

Strawberry Marmalade from Taste of Home 2012. This is also delicious and I like in lots of different ways.

Rhubarb BBQ sauce from the An Oregon Cottage website.   I liked this, but it’s possible the Husband is allerfic to rhubarb, so I haven’t used it since. This was a freezer recipe, it was too low of a PH level to safely can.

Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate from Ball Canning online. This is lovely. I wanted to make some blackberry as well, but didn’t get to it. I have some blackberries in the freezer, so may try it. The Husband likes it with Sprite. He was excited to have our own lemonade.

Gardening Review:

My herbs did very well. I was able to move the rosemary plant inside even though it got caught in a snowstorm.  I was excited by how pretty this picture looked and it was also exciting to get to cut my own fresh herbs for foods. My only problem was keeping them watered enough. My work schedule was not conducive to watering schedules.

Strawberries! I waged a war with the squirrels and the ants to get some strawberries for us. We actually got a bunch this year and I’m hoping the plants will survive to be used next year. They are protected in the garage.

We got one zucchini! I brought it up with us when we went up to visit my parents and we had it sautĂ©ed with other veggies. Sadly, the plant didn’t survive much after this.  It was not happy in a pot.

Gardening Goals and What I Learned:

Next year we need to get the raised bed set. Now that we know how much work it will be, we’ll set aside a gardening weekend early. We’re thinking of putting raised planter boxes by the garage with berries in them. Perhaps the ants will not get them this year after all.

What I learned was that consistent watering needs to be a priority. Also, learning what is up with my tomatoes to stop end blossom rot would be good. I can’t stop it, it seems, but am hoping that when they are in an actual bed with tomato cages they will be less prone to it.

I am not good with cucumbers either. The only one I got this year was bitter and inedible. Blech.

Canning Goals: 

Try a pomegranate or wine jelly this winter. Put aside a few full weekends for canning. Prep everything one day and can the next.

Learning: Smaller goals? Make sure I have the time to properly deal with my produce.

I hope you enjoyed this review. It’s a good feeling to have these things prepared to use in the winter time.

 

Sewing and Gardening Update
Crafty · Gardening

Sewing and Gardening Update

LSieh2 Comments

You’ll have to excuse the abundance of Fancy pictures this week. We will have had her for a year on the 17th and since we don’t know her birthday, we have settled for celebrating her on her adoption day. She’s going to get a little spoiled this week. Well, a little more spoiled than she already is. 🙂

I have some great recipes to try for treats and I need to repair her little jacket before winter. Once it starts hitting temps in the 30’s she won’t go outside without a sweater on. Her fur is too short and she gets cold very easily. I’ll make sure to post the treat recipes and her review. 🙂

I realized I hadn’t posted a garden update in a while. The lettuce and zucchini didn’t make it. I got one zucchini from the plant and then gave up. The lettuce got spiders and is apparently more temperamental than I thought.

Most of my other stuff is still growing. I have a ton of jalapeno and they are certainly living up to the massive name in terms of width. I am thinking about maybe canning some salsa on Sunday and making sure to use some of them.

I have one tiny poblano pepper. I had some starts earlier in the summer, but something happened and they didn’t really grow.

My strawberries have some blossoms on them still, which surprises me. I am hoping to be able to winterize them and keep them for next year. I’m going to try to keep them in planters, but get some longer ones or an actual strawberry planter.

There are also a few red peppers still growing. This one has a spot, but I think the rest of it is okay.

My herbs are mostly still going. I’m going to start pulling them and drying them soon. I don’t have a good spot to try to keep them growing inside in the winter. We keep the windows covered during the day and our kitchen window is a bit too small.

In sewing news, I swear the Rainbow Snowball quilt is cursed. The backing fabric is washed and looks lovely, but there is not enough of it to cover the back and I don’t have anything that matches. I am planning to go to Joann’s with supervision and pick up some fleece. The Husband is normally pretty good about reigning me in when I veer off my fabric list. 🙂

I made a new dress last weekend, but hadn’t posted pictures yet, so here it is.

The fabric was a Christmas present from my Mom and I ended up with the perfect pink lace to accent it. Excuse any wrinkles, I wore it and didn’t have a chance to iron it. I plan to wear it today for my intake appointments because it’s cute and comfy.

I am now completely out of black dress zippers. I need to make dresses in other colors to use up my rainbow of zippers.

I also finished a scrap quilt, which will be headed off to a friend for her occupational therapy room probably at the end of the week. I had tried this pattern out and wasn’t happy with how it looked. It looks lovely, but not quite what I had in mind. So instead of continuing, I alternated with the fish fabric squares and made it work a different way.

It’s roughly a 38 inch square with 9.5 inch squares 4×4 across and down. It’s backed with the same fish print and a strip of blue batik, as I didn’t quite have enough fish.

Here’s close up of the squares:

It has no batting, so it should be light and easily washed. This is one more project off my written list, so I was excited.

Of course, I finished one quilt and started another scrap quilt…. This one is another rainbow quilt. It doesn’t yet have a home, but I’m sure it will find a good one.

I still need to make the red squares and have to check how many squares are needed. It will be bordered with a black fabric, I think, unless it turns out looking too dark. My points look nicer than usual because I ironed every piece! I know. Crazy talk. Don’t tell my mother or mother-in-law that they were right…

Next up for quilts, I plan to actually finish one of the wedding quilts that are in a box waiting to be put together. No more new quilts until at least one of those is done!

So there’s my update. I think I am in my groove about being productive with my down time after work. I washed a bunch of fabrics for clothing this weekend too, so I can start on those.

It feels good to be able to work through my scrap and UFO boxes. Maybe one day, there will only be one of each!

Wednesday’s post will be all about Fancy, so be sure to check it out for your dose of cuteness!

Canning and Gardening and Crafts, Oh My!
Canning and Preserving · Crafty · Gardening

Canning and Gardening and Crafts, Oh My!

LSiehLeave a comment

We had a lovely weekend. We had friends over on Sunday for crafting and video games and it was lots of fun. They helped us cook and we used the grill two days in a row!

Fancy was in heaven with two other people to pet her, plus we got her the treat she likes the best from the dog bakery. She’s currently recovering with multiple naps.

My craft this weekend was canning. I made five jars of pickles. There were originally 6, but one popped in the pot. I have always been afraid of it, but it’s probably good it happened with pickles. The mess that exploding jam would cause makes me cringe just thinking about it.

I found out when I went to check the  pot and there was a floating jar. That’s not a good thing to see when canning. The bottom just popped right out with a pretty clean cut. All the pickles stayed right in the jar too, so it wasn’t too bad to clean up. There wasn’t  good way to take a picture of it while it was still hot, but the picture up top is the circle of glass from the bottom.

Here are the intact pickles:

My friend had the brilliant idea to cut the cucumbers into chips after I found out I didn’t have enough wide- mouthed jars. Sometimes my prep skills could be a little better, but I thought I had more and was trying to avoid having to smuggle more jars past the Husband. Apparently I still haven’t canned enough for him. 🙂

I have a few more pickled veggies to add to my list, but not during this week. We are way too busy! I need to outdo my Mom’s pickle trays though, now that it’s become a thing.

My craft ladies discussed the differences between pickle and relish trays for about 45 minutes after they heard the story. My Mom was so proud when I told her. 🙂 This year for our parties, we’ll have homemade pickles!

On the crafty front, I cut a bunch of tea wallets over the last few days. I pulled from the red, brown, and purple scraps this time. I got in a groove and found myself with a huge pile of tea wallets needing to be made.

I worked on the purple ones first this time.

Here are the insides. The blue one at the top right has planets on the back and on the inside!

The garden is growing pretty well. We have three zucchini on the plant and a whole bunch of tomatoes coming in. The green pepper plant has two peppers on it. I couldn’t get a good picture of the “massive” jalapeños. There are three of them starting, but they are so far not living up to their name.

I did have a problem with blossom end rot on three of my big tomatoes. We’ve had a few days with a lot of rain and I probably need to add some more special fertilizer. I had the same problem with them last year and the internet said it was probably due to inconsistent watering. I was really terrible about watering enough last year.

The lettuce will be a wash this year. It’s completely covered in spiders and is starting to go brown. It’s quite sad. I have successfully grown baby lettuces before, so I think in the future I’ll stick to that.

I brought home my personal clipboards from work to collage, as I wanted to make sure I could tell them apart from the work ones. I’m going to just do the backs, so that there is still a smooth surface to write on. It will also let me go through some of my art supplies, as I need to have a bit more of it in the office right now.

Have a good night!

Craftiness and Garden Update
Crafty · Gardening

Craftiness and Garden Update

LSiehLeave a comment

How did it get to be Monday again? It seems like it was just Tuesday and now I need a weekend to recover from the weekend. We had friends over for a Driveway Movie Night, where we projected “Moana” on the garage door and watched it from lawn chairs in the driveway. Fancy got to see a dog friend again and did really well when the other dog was in the house. We were happy with that, as she can be territorial.

It’s pouring rain and thundering this morning; the perfect kind of day to stay home and do nothing. I don’t have that luxury, sadly, but do have French Onion soup in the crockpot for later which will be comforting.

Fancy had the right idea this morning. She hid under the bed and refused to come out. I was making chocolate ice cream, so bribed myself with that, otherwise, I would have been under there with her.

I was pretty crafty last week. Having to be in the basement with Fancy helped me get some more fabric cut up and organized. I had to start a new box for purple fat quarters, as I kept finding more of them. I also almost completely cleaned out a box with random fabric and crafty things in it. I also made 12 new tea wallets for Twinflower Fancies, or Hawthorne and Vine, a flower shop where they are also currently being sold.

When I sew these, I organize them in color groups based on what color thread they will be sewn with. I chain sew them as well. It doesn’t make sense to do them one at a time, as I would have to switch thread colors constantly. Normally, I wait until I have three or more in each color before I start sewing them up. I tried to expand my color range this time. I know I tend to stick to colors and patterns that I like by accident, but need to remember that it may not appeal to others as well.

Here are the green ones:

These three buttons were my favorites, I think, from the whole stack.

Here are the two black ones:

And the blue ones:

The octopus one might have to be my work tea wallet. I just love it and don’t know if I can give it up, despite already having a Red Riding Hood one in my purse. It’s just too cute.

It ws fun to go through the fabrics and remember what they were from as I was sewing them. This batch had a lot of familiar prints.

The owls are from a baby quilt for my cousin’s little girl. The dark green and vine print one is from a purse that I had tried to hand sew when I first started out. It was not a good idea and I finally got up the nerve to just rip it and reuse the fabric.

The geranium one and the holiday recipe one are both made from scraps of aprons that have been made for my Mom. When I bought the geranium fabric, the lady at the cutting table asked if I could adopt her too, she was jealous. 🙂

The gold treble clefs are from pillows I finally made the Husband this year after buying the fabric when we were dating. The blue and white waves with the boat is from one of the first skirts that I made.

All the other fabrics are from the stash. It’s nice to think if those special fabrics being used for something else too. That’s why I love scrap quilts so much too, there are a lot of memories in each of them.

Now for the gardening update:

I keep accidentally almost killing my lettuces. Plus, there are spiders living in them. Gross, hairy spiders, who have made a home in the lettuces themselves and in the pots. The Husband is going to have to cut them when, or if, they survive. I am not having spiders crawl on me. I think I’ll stick to farmer’s market lettuce next year. Any tips would be appreciated.

We have been getting some strawberries before the squirrel does!

These were all from yesterday and I found another one today. There are still a bunch of green ones on the plants too.

My peppers are looking good. The Mammoth Jalapeño has a pepper started. We’ll see how big it gets and if it lives up to its name. 🙂

The tomatoes all have some started. This one is the Roma, I believe and it had the most on it. I need to get some more stakes.

Here is the cucumber. This sucker is huge! It has a lot of flowers, but no starts yet. It keeps trying to escape into the yard.

My herbs are doing alright. The basil doesn’t look good. There has been a beetle that keeps eating it and it got very leggy and scraggly looking. It has yellow bottom leaves too, which I’m sure isn’t good. The oregano seems to have bolted. It keeps sending up flowers. I’m going to prune them off and see if I can get more out of it. Everything else seems to be growing well.

This week I have a few late nights, but most of my other days have a little more flex in them than usual. The weeks that my biweekly clients all come can get a little crazy, but it evens out with a few slower days occasionally. I’m hoping to get the fabric washed for the Rainbow Quilt and get it ties this weekend. Our friends are coming over this weekend for another sewing/video game day, so I can get some sewing done then too.

I also have a goal of canning three recipes, blackberry cinnamon tequila jam, nectarine orange marmalade, and dill pickles. I have some time tomorrow and a few other times this week.

I’m considering starting a “Simple Sunday” post which would be a quote or two, either funny or inspiring. I found my quote book from a while ago and was sad that the quotes I liked were just sitting in a book and not getting shared. It would be a good way to find out other quotes too, so I think that will start this Sunday.

Have a great Monday!

Monthly Review
Crafty · Gardening · Monthly Review

Monthly Review

LSiehLeave a comment

I’m embarrassed about how much I didn’t get done this month… I had a lot of goals and got some of them done, but not as much as I would like. Knowing I was going to write this post did motivate me to get a few things done right under the wire. In fact, I waited to post until I had posted some flowers on Etsy, so I could cross off one more goal. 🙂

The garden was a big accomplishment too. It wasn’t actually written down as a goal, but should have been. It is going well so far. I have blooms on a few strawberry plants and my zucchini plant got bigger while I was at work yesterday. The Husband is helping me water the plants after he gets home from work, so they are staying nice. Fancy hasn’t shown any interest in digging in the containers, so that’s good.

I did make a few new recipes this week, but not really enough to write a full post, so I thought I would just combine them with the review. This week we had taco salad and mac and cheese with butternut squash and homemade sun-dried tomatoes for old recipes.

Here are the two new recipes I used:

1- Mushroom Pork Loin from the Taste of Home Slow Cooker Cookbook. Section: Pork, Lamb, and Seafood

Modifications: I was only making one pork loin, so I only used one can of cream of mushroom soup and about 2 cups of broth. I used a pre-seasoned Italian pork loin, so didn’t add much additional seasoning. I also added onions and chopped mushrooms to the bottom of the crockpot to make sure it was full enough and for additional flavor. The Husband had it over noodles and said it was good, but a little salty.

2- Asian Cucumber Salad from Food Network Magazine, June 2015, V. 8, N.5. 

Modifications: I think I accidentally got a Fresno pepper instead of a red jalepeno. It was hotter than I expected, but was still delicious. My in-laws enjoyed it as well. We had beef franks with sautéed mushrooms and onions and a side of peaches as well. I will be making this again. 

Food wise, I did alright with my goals. I used 2 new recipes each week, I think, if not more, and we did do some more meal planning. I was a little bit better at taking pictures of new meals, but have to remember to take pictures of the other meals too. Plating needs to be worked on too, since you eat first with your eyes.

I didn’t even start on sorting my recipes, but have been remembering to put the cookbooks away after meal planning. Sometimes it seems like the tables sprout piles of books when I’m not looking.

I used 13 of my old recipes, 7 new cookbooks or recipes, and 4 repeat cookbooks. I think my totals are shrinking. Maybe I need to throw another party to bump them up again. 🙂

Hits for the month were the dog treat recipes, the roasted garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, and the shrimp albondigas soup.

Misses were a pork chop dinner that was too dry, and the rosemary flank steak, which had no flavor.

The Italian Turkey/Chicken meatballs were sort of in the midway point. They were good, but needed extra seasoning. I would still make them again, just bump up the seasoning a lot.

My craft goals didn’t go so well. I did iron the Rainbow Snowball quilt, but still haven’t washed the backing or finished it yet. I also didn’t finish anything from the UFO bin. The basement is still a disaster. The area around my sewing area is slightly less of a disaster, but that’s it.

I just listed 3 of my fabric flowers on Etsy (http://Etsy.com/shop/twinflowerfancies) and finally managed to take pictures of them. I promoted the listing as well, which is something I always forget to do. They are a great hand sewing project, so I plan to make more.

I did finish my inspirational chair pillow for my office and managed to remember to take a picture of the candle jar I made.

The pillow is definitely helping me not sit cross legged all day, which hurts my back, but it does tend to fall on me when I get up.

I did have one vending event which I made a small profit at this month and remembered to take pictures of the table. I used one of the close up pictures for my Etsy cover picture and made sure to get my business cards in it.

I found myself doing things that weren’t on my list instead of focussing on things I had wanted to do, such as making these fabric trays for vending and the ones for my office. I do need some more storage options for my office and it was fun to make them, but it wasn’t exactly what I needed or had planned to do. The small ones work perfectly for pencils and my smaller fidget toys.

Another highlight for the month was getting to take Fancy to the lake. She did so well and she seemed to really enjoy herself. It was a relaxing weekend, for sure.

Food goals for the next month:

*Meal Planning: use more of what we have, spices, pantry foods, etc.-Ongoing

*2-3 new recipes per week.

*Make good lunches. Use my lunches to try vegetarian recipes.

*Sort recipe binder and loose recipes.-Ongoing

*Find a good biscuit recipe for Fancy. We go through biscuits quickly.

Craft goals for the month:

*Finish Rainbow Snowball quilt so it can go to its new home.

*Make a container for Legos at work.

*List at least one new item per week on Etsy.

*Sew one item of clothing.

*Make a new purse. I shredded my current music purse bottom yesterday while running through the kitchen on my way to work.

*Organize the basement.

Garden goals:

*Don’t kill anything!

I’m going to write these goals in my project book too, so I can have another reminder without having to go back to this post. Hopefully remembering how it feels to not achieve many of them will help me stay motivated. Feel free to check in on them throughout the month. I’m sure the extra push will be helpful.

Now I’m off to take a certain puppers for a walk, if I can get her to move out of the sunny spot in the yard. She had a big morning with lots of barking and chasing of the squirrel that lives in the yard. Hopefully your day is as happy as hers!

 

Crafty · Gardening

Garden Thoughts and Sewing Update

LSiehLeave a comment

It finally feels like it might be turning into spring for real around here and I’m starting to think about gardening. I meant to start from seeds this year, but as usual, time kind of got away from me and I wasn’t able to do so.

Last year, we had just decided to buy our house, so I ended up using a container gardening system. It worked pretty well, we had a ton of jalapeno peppers, a fair amount of tomatoes, and fresh herbs. Two years ago, I grew tomatoes and basil on an apartment balcony and got enough to make Caprese salad for a party. This year, I’m hoping to beat both of those years.

We are planning out a raised bed using cinder blocks. We’ve got a space about 5 feet by 16 feet marked out right now and know how many cinder blocks we will need. We’re planning on digging down a bit of the dirt, so we have enough space for the plants to grow. I’m excited for the garden, but not necessarily for the digging part. The spot is along our side fence and we’ll leave enough room to walk around it to weed. It gets mostly all sun, with some shade in the afternoon. I used this website to get some ideas for garden beds.

https://www.weedemandreap.com/12-raised-garden-beds/

So far our list is probably pretty ambitious. I’ve grown or attempted to grow most of these before, so hopefully the garden will be good. I’ve also got some friends who are excellent gardeners, as is my Mom, so I should have enough support if it all goes horribly wrong. 🙂

We’re trying to grow the things we most commonly eat. It doesn’t make sense to grow things like pumpkins or beans, as the Husband doesn’t eat them, so it would just be me. We are growing zucchini though, because I can shred them into soups and things and the Husband will eat it that way.

Our list:

Cucumbers, lettuce, onions, hot peppers, bell peppers, garlic, carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes.

I go through canned tomatoes like water sometimes, so if we can grow some to can as well, it would be a very good thing. I am expecting to buy some canning tomatoes still, but we can try to at least get a good start.

These are some of the cherry tomatoes I grew last year. I had a really cool variety called Indigo Rose, the bigger ones, which start out black and gradually turn red. They seemed to have a richer flavor than regular cherry tomatoes.

Herbs on the list:

Basil, Thai Basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and chocolate mint. I’m sure there are some more that I will see and immediately want to grow, but these will be a good start.

The herbs may be grown around the edges in pots, depending on how much room we have. The chocolate mint will be put in a pot and kept very controlled. The Husband says I shouldn’t grow mint, but I have Christmas present plans for it…

I also have this cookbook called Cooking From the Gourmet’s Garden that is herb based and I’m excited to grow my own herbs to use in the recipes. They all look so fancy and intimidating!

Two things that concern me are the skunk that seems to come around about once a month and the squirrels that are constantly around.

Last year, one of the squirrels kept eating my tomatoes halfway and leaving them by the door for me to find. What a jerk! He stopped when I started sprinkling cayenne pepper over all my tomatoes with great glee. I like to imagine his imagine his reaction at the first spiced tomato that he bit into.

As for the skunk, some friends use a dog safe deterrent, so I think we’ll try that and see how it works. I haven’t smelled the skunk in a while, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still around, or won’t be attracted to the food.

We are planning to start composting again. We did for a while, but it was too difficult in the apartment, so the bin got retired to my in laws’ house. This year we are planning to get a compost tumbler to make it easier on both of us. Hopefully, this will get our trash down. We’re already doing pretty good with this, most of our trash gets recycled, but it will be nice to do it again. And as a plus, we’ll be making more food for the garden.

I’ve been exploring natural pest control options lately too. Since we have Fancy, we want to make sure that everything we use is pet safe, especially as she has been wanting to be outside more. We’re hoping she doesn’t decide the garden is her new digging spot, so we’ve got some fencing options lined up already. I’m planning on companion planting to encourage good growth and using marigolds around the edges to stop some of the bugs. What other methods are out there for natural pest control?

Those are all our plans for the garden. Hopefully we can get things done in the next couple of weekends and can get started soon!

A small sewing update: I did get the Rainbow Snowball quilt ironed today, but the backing flannel needs to be washed before I can use it. It is very red and may run, so I need to find my other similarly colored fabrics and do a big load. I also got my sewing machine set up downstairs again and unpacked a sewing crate to add to my shelves. No pictures, as is all in the basement, and there is no good lighting down there. It felt good to get it a little more organized.