Some does and don'ts

After my first year of trying to grow vegetables I discovered the those hanging things are no good for growing tomatoes or strawberries.  Both did not do well at all.  I planted the strawberries in the ground so hopefully I will get some next summer off of those and I know that planting the tomato plants along the front of my house, which faces the south, produces the best crop for those.

I think that I will plant lots of tomatoes next year and make sauce to freeze like I did this past summer. I froze them in individual containers so that I could defrost as needed.  I even did up a second batch with tomatoes my neighbour gave me from next door and they are also gone so I know that it will get used.

The strawberries didn't produce much this year but since it was the first year I didn't really expect too much but I bought lots of boxes and some rhubarb from a roadside vegetable stand and froze them so I have lots left to use over the cold winter months.

I'm not ashamed to admit it...

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have a girl-on-girl crush.  I absolutely love Jennifer Lawrence. ♥  I first saw her in the Hunger Games and since then have seen her in numerous talk shows and I'm in love with her.. sorry Ron.

Her sense of humor is off the chart.  She is so self-effacing and does not appear to be effected by her fame.  I would love to eventually see her in American Hustle because it looks like the part that plays off her natural personality.  And I read the Hunger Games books so I can't wait to see the second movie.

Big Brother

I think that Big Brother may now be watching me.. eeekkk!!  Yesterday I saw an ad on Facebook advertising a book on how to create a 4 foot x 4 foot garden to grow your own food for pennies efficiently.  And since I have actually been growing a few things such as Kale, Cucumber, Tomatoes and Strawberries I thought that this would be a great item to get for a measly $7.00 so I ordered it.  But it was only after I ordered the E-Book that I found out that this is a survivalist group that also tells you how to buy guns and how to make your own ammunition.. double eeekkk!!  Now I'm paranoid that the government will have me in their sights.  I promise that I'm a pacifist.  

My new greenhouse

The interior of our new pop-up greenhouse.

Hanging Strawberries.

Hanging tomatoes, they are not doing well but the ones in the greenhouse seem to be thriving.

Kale,  mmmm.

Various veggies, this was taken a couple of weeks ago, they are a lot bigger now.

So far so good with our new pop-up greenhouse.  I will soon be able to pick some of the vegetables like the kale and the lettuce which are doing great.  Some of the herbs are doing good as well but some leave a little to be desired.. lol.

Never say never.. about your dog.

I remember always saying that I never wanted a yappy dog.  The first dog we got was a miniature poodle and she was yappy but we got her at 7 years old and thought that it was the way she was raised before we got her...  Then along came Tinka, who we got as a tiny puppy and guess what, she's a yappy little girl as well.. so I guess it wasn't the previous owner's fault after all..

MMM... who said that food that is good for you can't taste good?

Nice full-bodied chili, salad and butternut squash.. mmmm. All from scratch.

Spring.. where art thou?

This is supposed to be spring.. well, I guess it is because my flowers are starting to bloom but brrr.. it's cold today.  Yesterday was a busy day for me, I decided I had better get my huge amount of  seeds started for when we get our hothouse and raised gardens started.  We got a seed starter kit that holds 72 of those little seed starter pods, etc. so I spent the afternoon planting seeds into them and finally got them done.  The hothouse was fairly cheap so I don't know if it will last past the season (it's a pop-up type and we are going to put it up soon).  I would love to do away with my  regular flower beds, especially the heart shaped one that is goes down into the ditch because it's so hard to weed it especially with my bad back.  But we'll see if I can talk Ron into it later.


These are my first flowers...

Home is All in Your Mind

They say that you can never go home again.  But I wonder if home ever was, or, if it's all in your mind.  I can't seem to get a clear overview of back then.  I remember snippets of my childhood... making mud pies on old pieces of broken dishes and decorating them with wild flowers. In my mind's eye they were the most beautiful things created.  And I guess they were because they combined natures flawless beauty with a child's imagination.  But, looking back, I wonder how my mother saw me that day as I came into the house covered in mud and smeared with dandelion sap?  My poor mother, I can't even imagine having 13 children to raise [14 if you count our brother Ralph who died as an infant].   The endless washing, cooking, cleaning she must have done.

I also recall climbing out of bed as a very young girl before anyone else and going to the garden my mother and father planted to watch the sun rise.  I can see clearly the dew on the leaves of the plants and a light mist that kissed the ground.  I don't know what possessed me to rise so early being that I wasn't a morning person.  It was the first and last time that I had done that.

I have wanted to plant a vegetable garden for a long time, perhaps to recapture that early morning stroll through dew kissed plants.  Who knows?

Either Feast or Famine

Excuse me for my erratic posting.. but that's just me.. gotta be why you love me, right??

Before Christmas we had two lines of credit, a car payment and a low interest loan for the renovations we did on the house a while back.  I don't work because of my back and so Ron went back to work for a few years to pay off some of our bills.  We got news that our bank, where we have the lowest interest rate, was raising our line of credit quite substantially.. so we paid off our low interest loan [which was still higher than our line of credit], our other line of credit at the other bank that wasn't a lot higher but still was higher, and we also decided last week to pay off the car... so now we have only one payment to make and we can take all the money we were stretching out over the other payments and put it all on the one payment.  Also, if something happens and we are short on money we can make a minimum payment for a month or so on just one bill so that would be a cushion to fall back one.. We figure we will be debt free in a couple of years and will trade in our car at that time.  It really feels like we have things more under control now.  *whew*.. [hope that's not one of those ''famous last words'' type of things.]

MMMMmmm Coffee...

In addition to the new kobo ereader we also invested in a Keurig coffee maker.  Our old one was the kind that had a thermos instead of a glass coffee pot but we ended up wasting so much coffee.  I would get the coffee maker ready the night before and Ron would turn it on when he got up so he could have a cup or two before he left for work.  The only problem is that by the time I got up [I'm a late to bed and late to get up kind of girl], the coffee would be getting cool even in the thermos so that I had to nuke it in the microwave to get it hot enough to drink.  Then I would end up throwing half the pot of coffee away because it was never as good when it was reheated.

We also got a reusable little filter that we used to fill with our own coffee instead of getting the little pods. So the coffee is always very hot and fresh as we need it, no pouring half a pot of coffee down the drain and no wasteful coffee pods to dispose of.. So a win-win proposition.

Oh KOBO I ♥ you so...

We purchased a kobo ereader the other day and I have to say that it's so much better than buying paper books.  Our house is overflowing with the paper kind and we are so out of room for them all.  Our new kobo will hold up to 1,000 books with the possibility of holding up to 30,000 with a memory card.  The one we got is a kobo touch.. really nice and that's saving a LOT of trees.. :)  Later on we may get a second one so that we both can use one at the same time but presently Ron is reading a paper back and I'm using the kobo.

I just finished reading Bones are Forever by Kathy Reichs who wrote the Bones series on TV.  It's a good book but not great.  I guess it's all a matter of taste.  I had meant to use my 90% off coupon to get it but didn't know that I had to put the coupon code in earlier in the checkout process and ended up having to pay full price.  I later found out that there are only a certain set of books at 90% off and got a John Lutz book called Night Kills and there was also a 50% off for new members and I used it to get a book by Heather Gudenkauf called One Breath Away.  I'm reading the last book in the list and I just LOVE it, very well written and although the author is speaking from a number of different voices from the different characters it's still easy to follow.

We got a cover for it as well so that I can take it in my purse without worrying that it will get scratched. ♥

Everywhere at once

I must say that being me can be very confusing at times.  My mind bounces around like a ping-pong ball.  I was on again, off again a couple of times with the wheat elimination, and at the present time I'm back on again with the wheat.  It seems like I can't settle on one thing and stick with it.. but hopefully I'll stick with my counted cross stitching that I'm doing.. The top one shows the start of the picture and the bottom one shows where I am at the present time with it..