Late Season Gardening: Beautiful Bountiful Containers

A commenter asked me about starting tomatoes in a container this late in the season.

Since we share similar interests, I thought I'd share my answer with you as well.

To get a tomato producing if you plant it now, you will have to pick an "early" type of tomato, and water the first three days with hydrogen peroxide to speed sprouting. You will still be able to get a good harvest, and if you fertilize weekly with vermicompost tea, and bi-weekly with organic fish emulsion, milk, Epsom salts, and randomly stick spent match heads around the root system, you will get a plentiful harvest.

As long as the tomato has 5 gallons of soil, it will be fine and produce well. I use 10-15 gallon planters, and plant a ring of herbs around mine.

I have frilled purple oregano, onions, and basil, planted alternately in a circle around each of my potted tomatoes. I am also starting flowering garlic chives for height and visual interest so the planters will be highly decorative as well as useful, and thus, not offensive to the neighbor's potentially delicate aesthetic sensibilities.

On the other hand, if you aren't particularly set on tomatoes, there are many other food plants that thrive in containers and produce very quickly, as well as the cooler-weather plants that it is already time to plant in time for fall production before the frost such as Brussels sprouts, lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, and cauliflower to name a few.

Among the many plants that can be grown in containers successfully, there are beets, peppers herbs of all sorts, potatoes, tomatoes, bunching onions (the tall ones), radishes, lettuce, rhubarb, celery, dwarf fruit trees, chard, zucchini, squash, corn, any vining fruit or vegetable, beans, peas, cucumbers, greens, gourds, turnips, lettuces, strawberries, and blueberries.

Pretty much anything can be grown in a container if the soil area is large enough for the roots of the plant. That said, however, most plants can be planted twice as close to each other as the seed packet recommends for higher yields. Frequent natural fertilization and reliable watering practices can decrease the area needed even further, depending on the plant type.

Most herbs, short-rooted root vegetables, and vines with smaller (1lb or less) produce can be plated high in hanging containers, and simply trail their fruit downwards in a beautiful cascade of greenery, flowers and food. Some strawberries also trail quite nicely.

If you wish to hang a plant that has up to 3lb fruit, use a larger container, strong hooks, sturdy hanging material, and hang it just below shoulder-level, under smaller hanging plants to add visual interest. Bulky hanging plants should be part of a full living arrangement instead of stand-alone to avoid them looking clunky and unwieldy.

On hanging tomatoes; Cherry or smaller-sized tomatoes can do exceedingly well hanging upside-down as well to conserve even more space. A few tips; Mulch the top of the tomato's soil, or plant herbs at the top of the container to reduce evaporation and the need for constant watering. Be sure to hang tomatoes out of a breezeway, as they can spin in a wind, and too much spinning leads to a broken plant. Larger tomato varieties don't produce as well when hanging inverted, as the weight can easily become too much for the plant, which may sense it's difficulty and slow flowering, ripening, and potentially decrease your overall harvest.

A bonus: container gardens can be brought indoors when it begins to cool off in order to extend the harvest throughout the winter if desired.

There are a lot of great books out there on container gardening for food, and growing in cramped quarters. Visit Amazon.com and search for "Square Foot Gardening", "Container Gardening", and even "Worms Eat My Garbage". Be sure to also check the recommendations of similar books below the description to find precisely what you are looking for.

Happy Harvests!

Tibetan Ricepaper Minefield

So we've found a place, and it's both a little more and a little less than what we expected. It's perfect in size, location, and price, perfect in amenities, and even has great neighbors.

A very exclusive place, you must know someone there to be able to even view, much less rent a unit.

The bad part is that it doesn't come with any appliances, so I have to provide my own stove, oven, air conditioner, and fridge. Not that it is much of a problem though, since I have a toaster oven, a small chest freezer, fans, and a dehumidifier. Later today I am heading out to buy another used small freezer and mini-fridge from someone who advertised it online. I also have a propane-powered steel camping cookstove that I can use if I can't manage to find a different stove before we move in.

Yesterday, we completely ran out of boxes, so the packing came to a screetching halt. Everything half-packed and partially sorted, walking through the house was like trying to navigate a Tibetan ricepaper minefield.

But we have more boxes now, so the work begins anew. We'll need new boxes shortly, as I'm sure we don't have enough at this time, but for now, we have some supplies to work with.

Autmn Gardening

It's that time again, time to plant your cold-weather crops for the fall season and start thinking about bringing in the planters from outside in the hopes of an all-year crop, or at least extending the harvest.

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Outdoors, plant your greens leafy vegetables again, and don't forget your quick-growing root crops like radishes. If protected from frosts with a floating row cover or other such thermal happiness, they can be convinced to produce throughout the winter.

We're seeding winter wheatberries in our yard this fall to see if we can produce a crop over the winter season, or at least keep a little green in the area. It will be worth a try, and if it doesn't work as well as we'd like, at least the soil will reap some pleasant benefits from the planting. *smile*

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All containers can be brought in, and if placed in a sunny window or supplemented with a timed grow-light (if in a shady spot), can grow and produce fresh food happily well into planting season next spring. Just do yourself a favor, and make sure your planters all have saucers under them, or someone may just end up watering the floor too. Those saucers really are important!

If you don't have room to bring it all inside, that's okay!

Most plants, grow and produce really well in micro-hydroponics, which take up a lot less room than planters, and require about the same amount of work.

Some plants, like tomatoes, root really easily if a cutting is simply dropped in a cup of water for about a week. They'll root even faster if you use willow water, which is full of natural rooting hormones. If you want to save your tomatoes indoors this winter, but don't have room for the containers, or if they're firmly in the ground, and still happily producing, just snip off a limb or three and set them to root. In about a week, you will have a good root system developing, and you can plant them inside however you wish, for a year-round harvest of deliciousity!

We'll be building a microponics system inside sometime in the next few weeks. Plans are to forgo the usual route of chemical fertilizers commonly used in hydro systems, and try out a few methods of natural fertilization, but with the same type of system. We'll see how it works out. The project would be underway now, except that we are so broke that we have to wait for a gift card I earned online to come in so we can buy the supplies. That's the only reason we're waiting, as I'm raring to get started. I'll be sure to post photos and instructions for building your own as soon as we get it done.

Building Community

There was a concert and a playgroup at The Radish last week, and both were a lot of fun. Nora & Gnoll were even better than I remembered them, and I tried to take video, but, alas, I have children who just HAD to come up to me and chat while I was filming, so that didn't work out quite as I had planned.

The new garden beds are coming along quite nicely, and we're scheduled to deliver more used coffee grounds to the urban gardening project on Friday, when we will likely be able to finish and plant the newest bed and finish weeding the urban garden patch. The Radish could really use some clean, rock-free soil, so if you have some you want rid of, please let me know. If you can't deliver it to the garden, I bet I could find a way to get it picked up if you're in Springfield. *smile*

Other than that, things are going well on the home front, our personal garden is growing rather nicely, albeit slowly, and I should soon have some free time to spend on getting a proposal written up for buying the property for the educational farm and community center we want to create.

Houseless Home-Mates & More

These last couple of weeks have been a doosey to say the least.

A friend of mine became homeless and is now sleeping on our living room floor with her husband while they await his next paycheck so they can move into an apartment of their own, and it's been a lot of fun staying up late at night after he gets off of work chatting, telling stories, and playing games, but it has cut my productivity down to nill.

Ladybug's birthday party went well, and we all had a lot of fun, even if the invitations to our homeschool groups didn't go through for some odd reason. Of course, this means that there are a LOT of party bags left over, but we'll be taking them to the free homeschool clothes, toys, & food exchange this weekend and they will all find nice new homes there, while we will hopefully find some new-to-them clothes and shoes for the girls.

The garden is growing well, and the cuttings we've taken are rooting nicely. As usual around this time of year, we are at a loss for planters, and have need of many more than we currently own. We've trimmed back some of the trees lining the parking area so that we can plant something there, and already begun beautifying the neighborhood with flowering edible plants. I'm sure the neighbors won't mind.

We still haven't gotten an answer from the landlord as to whether we can garden the back lot, but we decided we didn't need permission to put up a small retractable clothesline, so we went on ahead, and that's helping to save us a lot of money on at least drying the laundry, since my mother still refuses to give up our washing machine.

If we don't get an answer on the gardening thing by next week, we're going to set up a load of planters back there and garden that way. Nobody has ever said no to a container garden, only to digging up their precious (yet poorly-tended) grass. At least there are edibles in the yard. *grin*

One of the local coffee shops has agreed to save their used coffee grounds for us if we provide the container, so the pickle buckets will soon be on parade yet again, and our wait for garden soil, both for our own garden, and The Radish's many projects, will soon be over, or at least significantly reduced. Today, I deliver their first empty pickle bucket.

The Radish's community garden is coming along nicely, and we've donated a few plants over there, as well as continued to contribute to their compost heap with our un-wormable compostables.

I've taken lots and lots of photos of pretty much everything, but as the battery on the camera is now dead, and with me not knowing the charger's location, showing them off is kind of on hold for now.

The house continues to pull into shape, and we've decided that we need a lot of shelving all over the walls of the house to be able to have enough storage space. This place doesn't have nearly enough closets to store the things we need. Looks like it was made for college students, with three small closets, and only enough kitchen cabinets to store a couple of pots, some spices, random boxed foods, and a set of dishes. We really miss our old house.

There have been some pleasant dumpster scores as of late as well. Not that we've been out hunting, really, but when a shelving unit looms up out of the trash as you drive by, you just have to go pick it up, no matter if you have no place to put it back at the house. *chuckle* Of course, shelving is one of those things that not having space for isn't a problem, what with the average shelving unit itself being able to provide at least twice the space it takes up.

We've been requested to teach a class on sushi preparation, and two people want to come over and have me either create or upkeep their dreadlocks for them.

Now, I know where the time goes, but why the heck can't I somehow barter time from those that have extra lying around that they're not using?

Crowded? Nah

When Faith and her family dropped off my kids after a great day of fun at Silver Dollar City in celebration of Z-man's birthday (Happy Unbirthday Z!!!) the other day, we did what we usually do and stood around for a few minutes to share a quick rundown of the day and say our goodnights.

As they were getting ready to head home, however, the sirens went off.

Tornado sirens, that is.

In my family, we usually check the Doppler radar on the computer when we hear a siren, to check and see if the storm is anywhere near us when we take shelter, or slightly before (if there is no active t-storm activity outside, we'll check before huddling in our safe room.).

In Faith's family, they hear the sirens , grab the kitties and emergency kits, and head for their safe-room with their trusty weather radios to ride out the warning.

So out of respect for their family, we grabbed some folding chairs, a sheet for holding in front of the toilet in case someone had to potty with us all in there, a blanket, some pillows for the kids to sit on in the bathtub, our wind-up weather radio, and a couple of oil lanterns, before we all crammed into our bathroom.

I sat on the closed toilet, using the sink as a desk to check the weather, Keeb, Faith and her DH sat in folding chairs against the wall across from the bathtub, and the kids hung out in the tub, tickling, giggling, and generally making a happy nuisance of themselves. It was cozy, but not too tight, and we all would have been rather comfortable, but for Keeb's tendency to smoke in the bathroom. See, Faith's allergic to smoke, and the lingering chemicals in the air, as well as the smell, got to her, and she started to have an allergic reaction. I hope that convinced Keebler to not smoke in the bathroom anymore, as that room really holds in the scents, and old, stale smoke isn't an odor I want permeating any of the rooms in our home.

The kids had a blast, which is to be expected, and embraced during a tornado warning. Hiding from the storm should be something fun, with special storm-only games, songs, and the like, in order to make the hiding experience less frightening. We didn't get to do any of our regular silliness because most of our things are still packed away, but we did get to do a fun little meteorology lesson, and it was still a pretty good time.

A Sinking Feeling

The above photo is what greeted up in our new kitchen when we moved into our new house.

Gross, huh?

That's what we thought too, so we snapped a photo to show to the landlord as proof, and got to work.

45 minutes of hard labor with my favorite cheap & natural cleaning products* later, we had the image below.
Yep, that's right, there was so much grime on the sink, we couldn't see that the enamel had worn off the bottoms of the basins! *gag*

So we snapped another shot, and told the landlord we just plain needed a new sink. He said that he'd be happy to install whatever sink we managed to get, so a-hunting we did go.

With no written promise of reimbursement, however, and our tighter-than-tight budget, there weren't many places we could look. Freecycle(tm) to the rescue!

Within hours of my wanted post to our local group, a friend of mine messaged me to let me know he had just purchased a sink from a yard sale, meeting our size requirements, in order to get the faucets and stuff off of it for his home. He didn't need the sink itself, and we could have it.

*the crowd goes wild with cheering*

Even better, the sink is steel, so I can finally polish a sink again, after 4 years of being deprived of my precious shiny sink**!

Now to call the landlord and schedule the installation. *grin*

I may not have the best landlord in the world, but my friends and community are a true blessing!



*baking soda, vinegar, heavy-duty scrub sponge.

**Google "Flylady" for more information on the shiny sink obsession.

She Just Keeps Going, & Going...

Yep, that'd be me, the energizer mover. Today was a beautiful day for moving, and despite the stresses of hard work and a rushed schedule, nobody got really crabby. *grin* By the end of it all, we had pumpkins, Daleks, and kittens in coffee cups aplenty, and the rest of us were about to pass out from exhaustion as well.

Our family is still eating on the spaghetti from yesterday's moving party, and desperately trying to find new and innovative ways to make it different for each meal. It's a good thing we have our spices and sauces moved over now. Did you know that seafood sauce tastes pretty good on spaghetti? Neither did I! Experimentation is our friend. *chuckle*

Thanks to the gracious and generous help of dedicated friends, we are almost completely into our new place! We have an appointment to meet with the landlord tomorrow to review the move-in list, a few more things to retrieve from both his and my mother's homes, and I may be picking up a slew of tomato seedlings sometime in the morning as well.

After all that is done, I get to help one of my friends finish up her moving process. It's a shame we ended up moving at about the same time, as I really wanted to help her out more, but I'm really glad I at least get to help a little. *smile*

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggitey Jig!

After a long time searching, and long time waiting, we received the call today that our application has been accepted for our new home, and we can begin moving in tomorrow!

It's a good thing too, as the 15th is the last possible day we can have anything of ours in my mother's garage. *chuckle*

As you may have heard me promise, tomorrow will be a moving party! If you know us well enough to have our phone number, then you're invited. Starting at 2pm, we'll have treats, snacks, goodies, beverages, and some gas money for anyone who wishes to attend and help us ferry stuff from my mother's house to our new abode.

If you've ever wanted to meet all these other people are I'm always talking about, or just wanted to attend a party or have a good meal at my place, come on over and join the fun.

We're finally on our way home!

Just like Mom Used To Make

These past few years, I've lived in the Ozarks, only in the geographical sense. Weather-wise, we may as well have been in Texas. The heat, the dry, the regular, unchanging temperatures, and near constant predictable weather was a bore. A dull, unexciting, drag, as it were. *yawn*

But this year is different. This year, we have our old weather back. Unpredictable, can't-pack-up-the-fleece-until-July Ozarkian weather. And really, I couldn't be happier. *grin* In the last two weeks, we have had snow, temps in the upper 80's, sleet, hail, a tornado or two, flash flooding, hurricane-force winds, warm rain, fog, and full sun.

The varied, colorful and exciting weather I grew up with is back, and I'm reveling in the need to carry our coats when the family goes out on a summer-like day 'just in case'. The emergency supplies are all set up in our tornado 'safe room', and they'll stay there until they will likely not be needed anymore, sometime in late may.

Some may see it as a hassle, and as a gardener, I feel the pain of all those who try to start their plants a bit early for a bigger harvest, only to realize that even into April, the ground may not be thawed, and there's still the chance of a killing frost. I know all about packing more stuff than would be necessary in any other climate into any camping trip, and my family is well aware of the fact that sunscreen and natural bug repellent can never really be packed away.

As we say around these parts; "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes, it'll change". *chuckle* So here's to all of the Ozarkians out there, who can't quite grasp the concept of 'out of season' clothes, and love every minute of our crazy weather.

To those who may not understand, just think of a memory from your childhood. Hiding from a tornado in the basement with the family is to a Springfield native, what hot cocoa and marshmallows is to a kid from Maine. It's a comfort, a warm feeling of belonging, a cherished opportunity to share a part of your youth with your children.

It just feels like home.

Smart Strips: As Seen on Oprah

Miftik saw a new product on Oprah, and shared her "green" discovery with us. Smart Strips are power strips that turn on and off all of the devices using the strip for energy supply when you turn on one main device. Simply plug a control device into a specific spot of the power strip. Then you plug in the peripherals in the other plugs. When you turn on and off the control device, such as a computer, the extras are turned on and off as well.

I went to their site to check the product out, as I'd never heard of it before, and $40 for a power strip isn't my cup of tea. And while the refurbished ones are a little less than $30, there are none available on the site at this time.

You can save even more energy (and money) with a regular surge protecting power strip than you can with a Smart Strip, however. They do have a great marketing strategy, because some people are just too lazy to flip a switch at the end of the day after shutting down their computers, so I can see a use for it for those folks, but it is not a product for the radically frugal or eco-conscious.

How can you save more energy than using these expensive devices, you may ask? Computers, Televisions, and many other electronics suck 40% of their full operational power, even when turned off. The "control" device is the DVR, Computer or other device that you plug into the master plug on the Smart Strip, which allows the main machine to continue to pull it's "powered off" standby-mode electricity. When the power demand raises in the master plug (caused by turning on the device), it turns on the rest of the strip, allowing power to the other things plugged into it, and thus turning them on automatically. It does turn off all power to the extras, as far as I can tell by the website, so it will save a bit of electricity if your peripherals are also always-on-standby-type machines.

Even the lowest cost surge protecting power strips can be turned off with a button and shut off all power to everything plugged into the strip. This stops not only your peripherals from sucking power as the Smart Strips do, but also stops your computer from doing it as well, saving you a good $1 or more per month, per computer, even in low power cost areas. Add to that the fact that a power strip that can do what I mentioned is about $4 at the local hardware store, and you will save a good chunk of change immediately.

Method: shut down computer, flip the button on the strip (with your foot if it's on the floor). We do this with the constant-on-standby kitchen appliances too, with a power strip on the counter. It feels really good to be able to prevent most an entire room from drawing electricity when you aren't using it.

Miftik thinks the green revolution is likely to fail, and with hundreds of products like the not-so-Smart Strips being toted as the greenest option and advertised on popular shows like Oprah, it doesn't look good for the average joe to learn how to do it right.

(UPDATE 5/6/08 : I recently discovered that the Smart Strips have a protection policy. Products plugged into the strip are insured from electrical surge damage for up to $30,000, which is nice, but insurance of this type is rather to be expected from a power strip of the Smart Strip's price range.)



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Snow "Ice Cream"

Remember how I said the other day that it had snowed and we had saved some in the freezer to make snow "ice cream" with later?

Yep, today was the day. With everyone feeling almost all better, we dragged the snow out of the freezer and had a go of it.

My usual variety of this is plain olde vanilla, created with some granulated sugar, a little milk, snow, and a dash of cheap vanilla extract, just like my mother used to make. It's grainy, liquidy, and not really all that great, except as a fun little novelty in the winter.

This year, we decided to try something different.

Radically different.

I added some dye-free, all natural, no-sugar-added blueberry syrup to the snow and mashed & fluffed it together until it was all about the same color. Not quite ice cream and more like a snow cone, this was by far, the best snow-based concoction I've yet to come up with.

Easy and tasty, just how we like it.

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Just Start

Our dreams are all we've got no matter who we are, and I'm dead serious about making ours come true. So serious that I've listed our dreams on websites, told literally hundreds of people, and worked my tush off towards what we really want.

I've told you of our dream of creating a working self-sustaining mini farm and community educational center for green living in the middle of the city, and about wanting to own and live in an RV. The hows, whys, logistics, and benefits of living our dreams have been explained multiple times in the history of my sharing here with you, so I won't go into it all again now.

But I've gone and done it again, forever running my mouth off towards fulfilling our dreams.

QuickBooks is having a contest called Just Start for small businesspeople or those who want to be. All you have to do is let them know what you would do to create or further your own business. The prize is $40,000 cash, and $10,000 in goods and services to help you on your way. You can enter via video or letter, but things being as they are, I don't have the time to make and edit a video, so mine was submitted in writing.

Since living in an RV isn't exactly what most would consider a business dream, and my plans for how we would do it and how it would further the family business aren't easily explained in 250 words or less, I instead shared with them my dream of running an inner city eco-educational facility and miniature Certified Naturally Grown (organic) farm.

The contest is partially based on popularity and votes, so I would be much obliged if you could take an extra moment out of your day to take a look at my entry and rate our dream and business plan. If you like it, please tell your friends. I can use all the help I can get.

The widget with the link is giant and green, and living on the left sidebar. It may take a few seconds to load our business dream once you click the link, even on high speed, as the page is entirely flash.

Everyone is welcome to join the contest and declare their goals, and all participants automatically get a free copy of some helpful business software.

Feel free to also check out our wishes and dreams by following the text link in the left sidebar. They are directly underneath the big green widget.

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Burnidedy Badness

Yep, the baklava burned right nice it did. The first try in the new oven was a lovely golden brown, and a tad more than caramelized. *sigh* Two batches down the tubes. That's what we get for trusting the new oven to be as bad at baking as the old one. That'll larn us, right? *grin* At least somebody on Freecycle(tm) will get to enjoy them. That and my friend Faith. But I'm sure she doesn't want two whole batches. *chuckle* Needless to say, more baklava is in the works here in the next couple of days.

Ladybug's party was a huge success, even if we didn't manage to make the white wizard hat cookies I had purchased the supplies for. Everyone had a lot of fun, and I was asked to bring out the paints, which of course intriuged any number of passers-by into staring, gawking, and begging to get painted themselves, despite the fact that there were other face painters there for the event. Of course I am the best in my style in the four state area, but who is counting, right? Well I couldn't let all those poor people not get painted or get done up with the soap paints *shudder* that were being used at the other booth, so I just kept painting. I didn't have a book or anything with me, as I hadn't come there to paint, just to host the birthday party, so every child got their heart's desire instead of being able to pick from a book of designs. Parents kept asking me how much it would cost them, and since I wasn't there for the express purpose of painting at Snowfest, I told them that I was not the official Snowfest painter, I was just painting at the birthday party, but that they could just give me a tip or some such if they wanted to, and I would happily paint their children as long as the party goers weren't wanting decorated. *grin* Yeah, so now we have a little bit of gas money, and that was a pleasant surprise.

Not so pleasant surprise; The parking garage has started to charge $4 parking for during Snowfest. Yeah, so next year, Ladybug's birthday will be on a non-event day when the parking is free. Nothing like accidentally charging admission for a birthday party! *grr*

On the other hand, we came up with a neat new thing to get folks to stop in at the farm stand. Bunnies! Baby bunnies! *grin* We had so many people stopping to pet the baby bunnies and their mommy on Saturday! Not a single paying customer, but we did get some great word of mouth, and gave away some promotional materials, and that's always great.

So Much to Do

I am yet again too busy for words, and yet I have still taken on another new project. *wry smile* There is always a great reason to do just one more little thing, and that is what was presented to me a few days ago. Things are pretty much hush-hush at the moment while we get some primary things worked out, but I will likely be dropping hints for the next month or so. *smile* I promise it is worth waiting for.

In other news, some of our good friends moved closer to us and we went swimming over at their house this evening. It was great fun and their new place is really nice. They plan to come visit us for a bit tomorrow, so that'll be fun too.

More to do before the morrow, as we not only have the FreeBee downtown, but we also have our first day of our farm stand, and we have nearly nothing ready for that. Tomorrow shall be a day of baking, photography, and Kinkos. *chuckle*

I seem to be having trouble remembering to blog every day, but I promise to try to remember better. I honestly don't... *ponder* Okay, I do know where my mind has been, it has been asleep from these seemingly incessant (but exciting and necessary) nocturnal planning meeting that regularly run from 7pm to 11am and similar.

If you are looking for sun tea, authentic baklava, gooey butter cake, and naturally grown green onions and radishes, stop on by the little farm stand at the back of the Brown Derby Parking lot just north of MSU. We'll have more produce for sale as the season rolls on.

I'll keep you posted.

No Way

It is already WAY too late for me to be up the day before an event, and I have a million things to do before noon tomorrow.

Since I have completely neglected to mention it here, Tomorrow is the first of 4 seasonal urban farm tour days here at Buckets of Yum. From noon to 6pm, I will be welcoming everyone who wishes to visit our little CNG farmlette here in the center of town. We'll be feeding the pond fish around 2pm, so be sure to come join us at any time between noon and six. *smile*

We will have the farm stand open, and products will be available for purchase during the event.

Heck, if you want to, you can learn all about Certified Naturally Grown by inspecting our farmlette! How fun. If we forget to offer, just ask. *smile*

Like I was saying, there is no time to blog tonight, I need sleep for the busy day tomorrow. :)

For more info on our open house/tour, visit our page on LocalHarvest.org

Flesh Eating Aphids!

I have aphids!

No, not the plants, me!

And the kids!

WE have aphids.

Somehow these aphids are attracted to the people in my household, and every day or so, we find a tiny winged creature walking leisurely along our arm. Yellow or green, that is still an aphid.

Which brings us to the questions;

Why are the aphids attracted to us?
Do we smell like tomatoes?
Are these a new, deadly species of exotic flesh-eating aphids?

The world may never know...

A Finished List ... Almost

Our to-do lists are often more than a full page long every single week.

We made our list on Friday last week as usual, and glory of glories, all but four teeny tiny things are done! Woohoo!

Now we get to move on to the less important goodies like repairing the swimming pool, leveling the pond (again), planting new seeds, viewing local art displays, and visiting the library!

Yaaay!

Life is good.

Did I mention Yaaaaay!?!

*grin*

No, Really!

I've been really busy with the yarden and Gather, and reading the new Gregor book to the family, and I simply haven't had any time left for you.

Can you ever forgive me for my negligence?

Two Gallons of Hose Water and a Flash Flood Later

Serious flash flooding this afternoon.

Thankfully we were able to use it to our advantage.

I had just planted some new seedlings and plant babies in their permanent homes, and we were getting ready to water everything when the clouds rolled in.

We had already washed the pond liner and patched the holes in it with hot glue. As we heard the first thunder, we dropped it into it's permanent position, and started to fill it with the hose, but then the downpour began, so we turned of the hose, set up the water catchment pool temporarily, and let the rain do all the work. Now it is a full pond just waiting for a warm day to make final the set up of the catchment pool and clean storm debris out and we can put the fish where they belong.

It was really fun being able to rely on nature to save us the money we would have spent watering the plantlings and filling it with hose water, and we have the added bonus of not having any chlorine in it as well. *chuckle*

I just love serendipity. *grin*