Practical Makes

Practical projects and crafts

Fall is here

November 3, 2024 /

Well, after about two months of getting to see what bread feels like being baked in an oven Fall has actually arrived like someone flipped a switch. It’s dark, it’s currently rainy (for the first time in 2 months!!), many of the leaves have fallen (except for the darn buckthorn…) and all the cranes and geese are booking it north as fast as they can go, like someone who overslept on a day with an important meeting or test.

It’s like the world outside is out of alignment and isn’t sure what to do about it. Like a piece that isn’t seated right or someone with a or a gear that’s shifted. It being November 3 here in the world of human things and not knowing what sort of world I will be experiencing this time next week really, really, really doesn’t help.

But I’m here and we are here and the kids are here and this is the world we have to chose how to live in.

So, November, food preservation is done, we’re getting the yard cleaned up for winter a bit at a time. There were Pumpkin Hikes and pumpkin carving and adventures with the kids. The boys did their Christmas shopping (yes, it’s early, but with the world being what it is, that’s how we need to do it). Our tiniest girl got to toddle around the yard after her brothers and help find candy and treasures during the Great Pumpkin Hunt this year. She has worn her costume every day since. 🙂

I have books to read and projects to do. We’re into making Christmas presents now. I’ve down colorwork knitted cowls for my parents and our tiny girl. And I’ve made embroidered bookmarks for the boys and my parents. That’s been fun. I knit a lot so it’s fun doing a new craft. And I can re-combine or invent the patterns and then embroider them while I’m taking breaks or watching something or listening to something. And fabric bookmarks will be durable so I think they’ll be great!

The other new one I’m hoping to do is needle felting wool and making tiny fuzzy cats for the kids’ Christmas stockings. I have about two months yet. So we’ll see if I pull it off!

Next is food gifts. I’m going to make flavored honey, and hopefully honey roasted nuts. I’d like to try flavored vinegar, but we’ll see… And maybe I’ll give making vanilla extract a try. I’ll probably make chocolates too, and I’ve gotten a lot better at candies! I made honey popcorn balls that were great. I’m hoping to make caramels and peanut brittle and some other things with honey…fingers crossed!

Other than Christmas crafts the other fun project is to make paper holiday decorations this year. The theory being, they’re fun to make and if I make new ones each year I can have fun doing it the way I want and they can’t get dusty and upset the arthritis. And paper can be recycled so it’s not a big environmental cost. I’m also planning to try dehydrating orange slices and making things like that.

Other than that the next couple of months are small adventures with the kids as the holidays get closer (driving to look at lights, going for a hike in the woods, watching holiday movies, going to the tree farm, etc). And keeping up with regular chores, and taking a break after the summer and doing small projects inside (and some outside) to make doing day to day stuff easier.

I guess that’s basically the plan all the way through winter.

And then spring will be time to tackle the yard and outside and get a proper garden set up and get the garden ready so we can have a good garden next year.

Hopefully all good plans.

Sunrise

September 29, 2024 /

This week is October! Late summer/early fall was pretty action packed with a month or two of food preservation packed into two weekends. Now it’s hard to decide what to prioritize and plan. It’s kind of like after you finish a really good or intense book/series and you can’t decide what to read next.

Some of the obvious choices are catching up on cleaning and picking up and regular-everyday-chores that got behind. Some are just taking a break to get things away from the edge-of-the-breaking-point physically. And some are making sure to do some of the fun things. October has pumpkin hikes and apple orchards and other good things. For us it will probably also have the taking the kids to do their Christmas shopping and it will have our Great Pumpkin scavenger hunt in the yard. (The Great Pumpkin needs to decide on small pumpkins or luminaries to mark the prizes this year…) Last year it snowed, this year we’ll probably all be in shorts at the rate the weather is currently going.

So for now it’s watching the sunrise and just thinking about what we want to do and when and how. The window up here faces south and so the sun comes up over the neighbor’s trees and slowly paints the tops of ours bright, bright gold on a good morning. It’s beautiful to watch. And it’s a good reminder that sometimes just being is fine too.

As long as the key stuff still gets done around the edges and before and after too. 🙂

So today, probably regular laundry and scrubbing and doing the kitchen. Hopefully fun bonus things like maybe chocolate chip cookies or putting up those shelves in the basement.

The kids get Sunday Morning Cartoons (a mix we make with a weekly line up because that’s a much better way to interact with media). This also means bagels and orange juice for breakfast, which is also something they love. And Sunday night is also Popcorn & Choose-Your-Own-Dinner (as long as it’s simple), which is nice for their parents and fun for them. Sometimes small traditions are as important as big traditions.

Preparing for fall

September 27, 2024 /

Well it’s fall now, it’s still hot, but it’s officially fall. So that’s something. And the leaves are falling and the sunlight is now angled as the tilt of the Earth tilt’s those of us up north away, so it looks like fall at least!

Fall means it’s time to work on projects that will be Christmas gifts. I’ve got the sewing project done for the smallest child (yay!) and I’m working on the holiday knitting projects now. Some for the kids (smallest child’s is done already!) and some for my parents as gifts. So probably 5 in all? But being colorwork cowls they are nice and relaxing to knit so they go fast. If I finish those the plan is flip mittens for the boys. Those will be complicated which is why I’m starting with cowls!

I’ve also got food gifts planned. I have to make sure I get the timing right on those though, since they’re new. The vanilla honey is the only one I’ve tested so far…

Plus the big projects, sofa upholstery, the last of the upstairs carpet replacement, cleaning up the garden, fixing the former landscaping around the tree stump…

Plus the inside projects from my husband, shelving, underbed drawers, etc.

With three kids, one of them tiny, if one of us is doing a project, the other of us is parenting, which is a challenge… Especially since we also want to have time and energy for fun things with the kids…

But hey, there are lots of happy things, and that is good.

September, Otherwise known as July

September 22, 2024 /

So the weather is hot, middle of summer hot, which is not the best. Usually this time of year is in the low 70s, which is comfortable for doing outside projects. Instead we have mid 80s and wildfire smoke aloft. And sometimes less aloft which is a problem… Parts of the sky turn white and orange and everything is hazy up high and near the ground. Even the moon was orange last night like something out of a Halloween story.

So I’m not contributing much to the outdoor projects at the moment. Wildfire smoke and RA aren’t a great combination.

I have a good start on my book stacks though! I re-read The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, plus The Zero Waste Life, The Year of Cozy and The Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home. Some of these, as is probably obvious are project books.

From The Year of Cozy I finally tried both the marshmallow recipe and the flavored honey recipe. Making marshmallows with honey is a success! Doing a full recipe is way too many, so I’ll be doing half recipes, but it worked, which is awesome. And while it was some effort, it wasn’t a problematic amount of effort, so that will be a ‘special occasion’ treat, but hey, I can make them!, and that’s huge. The flavored honey is a test run to see if I can make it as gifts. I’m letting it sit and absorb the flavor for a week or two before testing it. Hopefully it works!

Re-reading The Zero Waste Life was also interesting. It’s been a little while since I first read it, a year?, six months?, and it’s interesting to see what I’ve managed to improve on. Sometimes it feels like I’m not getting anywhere but comparing the suggestions to where I am now with my projects and systems I’m not doing too bad! Still a ways to go though. Some of the big ones are just stepping up the canning. If we get 200 lb of produce and it’s a year supply it’s realistically going in the freezer or in a canning jar in order to last that year. And if it’s in the freezer that probably means ziploc quart bags. And that means plastic that’s going to be disposed of. Yes, they can be washed a few times, but it doesn’t work well and they tear and even with the best efforts they end up in the trash. Plus it’s plastic, and wow does science seem to suggest plastic is the leaded gasoline of our generation in addition to the goal of not creating trash that hangs around for centuries.

Freezing in glass containers is on the table, but that means having enough containers. Doing say, a few quarts of chickpeas I cooked in quart jars to have ready for salads, is definitely reasonable. Doing 90 lb of blueberries in one weekend, less so. Not to mention it needs to be something that won’t turn into a rock or it will be very hard to get it back out of said container. But you can can them, and I found a post from someone from an Extension office saying a simple syrup with honey is valid for canning. So the plan is to do a trial batch next year. We’re going to need more shelves though. We have a nice set of shelves for canned goods, but not enough for a-year’s-supply-of-most-produce-for-a-family-of-5 number of shelves.

And The Spellshop is amazing. It’s happy and interesting and the circumstances mirror enough of my 2020/2021 experience it helps with a sort of background healing of some of that emotional trauma. Bad Things happened, we had a front row seat to them, and then we packed up everything we could and had a hard, terrifying trip and then we were back in my childhood home. It’s our home now, and I’ve always loved it and I love being here but what brought us here involves Emotionally Complex Memories… especially since the rest of the universe is of the opinion that None of That Happened (either 2020 or the first bit of 2021). And being without a functional body or immune system things didn’t Go Back to Normal for us in 2021/2022 so yeah… emotionally complex memories/thoughts.

The wildfire smoke is (hopefully!) headed another way next week and today, the official first day of fall, a big front should switch us from nearly 90 degrees back to barely 70 degrees but it should be. Walking outside has felt like standing in a bizarre oven this month, it feels wrong and horrible and terrifying. Hopefully we get a break for a bit.

I’m ready for fall, canning happened when the farms’ tomatoes finally, finally, finally came ripe. We now have shelves of whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, pickles, and pickled hot peppers. I think that’s my limit. Next year we’ll add applesauce and learn to pressure can vegetables and can fruit in light honey syrup. And can the jam instead of freezing the fruit (though maybe I’ll drag the frozen fruit out this winter and ‘catch up’).

Sweaters are also done! These are TinCanKnits Trek pattern but converted to be cardigans. The tiniest one will have buttons, when she’s a little older and less likely to taste test them. I have them waiting, they’re silver heart buttons. This was my first time steeking and it went great! I’m doing this every time now! I thought the kids would like cardigans they can thrown on when it’s cold out or they’re playing in the basement. Hopefully they like them!

Next up is the Christmas knitting! I’m hopefully going to make three cowls (Tincanknits Compass pattern) and two pairs of convertible gloves/mittens for the boys. My other Christmas gift crafts will (hopefully!) be embroidered bookmarks (hopefully 6 of these? boys, husband, parents, best friend…). And also my food-as-gifts experiments. Vanilla bean infused honey was amazing so that’s going to be one (parents) and spicy honey (husband) and rosemary honey (parents). Flavored vinegar is also a planned one, though I haven’t tried it yet. Spiced and sweet nuts and candy are also ideas (for husband and maybe parents, we’ll see what works for people?).

Oh and I also finished the softbook for the tiniest one for Christmas. At least the sewing is done. I’m going to embroider her name and ‘from mom’ on the back too.

I’m ready for fall and winter and holidays and consistent plans and schedules. It was a good and bad, hard and productive, and hard to predict summer. We did a lot of great things (a drive in movie for the boys and their dad! I got to go to an antique/thrift store and more than one book store!) and got lots of stuff done (the moldy trees are gone, house changes make things easier/cozier/less-RA-setting-off, we canned-all-the-things) and I got back things I haven’t managed for a few years (sewing, canning, growing-the-darn-tomatoes, a garden that’s mine). So all in all, good, but exhausting. Hopefully fall is good, restorative, and happy.

Fall leaves, Fall books

August 29, 2024 /

Fall is really trying to push it’s way into the end of summer this year. The weather was wet then dry, cold then hot then cold then hot. Outside it smells and feels like fall and every now and then a yellow cottonwood leaf falls, even though it still looks so green, if you look close you can see the leaves changing.

Unsurprisingly, the combination of bizarre weather and small children has not made gardening easy! Also, the mosquitos, so many mosquitos…. So the back garden was a failure (again) but the front garden is actually doing pretty great! We got peppers, tomatoes and herbs this year. Which is a huge step up! We would have gotten cucumbers if it wasn’t for the combined efforts of a very determined deer and some rabbits (sigh). So maybe there’s hope.

Overall, summer has been a success, peas, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, green beans and corn all got frozen. Peppers and tomatoes are up next, mostly (hopefully) going to be canned. And we need to freeze carrots and stash potatoes, garlic, onions and squash in the basement yet. And apples. With the RA, it has to be local apples, most of the ones at the store have coatings on them which is a minefield if I try to eat them. Apples will be made into sauce and pie fillings and (hopefully) canned. And I’m going to stuff a bunch in a fridge to enjoy as long as possible… So far we’ve done really well with what we’ve picked up and added to our projects! Hopefully next year we’ll be able to step it up even further and add more canning. Canning is harder to do but everything is easier to use if it doesn’t need to defrost. Also, canning jars don’t take anymore energy to stay preserved which is a plus for the energy efficiency goals. 🙂

With all of that the local food goals are going great! And with a side bonus, if we do it ourselves, there’s no cross contamination to set of the RA. Frozen grocery store green beans are a hazard… At least even if it’s more work it also tastes way better? So there’s that. At this point, the non-local things are cooking oil, grains, dried beans, fish and nuts. Plus some tropical produce (citrus, avocados, etc). The nuts and fish we are able to get directly for the most part but the others are hard to improve on. I need to see if I can get the RA to be ok with high oleic sunflower oil (regular is right out, but I’m hopefully maybe I can get the other kind to work) since that would help. Nuts and fish can’t all be local, but I can get those seasonally directly from the places that catch/growth them. Citrus I can improve at least some of that by (hopefully!) catching the citrus truck that drives up here in winter this year. Dried beans and grains is harder. Not much I can do about that at the moment…

We also got a lot of projects for the house done this summer, old carpet got replaced in two rooms, the trees that were setting off the RA came down and we started changing the landscaping over to a garden I can use (herbs, vegetables and fruit near the house and native flowers that don’t need to be as hands on) and are easier to manage with the RA. The basement paneling walls got replaced and we’ve made a lot of progress cleaning and sorting down there, which also helps the RA. So hopefully we’re heading into fall and school with a house that works well for us and that will make the RA easier to manage.

We have two more rooms of carpet to go, and several areas of basement to finish sorting and setting up better, and some doors to change, and lots of shelves to build (books! project places!) but so far so good. 🙂

My other plan for fall is books! (and projects!) I made 3 stacks this time. The garden stack, the inside projects stack and the fun to read stack!

First up is the garden, the goal is to get things set up this fall so next spring everything is ready to go. The big areas are near the house. Where should we put the veggies and small fruit? I have my garden in the front, it’s warm and sunny and there’s space and we have the new space right behind the house. So far I’m leaning towards adding veggies and berry fruit to my front garden, it’s close, I can get out there easily and I can see it all the time, all things that increase the chances of success! We just need to defend it better to prevent a repeat of the rabbit + deer + cucumber snacks problem. The other plan is to put native flowers in the areas we cleared out in the front. The ones I have now have had so many butterflies and other pollinators it’s easy to see why it’s important. If we clear up the spaces that are empty hopefully I can just fill that in with native coneflowers, rudbeckia, asters, prairie clover, false sunflowers and so on next spring.

The back we need to finish cleaning up around where the tree came out and on the north side of the house. If we get it cleared we can have more play space for the kids and keep stuff away from the air intake vents, which I really need to keep the RA from being a problem. So that will be some additional grass, some probably gravel or mulch or low ground cover. We’ll see.

Yeah, it’s adding grass space, but the front is going to be no-mow in the long term, and similar goals around the fruit trees in the back so it will even out.

Eventually I want to do more native perennials around the pond but if we get the back garden cleared for planting it in spring, the front set up with beds and the landscaping area cleared and the area around the house and the former tree cleared and covered with something, that’s a big list already.

In 5 years though! It will (hopefully!) be an orchard under-planted with low growing native flowers/grasses, a woodland edge with diverse native trees and under-story bushes/plants, a front yard with a big flower, vegetable and berry gardens and no mow sedge in the center and the back will be a grassy area surrounded by native flowers and grasses next to the existing pond and the big back garden for big messy stuff that don’t need much interaction like squash, garlic, onions, etc. Fingers crossed!

So this fall one stack of books is for ideas on how best to do all that.

Stack 2 is inside projects! A lot of these are crafts for Christmas gifts. I want to knit the boys each a pair of convertible mittens/gloves and a scarf/cowl for the baby (now toddler!) and embroider some bookmarks as gifts for my parents. And then I want to actually try felting to make things for the kids (and cats) and make my own lotion. Plus some fun projects like seasonal fun things and continue my quest for a more environmentally friendly and manageable life, which also helps with the RA. Oh, and I want to crochet a wool afghan, since you know, I need more projects…

And last, but absolutely not least! Fun reading! The new Rachel Aaron comes out Oct 1 (Hell for Hire, standing in for Hell of a Witch here), the new Rebecca Thorne also comes out Oct 1 (Can’t Spell Treason without Tea standing in here) and fun favorites like The Spellshop, FFO: The Once King and Yuletide Gems just for some happy fun reading. And then Soonish and A Short History of Wisconsin which are also favorites to re-read but are interesting and fun. And finally You are Here and Winter Hours which is poetry (and poetry like prose) which are heavier reads, but good ones and nice to mix in. A bunch of things I want to read are coming out in spring so those will have to wait for a future book stack…

So that’s fall this year, lots of goals, hopefully a better fall with the RA this year, plus school and tiny people adventures and books and projects. Hopefully it will be a good one!

Summer Books and Flowers

July 18, 2024 /

It’s summer! I meant to write this at the start of summer, which didn’t happen, but it is at least still summer now so I think it still counts. The above books are my summer books (plus some extras I’ve added since I took the picture…).

The bottom ones are planning fun knitting; ideas for the kids and for small summer projects and planning for Christmas gifts. I’ve also got the Edible Landscaping book for helping to decide how I want to change the gardens near the house.

I think I’ve got a good start now! We’ve gotten most of the overgrown old plants (especially the ones wrecked in the April snowstorm) out and now it’s open with more of my coneflowers and space for herbs and vegetables and native flowers near the house. The next big one will be when they come to take out the trees by the house that are dying (climate change is a thing). This process started in January but there have been so many storms we’ve been bumped down the schedule for awhile, but tomorrow should be the day!

Then we’ll have open space near the house and more options for kitchen gardens up close. And I’ll be able to see the back garden from the house, which will make it easier to keep an eye on it…

I’m also hoping to read more sci-fi and fantasy books and poems. I’ve made progress adding fiction back into my reading. Weirdly, fiction is harder than non-fiction when overwhelming parenting stuff. It’s somehow easier to read it in bits and pieces. But life has improved enough that I’ve gotten through several new sci-fi books lately (John Scalzi, Gail Carriger, Rebecca Thorne, Travis Baldree). They’ve all been really fun and I hope to keep it up.

Plus poems and old favorite fantasy books and a climate change book…

And then I found some more, embroidery and quilling which is something I want to learn, more poems and a classic conservation book. And a nice re-read of a favorite history book.

And if I finish all of those, the local used book store had some more. 🙂

Summer is a nice time for reading. Though given all the rain from the thunderstorms plenty of bug spray is required…

Books, and a cozy winter

December 3, 2023 /

I decided to make a stack of books for this winter. Since winter means being at home these days I thought it would be fun to have a big stack to work my way through.

So far I’m making great progress!

I decided on a mix of non-fiction, fun books, old favorites, poems, entirely new ones, project ideas and serious things to think about. This way I can pick depending on what I feel like and by the time it’s spring I will have learned a lot, had fun and have cool new ideas.

Also having a happy stack to look at reminds me that there are happy and interesting and important things to learn about, which for the season of being home, helps. It’s like a bookstore that just happens to have all of my favorites right there in front. I love home and it’s great not to have to go anywhere. And hey, being safe is a major plus in my situation! But wow, I miss going places sometimes and seeing people and new things. So, awesome pile of books! And as the kids get bigger and I work harder pushing the RA into remission (and hopefully there are fewer things setting it off all the time, darn climate change) there can be winter hikes too.

Anyway, I’ve read a bunch of my books and thought it be fun to write down what I thought as I’ve gone through them.

Good Bones
This was a book of poems, mostly themed around being a parent with themes on nature and babies and things but from the perspective of the present world, not in a soft focus pretty way. It’s very good. The author puts a lot of the feelings of determination, fear, desperate love and frustration into words. It makes some of these experiences less lonely. It’s an awesome book of poems.

The Water Will Come & The Heat Will Kill You First
Yeah, this one. It was written in 2017. It’s terrifying but also has hope. The first chapter captures one of my greatest fears from my professional life, the interview on the plane in a later chapter covers one of the great frustrations of my professional life. (Why didn’t they push harder?!) It’s very good, and very important. I agree that this is what’s coming.

The second one was written this year, 2023. It’s terrifying and there’s a lot less hope. There’s a vibe, of “thankfully I’m aged and won’t be here to see this, at least I’ve had a good life” to me. That’s how it feels at least. This time I had to skip the first chapter after a couple of paragraphs. I read about that when it happened, and it’s one of my greatest personal fears. Not the exact circumstances, but having the rules change and not realizing and that putting my family and kids in danger and me not realizing or being able to save them. The rest is like The Water Will Come but with less hope, just the danger on the horizon, waiting. And oh wow is the lack of action so hard and angry making.

A City on Mars
I got this one because I like SMBC and Soonish was great. The book was great in terms of the science. The parts speaking to the community around space colonization were hard though. The same people who seem to inhabit that community based on those sections are the same reasons I’ve left a whole bunch of online communities in the last 5-ish years. Also, re-reading Soonish to try and forget the reminder of frustration and anger that provoked didn’t help either. Because Soonish was also written in 2017 and man, the last 5 years and especially the last 6-12 months have really shown how things can degrade fast. Especially after the books above. It’s hard to look at these and say, “Yes, those awesome future things will come and be cool for everyone!” Sigh.

Heartbreaker Series & With a Golden Sword
Dragons, magic, awesomeness. These are so fun to re-read again. This time in hard copy. Yay for these. 🙂

System Collapse
This was a great read while struggling with the sadness and frustration looking at potential future scenarios for personal and professional reasons. For me the Murderbot series has always been about seeing a character with a non-standard look at the world (popular words: non-neuro-typical) and seeing that character find acceptance as they are even as they struggle there is friendship, partnership and even casual relationships with their core relationships accepting them as they are, offering ways and ideas to interface with the world as they are but not to change them except helping when healing is needed.

Not a common thing in the usual day to day. Or in literature.

So being reminded that that can exist in the face of everything-else-that’s-going-on is good.

Also it’s a cool story about robots and space colonies and adventures and it picks up right after the last one and they all read like my absolute favorite sci-fi movies from the 80s, 90s and 00s.

So yay!

Devotions
I really like Mary Oliver. This is my other book of poems. While Good Bones was like finding a voice about that matches my feelings, Mary Oliver is like remembering to take a breath. Which also helps with everything-else-that’s-going-on. I’m reading through it a bit at a time. I have a number of her books of poems but this new compilation puts together poems from all through her life really well.

Yuletide Gems
It’s a romance, there are cats and libraries and books. Yep, it’s fun. I like historical romances sometimes, it’s like a fantasy novel that way since it’s in a different world than the one I live in. And books, cats and libraries are nice.

And those are my thoughts so far. More reading to go!

A different world

August 11, 2023 /

So….

The last update was in 2019, and now it’s 2023. Still summer though! I guess summer makes sense for putting in a new post. There are (usually) fewer things to keep track of and worry about. And late summer also tends to be a transition time.

And wow, have there been a lot of changes between 2019 and now. Some were already in progress, some were surprises (I’m looking at you, the MANY world changing events of 2020…), but it is definitely, completely, absolutely, a whole new world. And not one I would have been able to predict. And the changes are likely to keep right on rolling! So in order to have my own sense of that, and what I’m doing and where I’m going and what I plan to do with and about all of this, writing updates on my blog seems like one good thing to add back to my life.

Of course the world of the Internet has changed too. So, how to format my blog, how much to let it connect (or not) to the outside world is an open question. But for now, it’s here, and I’m here, and having a place to talk that is mine is nice.

My projects are pretty similar by theme, though a lot of the details have changed!

For one I’m now back in the Upper Midwest instead of the Mid-Atlantic which is a big change, for another given my health constraints and the choices the world at large has made, I am basically at home all the time now, with all the pros and cons that entails, and only see my family in terms of in person stuff. At least I love my family a lot and my home is a place I love and it’s surrounded by trees, so that helps.

Gardening

It’s been a tough summer for gardening! First we had a cold wet spring and now we have a hot and super dry summer. Lots of soaker hoses have been deployed as a results. There are some happy spots though.

In the front ‘kitchen garden’ our slicing and cherry tomatoes are doing great! So that’s a big improvement! Next year I’m going to run a row of basil down the front of that bed. The lettuce and radishes kind of worked and kind of didn’t. Mostly because of the weather, and the wildfire smoke, and so on…. I am going to do some fall planting there though. Probably radishes and some cold weather greens.

And in front of the ‘kitchen garden’ (which is 3 3’x5′ raised beds) things are doing pretty good too. I planted a rugosa rose there last year and it’s growing! Also my tiny baby coneflowers have bloomed some, so hopefully they keep expanding! My herbs, the sage, lavender and our original chives plant (carried all the way from Maryland in the car!) are all looking good.

Some of the existing landscaping plants are having a tough time with the weather. I’m hoping to replace the ones that don’t like the weather with some native flowers and grasses: asters, coneflowers, rudbeckia, prairie blazing star for flowers and some native grasses. That’s a next year plan though…

The other goal is to make some space for the cold frames in front of the porch. I’m hoping to use the moveable cold frames there this fall/winter and then if it works well build permanent ones next spring/summer. I have to move some landscaping plants and probably add some compost to plant this fall (the soil is rock hard with the current weather). I want to see how long I can keep things like parsley and mustard greens and cold weather lettuce and carrots going in there.

The other garden on the opposite side of the porch is my garden. It has my rocking chair and a table and my bird feeder and a bird bath. It has most of our herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage, lavender, mint, tarragon, catnip, etc) and some coneflowers, grasses, coreopsis and a rose bush that was a present from P and the kids. It’s surrounded by my northern cherry bushes (romeo, juliet and jubilee) and some older lilac bushes.

Eventually I want it to be full of herbs, and flowers and native plants that birds like so it’s a sanctuary kind of place, for me and the birds.

I’m planning to make the space in front of it into a second garden for the more well behaved heat loving vegetables, specifically peppers and hopefully some salad ingredients (colorful lettuce, cucumber vines, etc). That will make an arc with longer narrower raised beds without sides (layers of sticks and leaves topped with compost). This will all be behind the deer fence!

And then around that will be a wide border of native flowers and grasses, this time a pollinator mix, which I think will look really cool.

The other bit in the front is a landscaping spot that buckthorn tried to consume and the deer have also tried to eat. It’s really shaded so the plan is to fence it and then plant deer resistant shade plants (ferns, spring plants, some grasses) and let them get established, plus some smaller trees like hazelnuts and witch hazel.

To the side is the two big apple trees, the baby apple and hazel nuts and the giant logs from my old tree (it came down when I was a teenager but it was huge and so it’s sort of like a log based art piece). I want to plant hazel nuts, wild strawberries and some fun plants there to make it a fun spot to be.

The back landscaping garden by the patio I’m hoping to add more flowers and berries (strawberries, blueberries, currants, cranberries, blackberries).

The orchard needs a few peach trees yet and some pollinator plants but it’s off to a good start now that the deer can’t ‘prune’ the trees.

The way back garden for the big vegetables is all in place but my plans got derailed by the smoke and the weather. It’s still producing good vegetables if not as many as I hoped though! I want this one to be surrounded by flowers (native and annuals) and have all the bulk vegetables (squash, asparagus, green beans, potatoes, canning tomatoes, etc.).

Sewing

Sewing has happened a little! H has her Christmas stocking. And I have fabric to make the kids fun shirts and me a dress and Christmas presents for H (a soft book and a blanket). Just have to find the time.

I did get the patterns for the shirts cut out at least and I’m using a favorite dress pattern so I’m inching towards actual sewing…

I really want to sew clothes again. Buying clothes is even worse than it used to be and I’d rather sew my own.

Knitting

Since knitting can happen while other things are going on and even when I’m tired (as long as the arthritis doesn’t get my fingers!) there’s been a decent amount of knitting!

I’ve got W’s sweater for this year all done and I’ve got a bunch done on small P’s too.

After I finish those I want to make hats and mittens for my parents, P and the kids for Christmas.

There’s also a pattern for a wool blanket with holiday color work patterns I really want to knit but I think I have more than enough to keep me busy. Someday!

I should also knit myself more sweaters, this is the Upper Midwest, sweaters are needed!

Food Preservation

So food preservation is a long term hobby and one that can be a challenge with three tiny people, but an increasingly useful and important one these days!

I’ve got pecans I ordered from a pecan farm in the freezer. Canning jars are pretty great for freezing dry stuff like nuts! And I found a place that sells buckwheat flour here too. It turns out fresh is pretty nice when it comes to buckwheat flour. Maybe I can grow my own someday…

We’ve also frozen our years supply of blueberries! All 70 qts of them (would have been 72 but have to save a few to eat fresh… 😀 ).

Plus we got our 10 chickens from the farm north of us, probably should have gotten 15, but this year the chickens were small and last year they were huge. Next year we’ll get more, and maybe they’ll be huge and then I’ll have all the chicken I could ever want. 🙂

Next up from the bulk farm order is beef and then the pig. Doing our meat buying this way has been nice (and beats the grocery prices overall!). Also it’s kind of terrifying how much meat (flavor, texture, all the rest) has changed since childhood, just wow. Going to be exciting figuring out how to fit a year’s supply in the freezer as the kids get bigger, but I like this method.

Oh and we froze peas, need to remember to count how many and write it down.

Corn is in progress (buy some fresh corn, cook some corn, cut off and freeze what we don’t eat with dinner).

Tomatoes will hopefully be canning. Lots and lots of canning. Probably from the farm (different farm, this one to the west of us) because between the cold spring and the super dry summer my paste tomatoes are alive and have produced but 50 lb of canning tomatoes it is not. At least the slicers and some of the cherry tomatoes in front are at least making nice fresh eating tomatoes! So that’s something!

We’re also going to buy a 50 lb sack of onions and one of potatoes. We’ve done that the last two years and it’s awesome. Doesn’t last us to the next year on potatoes but it came really close on onions! Garlic is producing super nicely so I’m really hopefully we’ll have plenty of our own garlic. Some is getting run through the dehydrator (it’s mostly hardneck so only lasts so long) and some is getting replanted (got to adapt our own types 🙂 ). But there’s still a lot. Plus all the occasional missed ones that will come up next year. I think my onion production this year also falls under “fresh eating”. Sigh.

I’m also hoping to bulk buy winter squash and stick it in the basement too. This will be a first try. Hopefully it works nice! (didn’t even plant my squash seeds this year it was so dry…)

Other than that, going to need to buy basil to freeze pesto. There’s some basil out there, but yeah, not much better than the tomato situation. The weather has not been great.

Oh, and apples, need to make applesauce, and then probably can it? The apple tree(s) have lots of apples, and there are a bunch orchards here. So probably some of each. We have 3 trees, 2 older ones and a baby tree. The older trees are a bit shaded so production varies… And the baby is a baby tree so no apples yet.

Writing/Reading

I really want to write again. This is more of a wish than a likely thing I can do right now given the number of other goals! I am reading again though and that is something that makes me happy. Being back where I have access to my favorite library helps! It’s a mix of science fiction, non-fiction and essays and things.

I’ve found a lot of great new books and learned some fun things so far.

My most recent books have been reading Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi and the Muderbot series by Martha Wells. Hard to go wrong with excellent science fiction. 🙂

House Plans

And another example of things that are still on the list, house projects! We’ve made a lot of progress since moving, and this post-moving organizing has been faster and better than last time, which is a relief, but I’m still going to be glad when it’s done. Like last time, having a baby adds to the challenge, but being determined helps!

We’ve got most of the rooms set up now and the basement is almost all sorted out which is nice. Our next projects are setting up the little lean to greenhouse and making a shelf in the living room for books and movies (because all rooms should have shelves of books and fun things!).

It’s neat living in the house I grew up in. It’s layers of home, home from when I was small, home now with my family, it’s a good feeling.

Holiday Plans

The first holiday to work on right now is Halloween costumes. H will be a witch, W will be a ninja and P will be a Frankenstein monster. H has a little black dress and I’m making her a purple felt hat. W has a black sweatshirt and sweatpants and a purple silk scarf and I’m making him a bandoleer for ninja swords we can make out of tinfoil. P has a green PJ shirt and pants and bigger shorts and jacket to wear over them. And I’m making him a green hat with black ‘hair’ for his Frankenstein outfit.

We are going to knock on our neighbor’s door for trick-or-treat, plus do our Great Pumpkin scavenger hunt and visit their grandparents. Which is hopefully the right balance for Halloween.

Thanksgiving we’re going to have a week of family time. We’re going to cook a bunch of food on Wednesday, some for us and some to share. Then we’ll have Thanksgiving with my parents and then we’ll have our own Leftover Party on Friday with movies and board games and lots of food too. (And of course Die Hard 2 after the kids are asleep… 🙂 )

And I have plans for Christmas, this year’s goals are a trip to a Christmas tree farm (I’m going to find us a new one this year!) and a night time drive to look at the lights. And decorating together and lots of stories to read. The kids will make cookies with their grandparents (sometimes not being able to be around sugar and flour courtesy of the autoimmune things is really hard). And maybe we can make me safe cookies too. I’m hoping for making stollen I can have too, fingers crossed.

I have things to sew for Christmas for Helen, I want to make her quilt and soft book.

I like fall and winter holidays. There are lots of good ones to plan for.

There, that’s a list of fun things to work on and look forward to.

Time Flies

August 12, 2019 /

And it’s already the middle of August… July went somewhere? Well, July went by so fast it feels like it was only a couple days long, probably because there was a lot going on (as is often the case). But it was largely good and fun things. A lot of it was even things we haven’t done in a long time or things I’ve really wanted to do for a long time.

We went to the regional park and everyone got a ride on the carousel, we went to the Takoma Farmer’s Market for the first time in years, we even went to places that are ‘farther’ away be current definitions (which at the moment means the Ikea and the Lowes 30 minutes north of here…). None of them sound very big, but given how long it’s been since anything like that has been possible, those are a pretty big deal.

And there were fun things, the little guys got to see geese and a heron at the lake near one of the best parks, we went to the toy store west of here just for having a fun drive. We all got up early and walked to the ‘new’ (it’s been there for at least a year, but it’s new to us!) coffee shop. There have been a lot of good summer things.

There have also been projects, we had two weekends with over 40 lb of tomatoes each weekend that got turned into sauce and probably over 100 lb overall. We’ve gotten lots of squash, beans, hot peppers and bell peppers this year and fun tomatoes. We got lots of nice garlic, onions and potatoes too and even a measurable number of cucumbers from the garden. Oh, and the blackberries and raspberries have finally gotten going and they taste really good.

I’ve got a whole bunch of fun Christmas sewing done (everyone has homemade Christmas stockings this year!). Maybe I can do a few more things soon, like Halloween costumes and a few more Christmas decorations or gifts. I have pumpkin and astronaut costumes to make!

Knitting also has a lot of things that got done, the little guys have new hats, the smaller Patrick has a new sweater and soon there will be one for Will. After that, maybe Christmas gifts? I’ll have to come up with something fun.

And the majority of my Christmas shopping is done too. I like to do it early since then I can get them from a wide variety of places. I think the holidays will be fun this year!

And there have been a bunch of random house projects, we put up a new kitchen cabinet and shelves, moved things around in the living room, did more work on the landscaping, the grown up Patrick built the little guys a set of shelves/box for their stuffed animals, we finally got the exterior faucets fixed…just a whole bunch of random things. Hopefully before the weather gets properly cold this fall we can get some of the random electrical stuff done (maybe even an exterior outlet, I want to try holiday decorations…) and winterize some things and maybe paint the front door (I’m voting for a nice bright yellow).

I will also have a whole bunch of tulips and daffodil bulbs to plant for next spring and more fall veggies to plant too. And the updating on the playground at the park should be done soon (it’s going to be way bigger and really nice!) and the library/rec center combo building will reopen soon too. So there should be plenty to keep us busy for awhile…

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