Easter Weekend

Happy Easter to everyone! I hope it's been a day filled with family, good food and lots of good conversation and laughs. It's been a quiet week for me, again the weather was not cooperating, rainy, snow flurries and cold. But on the bright side, I did receive a couple more seed catalogs in the mail and I love going through them and trying to decide what to get. I keep telling myself that it won't be long now, April starts tomorrow and I have high hopes of better weather.

Yesterday I made a batch of cookies from a recipe that I saw in Southern Living Magazine, called "Loaded-Up Pretzel Cookies". They kind of start out as a sugar or shortbread cookie but then you add M&M's, broken pretzels and coconut. Since I loathe coconut, I substitued toffee bits. Boy did they turn out good.

For the holiday today, my niece and her husband invited us out to their house for Easter lunch. There was lot's of great food, the traditional ham, mac and cheese, pasta salad, green beans, baked beans, au gratin potatoes, fruit salad, chips, soft drinks, cupcakes.........I ate too much but it sure was good. Now it's time to sit back and be lazy the rest of today and watch my team in the NCAA Tournament game this afternoon...wooohooo!!

This is my great-nephew looking for Easter eggs, left by the Easter Bunny :-). I'm not showing the other, full face pictures of him because without permission from his parents I don't want to paste his picture all over the "blog world", but take my word for it, he is a cutie and he got the hang of looking for those eggs and shaking them to see if there was anything in them, pretty quick.

My niece gave everyone these beautiful tulips as Easter gifts. Aren't they gorgeous, I hope I can keep them alive. I seem to do better with "food" plants then flowering plants. Do you see that bright light that is surrounding the tulips? That is something we call SUNSHINE!!! This is the first Sunday in about a month that it hasn't rained almost all day. Although it did rain a little overnight and early this morning. But this afternoon the glorious sun came out, warmed things up a bit. It just makes me feel so much better.....and warmer.

This is my "beast" Lola, I just like to put her picture on here every so often because she tickles me. As you can see, she's thankful the sun is out also. Her favorite thing is to lay on the deck and bark at everyone that walks by the fence and since there are about 10 steps down the deck, it's also a cardio workout for her.

Happy Easter everyone!!!


Kathy

Frustration

Here we are again.....RAIN. I know in the long run rain is good. But this is the first year that I have looked forward to doing something in my yard, like a garden, and I feel frustrated that the weather is not cooperating. It rained a flood last Sunday, then turned cold all week so I really couldn't do anything in the yard. Yesterday was nice, but I had lots of laundry, errands, cleaning to catch up on after working all week, and now today it is raining again and a possibility of 1 to 2 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. I realize that in this part of the country you really can't plant much of anything until the end of April, beginning of May, but usually the temperature is about 25 degress warmer than what it has been. If we had normal temperatures I could at least get in the yard and get things ready but I'm just not prepared to work in the yard when it's 35 degrees, nope...nope...nope.

I've discussed my saving and reusing bread bags, plastic frozen food bags, etc. Now I have a large garbage bag full of them and I can't reuse them fast enough. I've been using them to pick up after my dog or to put some wet garbage in instead of throwing it in the house garbage can or even to use as extra freezer bags. But that's not enough, I'm still overrun with them.

I guess the only solution to that is to not buy so many products that come in plastic bags. That may be easier said than done. Of course one solution is to buy more fresh foods and to use my own cloth bags. You know, when I started this "quest" to live more sustainably I knew it wouldn't always be easy or convenient, but I didn't realize just how difficult and inconvenient it can sometimes be. It's so easy to fall back on old habits without even thinking. Just the other day I stopped at the store to get a couple of things and as I walked out of the store, I realized I had put two items in a plastic bag without even thinking about it. I had forgotten my reusable bag, but I could have put the two, small items in my coat pocket, but out of habit I threw them in a plastic bag and walked out.

You might not think of it as a struggle, but it is, to change the way you live your life when you've lived another way for so long. But I plan on staying the course because it is something that I believe in and the more I read and learn about being sustainable and self sufficient, the more I want to succeed. It's just not always going to be easy. But that's OK, I'm in it for the long haul.

Kathy

Ready To Go Shopping

Well, my new produce and grocery bags came over the weekend.

These are the organic cotton produce bags, two small, two medium and two large. I'm excited about these because, supposedly, when you get your produce home, you can get the bag damp and store your fruits and veggies in them and they will keep in the fridge longer. Kind of like those green bags advertised on TV.

Of course I will wash them first before I use them. They will probably be wrinkley since they're 100% cotton but that's fine.

I also ordered two burlap grocery bags.

They are fairly large and have a thin plastic (I think) lining which will be easy to wipe clean. And along with my other bags, they should hold quite a lot.

On the recycling front, I've still been increasing the amount I can put in my bin. I also discovered that the       brand of ham slices that I buy every once in a while, comes in a plastic container that can be recycled. I've    always saved the containers to use for storage, but I'm glad to know that when I'm done with them, they can be recycled. I've also been saving some jars...jelly jars, pizza sauce jars, etc. to use for storage. I really        would like to get away from using so much plastic.                                                                                     

                                                                                   

On the gardening front, very frustrating. It was really nice last Saturday, then rained lots and lots on Sunday.  Now it's cold with a windchill in the 20's and the forecast for the next 7 to 10 days is not much better, highs in the 30's and 40's and close to freezing at night along with several days of more rain and possibly sleet or snow flurries. Last year at this time it was in the 80's......argggghhhh. This is the first year I've been anxious to work in the yard and the weather is not cooperating....at all. We are actually about 20 degrees below     normal. It's Spring now so hopefully.....soon, it will feel like it.                                                                    

                                                                             

This is an example of what all this rain has been doing to parts of my yard. 

Kathy                                                                        

Bi-Polar Weather Goddess

I've had a bad week, nothing major, just incredibly tired. Go to bed tired and wake up just as tired. Now granted, on weekdays I don't usually get a full 8 hours of sleep, but 6 hours or so will usually suffice.

I can usally catch up on the weekend. But this week I have just felt drained. I couldn't even post anything, because I was dozing off as soon as I hit the couch every evening. I thought maybe my blood pressure had dropped too low, which has happened in the past, but it was fine. I wasn't coming down with any illness, no obvious extra physical exertion and no more than the usual stresses.

Of course we did change to Daylight Savings Time last Saturday, and people were telling me that was probably my problem. I'm not so sure, I've never noticed that I feel the time change either in spring or fall. Losing one hour of sleep might slightly affect me on that first morning, but after that, I really don't think so.

My diagnosis is that the bi-polar weather is causing my problems. In the summer it's hot and humid and dry, my favorite weather, then fall rolls around and the weather starts gradually cooling off, my second favorite season, then winter and it's expected the weather is cold and dreary, my least favorite season. But spring, spring makes me crazy. I'm so anxious for warm weather and the weather goddess just keeps teasing and teasing me. Last Saturday and Sunday was warm and sunny, absolutely delightful. Then during the week, it started cooling off and raining, again, off and on. Yesterday it was sunny and 70+ degrees and today it is doing a combination of rain, sleet and snow, all day and the temp is in the 30's. It's just driving me crazy.

I am tired of being cold. I am cold natured anyway and in the winter I am cold 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no matter where I'm at, home, work or outside. I am so ready to be warm again. Also, I'm so anxious to start planting my small garden but the weather will just not cooperate. If it's not cold then it's raining. My body needs some heat and humidity.

So to soothe myself I cooked and baked yesterday. Cooking, without being rushed, is soothing for me. I made homemade biscuits. I made biscuits before, always with mixed results. Some come out flat, or hard as a hockey puck, pale not golden, or not very tasty. I am proud to say that the recipe I used yesterday was it, they came out perfect, risen, fluffy and golden, and they tasted great. I was so pleased with myself. Of course I ate two of them, with jam, as soon as they came out of the oven. This morning I made homemade white gravy to put over my biscuits. Not the most healhful breakfast, but it sure was good on the cold, rainy Sunday.

I also believe that homemade food, even biscuits and gravy are better for you, in moderation as an occasional treat, than heavily processed and factory made biscuits and gravy. While trying to live sustainably, I try to use local products whenever I can. (local meaning not across the street, but from a farm or source within 100 miles or so) My buttermilk, butter and lard was from local sources. The flour from the grocery store, although there is a local sourse for the flour but I haven't tried that yet.

Here is hoping that I am rejuvenated this week. Spring starts Wednesday and I am hopeful the weather will eventurally turn in my favor, please.

Kathy

Tidying Up

It's been a busy weekend and I took advantage of the nice, warmer, weather to clean up the backyard. First I had to start by picking up the dog's "business" then I raked up all the leaves and seed pods that have wandered into the yard over the winter. Also, I cleaned up outside the back fence, the back of my yard faces the street behind me, and the leaves and sometimes trash winds up against the fence. I ended up with three and a half bags full of stuff.

Then I proceeded to get my pots and old flower boxes out so I could see exactly what I had to work with. All of them are in really good shape, just dirty. I'm leaving them out in the yard for the next couple of days since it is going to rain. I figure they'll get a good washing that way. I've decided that I won't buy any more containers for this year. I don't know if I can even grow anything so I don't want to over extend myself until I see how this year goes.

There is one more of the bigger, round containers but it is in the storage area behind the lawnmower. And after all that raking, I just didn't have the energy to drag all that out to get it. I'll get it out another day this week. I also have two smaller, clay pots that I plan on using, not sure for what yet.

Maybe I can keep them on the deck and plant some herbs in them, then I just have to walk out the kitchen door while I'm cooking! In a perfect world that would happen!

Then, of course, there is my half barrel planter that I will be using. So I really think that I can, hopefully, plant a nice little variety of veggies.

(You can see the poor little raspberry and blueberry plants that I planted and they didn't make it. It was an experiment gone wrong.)

Today I did some more purging in my closet. There was another box of books that I will try to sell to a second hand bookstore. I boxed up some clothes and shoes that I no longer wear and "recycle" them by giving them to the goodwill. I also found a bunch of VCR tapes with movies that I had taped years ago. In the age of DVD's and DVR, these are just taking up space. I don't know if they are worth donating to anyone, they will probably go out for the junk pickup in May.

I've solved my problem with the plastic produce bags at the grocery. I went to Amazon.com and ordered a set of 6 organic cotton bags that are made for produce. The set includes 2 small, 2 med. and 2 large. Supposedly, you can store your produce in these bags and they will stay crisp and not wilt in the fridge, just get the bags damp before you put them in the crisper. We'll see...... I also order two large cotton/burlap grocery totes to replace a couple of mine that have ripped and worn out.

Spring is coming, YAY, the farmer's markets will be opening soon and there is a local, small "store" here in town that sells local, pastured meat, eggs and milk. They also carry veggies and they have opend another location within walking distance of me, YAY. I've been there a few times for local honey and some meat. It's all very exciting.

Now that the weather is starting, slowly, to warm up, I also plan to save energy by drying some of my clothes outside this summer. I love the smell of things that have been dried outside.

My search for a bike continues.


Kathy

One Of My Favorites

I am an avid reader but I rarely reread a book. But there are a few exceptions to that rule. A book by the title of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle....by Barbara Kingsolver. It had been one of my son's required summer reading selections when he was in high school. Needless to say, he wasn't impressed by it. But I certainly was. I picked it up a couple of months after he "read" it (and I have my doubts about how much he actually read) and thought it sounded really interesting.

The following is taken from the back cover of the book, to kind of give you an idea of the direction the book goes in....

"Author Barbara Kingolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life-vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."

The author, although having been born and spent her childhood in Kentucky, had lived more than half her life in Arizona, raised her children there and lived there with her husband.The author's husband owned some land with an old farmhouse on it in the mountain region of Virginia and the family spent their summers there, connecting with relatives, growing some of their own food and enjoying the mountains and creeks and outdoorsy life.

They eventually decided to leave the desert and move to the farmhouse and live closer to the land. They also decided to, for one year, only eat what they can grow or buy and/or trade with other farmers, or make themselves or buy from local atrisans. They would only eat what was in season. One daughter, who loved bananas, had to do without for the year since bananas are not grown in Virginia. Although they did each get one luxury item, for instance coffee for the husband. (I would need that one too!)

The story takes you through them having to clear the rocky ground, getting to know their neighbors, planting their garden. They were able to find a mill nearby where they could buy flour, they learned to make cheese, can food and butcher chickens. A funny story includes trying to get the turkeys to mate. I loved the stories of shared, simple meals with neighbors and friends. Recipes are also included in the book.

I was particularly interested in the sections where the author would "step out of the story" to talk about the food producing industry and how it as all gone awry. I've read some reviews of the book online and some people think these sections were "preachy", but I didn't personally find that to be true. Actually, they seemed to mirror some of the things I've thought about.

While their experiment just lasted a year and their strictly locale rule was no longer in effect, they where all changed by it. And as gardening season will soon begin, I've gotten the book back out and have started reading it again. If anyone else out there has read this book, I would love to hear what you thought about it. I know that while I read it, I wanted to be them.

On a side note, this weekend the temperature is going up into the 60's and it's supposed to be sunny. My plan is to rake and clean up the yard, get my containers out and make sure they're still in good shape and clean them up also. I can't wait to plant something!


Kathy

Updates and Progress

February has been a hard month for me. I'm tired of being cold. I'm antsy for spring to start. It has been cloudy and rainy for a week now, the weatherman says that our temperature is 20 degrees below normal. My motivation is sagging and all I want to do is wrap up in a blanket and sit on the couch with the TV or a good book and a glass of wine.

But, FINALLY, today the sun came out for most of the day and it put me in the mood to get busy. It was still cold but the sunshine made all the difference, the dog sat out on the deck most of the day and I got some empty boxes out and started cleaning away the clutter.

Awhile back I talked about how I wanted to clean out my bookshelves, clothes and knick knacks. I had brought some boxes home from work and I tackled the bookshelves today. I ended up with two boxes of books I could possibly take to a secondhand bookstore and make a little money off of and another box and a half of books to out of date to be of any use and I will either give them to the goodwill or put them out on junk pickup day. I also have a bag of old music cassette tapes that I will put out for junk pickup. I also boxed up a few knick knacks to give to the goodwill. I did keep the knick knacks that my son had given me through the years as gifts when he was little.

Now let me tell you about junk pickup. We have three days to put stuff out and then the city will come pick it up sometime the following week. During that week the "junk pickers" ride around in their trucks and stop and look through everybody's junk. Some are looking for aluminum to cash in, others for decent toys or household items that are still usable while others are just looking for anything they can be used. My mother once put an old toilet out and by the next day it was gone, so I feel fairly hopeful that someone will snatch up the old books and cassettes and they won't end up in the landfill.

I still have the closet to go through but that will be a project for next weekend. Oh yeah, I also got one of my junk drawers cleaned out and was able to shred a bunch of old papers and receipts. And I have a small corkboard hanging in the kitchen that was full of old business cards, newspaper articles and whatnot and I got rid of most of that. All in all it felt good getting rid of all that stuff. Making your life simpler isn't always as easy as it sounds.

In other news, I have been doing more and more recycling and I'm feeling pretty good about that. I have two bins and they are stuffed full. I still struggle at times with the plastic bag issue. When I'm at the grocery I use the bags to put fruit and vegetables in with the intent of saving them and reusing them the next week. But habits are hard to break and sometimes I forget and throw them away or tear them open without thinking. I'm thinking of buying some cotton bags that I saw on Amazon. They are used for produce and when you get home you are supposed to keep the produce in the bags and they will keep longer in the fridge, just like those green plastic bags they advertise on TV.  I am using my old bread bags to pick up after my dog when we are out for a walk and I've acquired a couple of more reusable bags to take to the grocery with me.

I'm sad to report that my little experiment with the raspberry and blueberry plants failed. I knew it was kind of early to buy them, but I tried to keep them alive by leaving them inside at night and taking them outside during the day, but with no sun and colder than average temps they didn't stand much of a chance. I've left them planted outside and maybe by some miracle they will come back. But spring is on the way and I will be planting more things when the weather is right, I will hopefully report better progress with that.

The paper towel battle continues.


Kathy