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By Lindsey, April 21, 2012

Very handy!

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By Lindsey, April 20, 2012

Stormy sky. (The tall things are garlic.)

Ohh it’s been another full week! I haven’t felt too terribly inspired to spend much extra time at the computer this week; I’ve been pounding out the moneymaking work and then happily slamming the laptop lid when I’m through for the day!

The week slipped by so quickly, I hardly remember the details of it, but I did get a wonderful day of work done in the garden. It was the perfect day; the weather (upper 70s) was even better than summertime because in summer you can’t reasonably work straight through the midday and still be comfortable. And I gardened to the scent of lilacs the entire day — oh my! What a fabulous treat that was. And the yards are getting so green and beautiful, the trees all leafing out, the tulips still blooming, the lilacs, the sound of lawnmowers, the smell of grills barbecuing delicious food! This is truly one of my favorite times of year. Spring and fall, I just love ‘em.

So onto some pictures for you. Things are going very nicely in the garden — with this warm weather and some rain, stuff is growing fast. We’re eating chives, arugula, and masses of beautiful fresh oregano, which is such a treat in Greek salads — I pile it on. It’s the more mild variety, by the way, which I like a lot better than that really pungent Oregano which is strong enough to burn a hole through your salad.

Oregano

Baby radishes

Lettuce

I uncovered one of the lasagna beds and planted it this week.

Potato sprouts

Arugula

The onion sets grow so fast!

Peas

Wheat (planted last fall as an experiment)

'Black Kabouli' garbanzo bean plant

Playing with my rotting leaf compost

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By Lindsey, April 5, 2012

I do love thrift stores. I love donating old stuff to them, and finding new clothing and treasures to bring home. Here are some recent things that have found a new home at our place:

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- A funny little majolica cream pitcher, and a porcelain Easter egg jar which happens to be ‘born’ the same year I was. Not sure why I bought the pitcher, really, cause I don’t need it, but then again I didn’t need the egg either. I liked them though, and I guess that’s reason enough!

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- A cast iron muffin pan for $3! I can’t wait to use this… to lift out a steaming muffin, with crispy crust all around!

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- And this one’s really cool. It’s probably an equestrian reflector thingy, but I’ve been wearing it while riding my bike in an ongoing and slightly obsessive quest to maximize my visibility to drivers. I say ‘probably’ because the tag is in Norwegian. And how a Norwegian equestrian reflector would have made its way to the racks of a junky Colorado thrift store is a story I’d dearly love to hear.

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Have you brought home any fun thrifted items lately?

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By Lindsey, March 9, 2012

It’s been a busy week!

Lots of garden work and preparing for spring seed planting which I’ll do either tomorrow or Monday; the weather has been so cooperative it’s been wonderful! It really feels like spring now, and it’s around this time that my eyes start craving greenery — though that won’t happen for a little while yet.

Here are pictures of just a few of the many things happening around the garden:

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We’re adding more raised beds to my parents’ backyard so we can grow even more vegetables!! Here’s one of the spots ‘before’:

And ‘after.’ My mom and I had fun doing this raised bed project together!

And tomorrow I’ll fill them up; I’ll be making lasagna beds which, in my experience, is a fantastic way to make some really awesome soil for your raised beds. I’ll have to do a post about that!

At the helm of her ship.

Building a raised bed for the other site...

That one lives here now.

Raiding neighbors' recycle bins at twilight for cardboard and newspaper for the lasagna beds.

Oh, and this is cool — our local health food store will save their produce scraps for your compost heap if you ask them. So Mom and I picked up a nice bag of them yesterday in preparation for use in the lasagna beds. Yay!

They look pretty good for so-called scraps!

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Tomato seedlings in the window

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Bed time now… tomorrow’s a big garden day! I hope you have a wonderful weekend~

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By Lindsey, March 1, 2012

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By Lindsey, February 23, 2012

This (snowy) morning...

It was a true February day today — gray and humid and chilly and snowy. But it was a spring snow — drippy and slushy! Over the weekend it just began feeling more like spring here. The quality and angle of the sunlight, the buds on the trees, the tulips pushing through the ground, and definitely the particular birdsongs that we’re hearing outside our window of late.

I was up and at the kitchen table by the window fairly early this morning with a steaming mug of tea, watching the snowflakes falling gently. I’ve rediscovered a CD I have called The Tranquil Harp by Paul Baker. It was perfect for this peaceful, snowy morning.

The streets were still warm from yesterday’s balmy temperatures, and so this afternoon most of the snow was gone from them, making my quick trip to the health food store a much easier proposition. Much as I love the snow, clear streets really are very nice.

Okay, so remember how yesterday I told you all about my great restraint in not buying more varieties of tomato seed? Well to demonstrate that iron will, I suppose I should show you what I bought today:

So anyway, I thought I’d also show you a great seed catalog I picked up yesterday for Southern Exposure. I’ve never ordered from them but I like their philosophy: “Our mission is to ensure that people retain control of their food supply, that genetic resources are conserved and that gardeners have the option of saving their own seed.”

Looks like they sell almost all heirloom or open-pollinated stuff (I really like that), and have some pretty interesting offerings. Their catalog also gives detailed growing info for each type of vegetable. It looks like a company worth ordering from.

Well it’s dusk now, and time for some tea I think.

It’s been a good day. Hope it was for you, too…

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By Lindsey, February 22, 2012

Man, these past few days have flown! I’ve been in almost an altered state, with a one-track mind focused solely on this year’s vegetable garden. There are big bags of dirt in our kitchen, and open seed catalogs have littered the living room floor like banana peels waiting to snag unsuspecting passerby (sorry honey!).

There’s been much reading, researching, figuring, dreaming, decision making, studying of past garden notes, and starting of seeds. The energy, enthusiasm, and time that seemed absent last year are all right here in front of me to be feasted upon — and I am feasting.

Yesterday I bought seeds for a couple fun last-minute additions to the garden plan — leeks and romanesco cauliflower — and today my mom & I got seeds for a few more things that’ll be new to the garden this year too — tarragon, bok choy, and onion seed (I’ve always grown my storage onions from sets in the past).

I also counted up that I have 37 different varieties of tomato seed. Lest you think that’s excessive, let me tell you that it takes great and continuous restraint to not buy more! But it’s already hard enough choosing only 16 varieties for the garden…

Yesterday I started all my wall-o-water tomatoes as well as my cabbage, romanesco cauliflower, regular cauliflower, yellow bell peppers, and leeks in their seed tray over a heat mat. That was a good accomplishment.

And today, even though my main spring planting time is still a few weeks away, I planted some radishes in the wall-o-water I had set up a couple weeks ago, along with some arugula in the open space next to that. I’ve found that walls-o-water are a great way to sneak in an early crop of radishes, which are in and out before it’s time to put the tomatoes in.

It felt great to get my hands into that cold, fragrant Earth.

They’re calling for snow tomorrow, and I think it’ll be a good day to get the broad beans started, and then come back down to earth a bit by going over my moneymaking work and preparing for a Friday meeting.

I hope you’re all having a nice week. And tell me — what’s currently going on in your own garden??

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By Lindsey, February 10, 2012

What a busy week! I’m so glad it’s Friday. I’m ready to vege out!

This week, amidst many other not-as-fun things like meetings, headaches, bus rides, and blood draws, I finally began my Mitten Project. It deserves those capital letters because it’s turning into quite the time-sucking ordeal (mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing, so am inventing as I go), but the mittens are going to be awesome when I’m done. I’ve worn out my old mittens & am tired of my hands being so cold while I’m outdoors & on my bike, so I decided to make myself some super duper custom-fit 3-layer fleece-lined wool mittens out of a couple of sweaters I felted.

It’s been quite cold and snowy this week. Even our neighbor squirrels look cold (although plenty well-fed I’d say!).

I got so excited one night this week because I stumbled upon one of my favorite movies/documentaries of all time, “Alone in the Wilderness” about Dick Proenneke. Have you seen it? I love it. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and after a long and exhausting day it felt like such a gift that it was on our local PBS station. Anyway, many years ago I read his book called “One Man’s Wilderness” and in both the book and documentary he talks about making sourdough flapjacks. I was inspired, then, to go get some of my own sourdough flapjacks going so they could ferment overnight. I cooked them up the next morning, and they made a wonderful snack eaten in the cold wintery air on my walk from the bus stop to Darlene’s house, that wonderful neighbor I talked about in my Gratitude Sunday post.

Darlene is a massage therapist and gave me a wonderful massage as a gift. It was heaven. My body has been so un-fun to reside in for the last couple years, and to have it feel so good for those two hours was so nice. Interestingly, the massage really stirred things up in my still-healing body; I actually felt quite bad and sick for the rest of the day and the day after. Hmm. Well now I know — massages are powerful medicine and they really do get things moving!

Yesterday I made minnestrone soup for lunch; it was awesome! I’ll share my recipe for it soon (Edit: here’s the recipe), but the beauty of it is that you can really deviate from the recipe which is what I did yesterday. That soup was SO good!

And today… is finally Friday! Part of the exhaustion this week was needing to be lots of places and not being able to ride my bike because of the deep snow & icy, rutted roads. Therefore I rely on city buses which introduces some stress into my journey as well as making it much more of an ordeal to get from here to there. It also involves more walking which my poor lil’ body was not really up for this week. But finally, today, I was feeling much more myself with more energy, and could finally ride my bike again as the sidewalks & some of the roads were clear enough. After a major snowstorm, I always have such an appreciation for again being able to transport myself freely and independently via bicycle.

I had another 2-hour meeting today after working hard this week on moneymaking stuff even though I felt like crap & my body was screaming GO TO BED! But today I woke up feeling good, and I liked getting up early and looking nice and going to my meeting and contributing something. At times, I feel like a full time patient, and therefore quite useless. I didn’t feel that way today.

And then it felt great to be home again! After being out and about, I always love coming home to our sweet little apartment… and today when I arrived home at 12:30 the sun was streaming in the kitchen windows, and with our new furniture arrangement it just felt especially good in here.

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I’m looking forward to a quiet, relaxing weekend ahead!

Do you have any fun plans?

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By Lindsey, February 4, 2012

We’ve gotten well over a foot of snow since Thursday night! If you’ve hung around here long, you know how much I love the snow, and especially these big blizzardy storms. What fun! Snowfall is so peaceful, too. As you can see below, we can hardly even see out our living room window anymore. I really like being snowed in!

And I love the indoor time — we’ve been rearranging some things in our apartment and I’m loving the new energy that comes from shifting stuff around. Plus, working diligently on getting rid of more stuff. Among other things, I organized the pantry yesterday and am enjoying it each time I open the door. It feels so good to be getting a handle on our house! It seems like when my illness got really bad in April, time stopped. When you’re so sick you feel like doing absolutely nothing, guess what? Absolutely nothing gets done! Huh. So I’m finally picking up projects that I had started in early April, which then got basically frozen in time. It feels great to be continuing them in earnest once again! And the crap that has piled up in the house in the space of 10 months… it feels so good to finally be addressing it.

I hope you all are having a wonderful and relaxing weekend! Tomorrow we’ll head to my parents’ place for the Super Bowl. It’s all about the food, the commercials, the company, and yeah, we might even watch a little football too…

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