Kitchen / Garden / Sanctuary - Urban Homesteading to Nourish Body + Spirit

Author: Lindsey (Page 26 of 88)

Gratitude Sunday * May 27, 2012

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

~

-Being outside on these beautiful, beautiful days. These are the days. Better than summer!!

– Turning a frustrating experience into a ‘learning moment’ — it takes some of the sting out when you can turn around an unsavory situation and learn from it.

– My sister Julie, who is a cat angel! She has rescued twelve street cats over the years, keeping six and adopting out the others to friends. She spends her hard-earned money to recuperate them, spay them, feed them, foster them — love them! She recently rescued three street kittens in very sorry shape. She took them to the vet to treat their multiple problems — eye infections, respiratory infections, ear mites, fleas. In the picture on the left, you can see how much better they look after only one week!

What beautiful creatures; they are Ingrid, Anastasia, and Vlad:

– Moving slowly, when I remember to. This month has been so busy; the remedy it seems is to move very slowly whenever I can, to offset the frantic pace.

– Curing my own ear infection with home remedies! It feels great to be self sufficient with your health and not need to visit a doctor. I had a bit of an incident, shall we say, a couple weeks ago where a garden experiment (and the subsequent attempt to dispose of it) went way south. What resulted was the most putrid, stinking, disgusting bucket of fetid sludge I’ve ever encountered — you have truly never smelled anything like this — and as I attempted to dump it, it splashed back all over me… into my eyes, ears, hair, clothes, etc. Since that time my left ear has been bugging me, and finally it sort of exploded into a case of swimmer’s ear. I doctored it with manuka, tea tree, and lavender essential oils, peroxide, and triple antibiotic ointment. And I cured it! In light of my recent pattern of reliance on doctors and drugs, this was a nice little victory.

– Tender, succulent garden lettuce and eating lots of amazing salads. The addition of fresh garden herbs like dill, oregano, cilantro, and parsley makes ’em even better.

– Tea

– Getting a really big moneymaking project completed and off my shoulders. That is such a fab feeling!

– Lots of errands completed! And then not wasting mental energy thinking about them any more!

– The few days this week where the catalpa tree was in full flower right outside our kitchen window. I was plastered to my chair right next to the window, in front of my laptop, doing work for several days this week — and every breath I took was filled with that heavenly scent!

– A cozy, rainy night.

– Taking a nap right next to my garden. I think there may be some kind of magic that happens during sleep time that occurs so near to a garden.

– Our air conditioner! It gets so hot up here in the attic apartment.

– The precious sight of a mama and papa goose and their single gosling.

***

What are your gratitudes from this past week?

*****

A Walk Through the Garden – May 24th

Wow, it’s been another full-on week here. I like how Trish says it — “life has been a bit real lately“!

When life gets extra real, it feels extra nice to be in my garden. My garden grounds me back to Earth!

And here’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve noticed — if I need to take a nap in the middle of the day (usually I don’t like to), I wake up feeling mentally yucky and depressed if I’ve slept inside. But if I take my nap outside, that doesn’t happen — I wake up feeling balanced and happy and content. Nature seems to be magical that way…

So how about a walk through the magical garden? It’s growing really well! My tomato plants are exactly three months old from when I started them from seed, and some of them are blooming! That’s exciting because the past few years have not been good tomato years due to unusually long, wet, chilly springs.

Here’s the garden in the glow of the evening sun. Gardens look best in either morning or evening sunshine, don’t they.

Big turnip. (All the others are still much smaller than this!)

Parsley (L) and Caraway (R)

Broad bean flowers

Homegrown lettuce is just so awesome.

 

My baby peach is growing too!

***

What’s up in your yard?

*****

Gratitude Sunday * May 20, 2012

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

~

– For my really wonderful mom, and all of her support and love for me.

– The sweet day with my mom and dad last weekend on Mother’s Day.

– The flowers that are blooming everywhere you turn! Our weather this year is so unusual; we seem to be 3 or 4 weeks ahead of schedule with everything… it’s really something. I’m thankful for it, and glad we didn’t get our usual late frost/blizzard which kills all the fruit blossoms! I think we’re gonna have a great fruit year.

– Sliced zucchini and onions lightly cooked in marinara sauce, for a quick breakfast before a morning meeting. So GOOD!

– Eating the last of the garden beets from last year, which had been in the bottom of the fridge since October. They still tasted so amazingly delicious.

– The person who ran after me to give me my mitten when I’d unknowingly dropped it. I really appreciated that.

– Working in the garden all day one day this week. There was so much work I couldn’t believe it, but it was really good for my spirit to be outside all day like that, working hard on something that gives me so much satisfaction.

– Going bar hopping with some friends on Friday night; that’s such an unusual thing for F and me to do — but we both had so much fun!!

– My honey F… his love and companionship… how much he makes me laugh… I’m so lucky!!

– The produce we’re already harvesting from the garden! That glorious lettuce!

– Hanging out in my parents’ beautiful yard. Connection to nature in a private space like that is so essential for my happiness and overall wellbeing. I’m so thankful that their place is just a bike ride away.

– Riding my bike on gorgeous summery evenings through beautiful neighborhoods, with the long shadows and warm glow of the setting sun. A simple pleasure.

– Waking up to rain.

***

What have you been grateful for this past week?

***

*****

Make a Bug Bath!

If you’re an organic vegetable gardener, or just a lazy cheapskate-type gardener (or both like me), then beneficial insects are at the top of your list. They’re easy, they’re free, they do the work for you. For example, I’ve never found a better way of controlling aphids than relaxing in the shade with a cup of tea and letting the wasps eat them off one by one.

All you need to do is lure the beneficials in by making your garden as irresistible as possible. One good way is to make sure you have a variety of flowers blooming amongst your vegetables. I’ve noticed they especially like herb flowers and wildflowers.

Another good way is to provide a reliable source of fresh water — just like a bird bath, only for bugs.

To make a bug bath:

1. Find a dish and some rocks; the rocks will stick up above the water and provide islands for bugs to land on.

2. Locate the bug bath somewhere in your garden. Feel free to have multiple bug baths throughout your garden.

3. Keep the water fresh; I dump it and re-fill when I water the garden.

4. It may take a bit for the bugs to discover their new bath; have patience — they’ll find it!

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*****

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