Wednesday, February 16, 2011

It's Just Around the Corner!






After several weeks of what has become affectionately called 'Snowklahoma', we have finally been blessed with beautiful spring like weather. So once again, I checked on my beautiful seedlings, watered them, and looked them over. And this is what I found.


My onions are still spindly and laying over. Is this normal? I have no idea, since I've never planted onions indoors before, but I suspect they have not seen enough sun. So I will continue to baby them and attempt to keep them safe from the mice. Orkin man is coming to save me this Friday!

On a brighter note, my tomatoes have finally developed their first beautiful little true leaves. I can almost taste the homeade pasta sauce already!

The collards are also producing their first true leaves like my tomatoes. Keeping up with the Joneses I suppose.  But they are long and spindly and laying down like the onions. Not sure about those since I've never raised these either.

I've heard we are in for another round of snow, which is still disheartening with spring fever already kicked in, but I'm so thrilled to have these little reminders that spring is around the corner.  Happy Planting.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

2010 in review



It would seem I went MIA again, but it has truly been a busy year.  First, I took the most amazing vacation with my children. We spent 10 days in California, watched my oldest child graduate high school and visited DisneyLand, CaliforniaAdventureLand, Universal Studios, San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and the beach. What a wonderful experience.  Because of  the vacation, my garden died, and because I played catchup all summer, I never got the fall garden started. That will not be the case this year. No matter what, my journey towards self-sufficiency will come first.
  

I learned to make homeade cold process bar soap, liquid laundry detergent, toothpaste, and have made plans to tranform my back yard into a beautiful food production space full of raised beds, and a stone or brick patio to enjoy it from.


I enjoyed a long sports season with the kids. Tanner had a knee injury that ended his season early, but we are hopeful for a good first year playing school football. And sister, well, soccer is her passion, so most of the fall season was spent rushing from one Saturday sporting event to another half way across the state! But I wouldn't have traded it for anything.


Two days before Thanksgiving I was in a car accident which caused a few problems and requires me to attend physical therapy three times a week for the time being... another usurper of my time.  Hopefully that will be over soon. And that is pretty much 2010 in a nutshell.  Now maybe I can keep up with the coming year!