Dicchotomy - Snow and Seeds

It doesn't snow often in Western Oregon - and I like it that way.  I grew up in Northern Utah and I've had my fill of cold and wet.

My boys on the other hand, think it's wonderful.

I did help build the fort though.  If it's going to dump snow on us, and strand us (the town we live in doesn't own a snow plow - so the roads don't get cleared) then I have to do SOMETHING to combat cabin fever!

However, I can only handle so much of the cold.

So, a little summer time prep seemed in order.  I got together with a couple of friends and we inventoried seeds -

Then places an order from my favorite seed site!

I've all ready picked up potting soil and just have to wait for the white stuff to clear so I can get our new (to us) green house up and functional.  As soon as the new seeds arrive it will be time to plant seeds!  I can't wait!

Crickets. . . What's good for the garden isn't so good for the blog!

Yeah, there's been a whole lot of NOTHING happening on this blog.  That is because there has been a whole lot of everything else happening in real life, so I thought I'd show you all a little of what took up some pretty major chunks of my time over the summer.

 This was our garden plot just after our final bit of planting.  We garden at a community garden, which I LOVE.

 A few weeks later. . .

  More water, more sunshine. . .

 And some of this in the mean time. . .

 And this is what our garden looked like just prior to harvest.

 For those of you who like to know what plants you're looking at.  The pictures above are all taken from the top right corner of this chart.

 We also grew onions in a raised bed on our parking strip, blueberries and herbs in our back yard, peas behind our shed, and lettuce in the flower beds at our house -  because we're crazy like that.

 All that time, effort, and water led to a lot of beautiful things like this. . .

 

and this. . . 

 and a lot of that lead to this. . .

 which lead to a lot of this. . .

 and some of this.

 Other parts of it lead to time spent making this. . .

 and huge messes in the kitchen. . .

 Which eventually lead to beautiful things like this. . .

and one of my favorite photos of the entire year!

It is a TON of work to grow your own food and then process and preserve it, but I am always so happy I've done it when it's all over - and of course eating delicious fresh veggies all summer long is a pretty good perk too!

I'm still working on getting all our veggies properly stored for the winter, along with prepping winter beds and planting winter crops.  Hopefully I'll be back soon with some of the furniture pieces I've finished recently, as well as other things that kept us busy over the summer. 
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This year I stuck to the basics, as it turns out my family doesn't really love fancy chutneys and jams - maybe when the boys are older.  Do you can?  What's your favorite food to preserve? 

Fairy Garden

John Henry recently became enamored with fairies.  I had seen some very cute fairy gardens and I asked him if he wanted to make one.  He was all for it!  We set out to do it without buying anything.

There was an old wooden planter in our yard that I had never planted anything in.  Every year this flower (I don't know what it is, anyone want to help me out?) grows on the edge of it, and that's it.  It was practically begging to be made into a fairy garden!

We also had a cedar bird house that had all ready lost its bird perch- it's as if the fairies were wandering around our yard leaving us hints!

We perched the house up high with a tiny terracotta planter, and then made a ladder from twigs and bailing wire from the garden up to the house.  John Henry put some nice soft straw in the house for the fairies to make their beds with!

I had some scrap Sunbrella fabric that we made a bunting and a flag out of it.  Sewing something that small is no easy task, it turned out a little rough, but then fairies like little things a little shabby chic, right?

John Henry painted all the rocks and and insisted that we make a sign to let them know that this was a place for them!

We used an old canning ring to make a sand box.  We had some colored floral sand and John Henry chose to fill it with pink, red, and yellow sand.

We made them a pond out of the lid of a cocoa tin.  It's John Henry's job to make sure it gets clean water every day.  We made the beach with crushed oyster shell.

We dug some creeping thyme up from another part of our yard, added some chicks and hens (John Henry's favorite plants.)  Some pine cones and a few other little decorations finished it out.  

John Henry and I are both enchanted!

Have you created a fairy garden?  Share the link in the comments!

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CSI Project's Kids' Summer Craft Week.   
Not Just a House Wife

Ladybug Release

OK, so between gardening, soccer, volunteering at my son's school and life, there hasn't been a lot of time for much furniture work.  I NEED to get this dresser out of my living room, though, so it's gotta happen SOON!

In the mean time, we have a big aphid problem on our roses, so today at the nursery we picked up the solution! 

Food

couple of years or so ago Lincoln and I both read this book.

It changed a lot about how our family eats.  While you will still find some processed food in our house, there is a lot less than there used to be.  We are more cognizant of where our food comes from and try to choose food from local sources when ever we can.  Even in Seattle we attempted to grow our own food.  We co-gardened with some friends who had a yard.  The problem with growing food in Seattle, however, is that you need three things for vegetables to grow: water, good soil, and sunlight.  Water we had plenty of, the soil needed help and we provided that, sunlight, however, was in very short supply.  The previous two summers we only produced enough food for each of our families to have a couple of small salads.

Well, I just happened to move to one of the richest farming communities in the country.  There is no doubt where your food comes from when you live on an orchard with a vineyard across the way, horses, cows and sheep aplenty, and all the resources needed to grow a garden and raise animals readily available to you.

I know it's still January, but we are novice "gentleman" farmers.  We are city people.  We are working against a pretty steep learning curve.  (Although, Link's family always had a garden and my grandparents had two small orchards and a large veggie plot, so we aren't TOTALLY clueless. . . we think.)  It's time to get started.

For inspiration I am reading this book.  (Thanks, Grandma!)  The Kingolver family moved from Tuscon to a farming community in Virginia to be able to produce their own food.  Hmmm. . . .

For instruction I am reading this book.  (Thanks, Sarah!)

First items of education on the agenda: chickens, rabbits, and building raised vegetable beds.

For those of you interested in more interesting reading along these lines:

The Encyclopedia of Country Living Blog
Michael Pollen's website (great index of resources)