Pardon the Garden

Confessions of a lazy wannabe homesteader

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Summer beginnings

May 27, 2018 Marie Leave a Comment

Low-key weekend for us, so far. Between the Little Mr and I, we’re quite the pair of sickly things. He started a few weeks ago with an ear infection and we thought we were good until earlier this week when he started complaining about the other ear – so, back to the doctor we went. Turns out the ear he said was hurting was actually fine and might have had just a small infection but the other ear – the one that was originally a problem a few weeks ago – was a RAGING ear infection. Oy. Between that and the sinus infection I’m fighting off we’re both in quite the mood.

So with what, we’ve been relegated to taking things slow. We got an early start Saturday and actually got our garden planting done. Well, the Mr got it done. I mostly showed up to plant flowers, lol. I debated on driving up to Wooster to the Great Lakes Fiber Show and load up on pretty yarns, but I’m working on being realistic with myself right now on a. how much yarn one actually needs and b. how much yarn I can actually use given how little I get to knit anymore. So I spent a lot of the rest of the day wandering the house wondering what to do with myself, and ultimately watched movies and snuggled the munchkin.

Today, determined to do something other than sit in front of the TV being pathetic on this holiday weekend, I chopped up a pound of strawberries and poured some blackcurrant balsamic vinegar in a canning jar and we snacked away on the porch while watching the world go by (and knitting, but a worsted wool sweater on a 90 degree day was a poor choice). BTW, that blackcurrant vinegar and strawberry combo is amazing if you pair it with some bread and cheese like little appetizers!

I started reading The Bear and the Nightingale this weekend, too. It was on my “to read” list, and Amazon Kindle has it for only $2 so it seemed fated for perfect holiday weekend reading. So far I’m loving it – it’s a book that I don’t want to put down and stop reading, but at the same time I don’t want to plow through it and finish it in a single day, either. So I bounce between a chapter or two of that, and a few rows of complicated chart knitting, and then back again.

Featured, Posts home, knitting, literary, Little Mr, summer

Winter solstice

December 21, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

Oh, my heart! ♥ Tonight, for Solstice, we strung up apples, oranges, and cranberries to hang on the tree out front. It was absolutely everything I hoped for, as far as a project to do with the Little Mr. I’ve never given him a needle and thread to just play with, so I wasn’t entirely sure if he would have the concept down or even be able to get the chunky needle through the cranberries, but he went to town. Well, as much as a 3 year old has the patience for it, anyway. But he seemed to love the project, and we trudged out to the cold, dark yard to hang them on the tree.

I think this might end up being a yearly Solstice tradition for us.

Featured, Posts family, holidays, Little Mr, nature, winter

Maybe this is just what we needed

October 9, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

Pears

I kept busy this weekend with canning. The store had some produce on sale, so I came home with ingredients to make strawberry lemon jam, more sriracha peach sauce, apples for applesauce, cider for a mustard glaze (need to find the mustard seed in bulk, first), and got to work. And then, today, after going thrift store shopping for clothes for the Little Mr (because winter is coming and he’s growing like a weed), my mom handed me this. A giant basket of free pears straight from her tree. Free produce to can and preserve and feed us through winter, should we need it.

Maybe this job loss is what I needed. A reason to get back to my roots, my canning and preserving and being more frugal. Though, it probably would have been better if I had been the one to lose my job, instead, so I’d have more time to make foods from scratch for cheap… but it is what it is.

Anyone have some pear recipes they love they’re willing to share?

Featured, Posts fall, food, handmade wardrobe, preserving

Lean times

October 3, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

September was the month of travel and plenty. October, fittingly, becomes the month of becoming homebodies and lean times. The Mr lost his job last week, right at the end of the month. Laid off, technically, because of budget issues though it’s hard to not take it personally when you’re going through all the emotions. Things are, understandably, awkward at home, now. Our routines disrupted and our marriage and parenting flow thrown off. I have been on the verge of quitting my job from the sheer amount of stress and workload (it’s a job for two people and, alas, I’m just one person) so those plans were crushed in a moment. My job doesn’t pay all the bills, but we can survive with the help of our emergency savings (PROTIP – save your money, kids, for that rainy day. It never feels like you’ll need it and then, suddenly, life happens and you’ll be kicking yourself wishing you had. I’ve been a stressed out mess since we found out, and I’d be 1,000x worse if I had to worry about how we’d eat).

I had a random day off of work, thanks to a broken sewer issue and no bathrooms, so I spent some quality time on plans to get back to the way we used to live when we were young and poor. I have no desire to go back to boxed mac and cheese and processed junk, so the challenge now is finding healthy meals that are also cheap to make. And working on our food waste habit that we’ve developed over the last few years – not eating leftovers like we should, not chopping and freezing veggies before they go to waste that can get thrown into soup, etc. It sounds dreadful of me, but after having a kid and then having to not worry about money so much I became lazier about things. And no eating out anymore, either. At least not until we get things figured out on what income, exactly, we’re going to have.  That’s going to be the hardest for the Little Mr, who has gotten spoiled with treats this summer in the form of freezes from Taco Bell (Nana is to blame on that one)

So far, we’ve been crazy productive in just a weekend. Since we’re avoiding spending money, we built an old office desk we had before we closed the business office down a few years ago, and that’s now in my craft room along with my computer. And we put up some shelving in the craft room, too – I have this bad habit of having all my craft stuff all over the house because I’ve never had enough storage, so we re-arranged some things in the rest of the house and now I’ve got this wonderful little Ikea Fjallbo unit in the room for storage. I decorated it with things I already had in the craft room, and the little lamp was rescued from my mom’s Goodwill pile.

The biggest stress, right now, is that the holidays aren’t far off. My holiday baking used to have its own budget line item each year, so that will have to be scaled back. I may need to start finding handknits to make (quickly) for holiday gifts, too. It’s far too late to come up with anything big to make for anyone, and there’s always the worry that someone will turn their nose up at a handmade item and not realize that it’s actually more valuable than whatever made-in-a-3rd-world-country piece of plastic would have otherwise been purchased and probably broken in less than a year. I worry too much, I’m sure. Between all the yarn and fabric I have, there has to be SOMETHING I can come up with for at least a few people, though. Even if it’s a few pretty lace hats for the girls in the family.

Featured, Posts knitting

Last of summer adventures

October 3, 2017 Marie Leave a Comment

We had an impromptu weekend away to Put In Bay with some friends and their daughter, which turned into this amazing end-of-season trip. Normally, Put In Bay is pretty packed during the regular season. But, given it was after Labor Day, it turned into the perfect escape. At home, temps were over 80 degrees – at the lake, 70s. Warm and breezy and sunny and just plain beautiful. The weekend was spent at the Butterfly House, where most of the photos were taken, and just kind of lazing about. We’d cook some meals, eat out for others. Naps were taken. Board games were played (Settlers of Catan, which is now my new favorite game). A bit of knitting done, though not much. A perfect end-of-summer weekend before fall sets in. ♥

Featured, Posts out & about

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