Pardon the Garden

Confessions of a lazy wannabe homesteader

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Cabin in the woods, round 4.

November 9, 2014 Marie 1 Comment

hh-woods hh-cabin hh-knitting2 hh-knitting1 yarn-dyepot yarn-rinsed yarn-finished

4th annual knitting weekend. Chugged away on the baby’s holiday stocking, started (and promptly screwed up) a new sweater for myself – I’m just going with it, anyway – and even dyed some lovely sock yarn (with food coloring/Kool-Aid, of course – I took a cue from Chalk Legs and used the sprinkle method along with a bit of liquid food coloring for a bit more intense color on the yellow. I will definitely be trying to dye more yarn like this as soon as I knit up some of what I already have!)

More than happy to be home, however. This year was… different. I didn’t enjoy my time there as much. And I missed my husband and son terribly. I think maybe the weekend would have been better if it had been 100% solo. I just feel like maybe I needed some time to be completely alone with my thoughts in the woods. Oh well, back to real life.

Featured, Posts dyeing, fall, knitting, out & about

Dream house

October 19, 2014 Marie Leave a Comment

neighborhood-house

I often waver between wanting to stay in town and wanting to be out in the country in the middle of nowhere. I love both ideas, and have a horrible time deciding which I’d rather. This is complicated by the fact that I live on the edge of a really, truly lovely neighborhood with beautiful homes. These days the housing developments I see cropping up are full of cookie cutter-looking homes. They lack character and charm, and I often feel like I’m wandering through a sea of white and beige as I drive through them. Our little neighborhood is filled with lovely homes of various sizes, and walking through is practically park-like with all the large lovely trees.

This house is my dream house. I have always loved and probably will continue to always love it – the landscaping, the brick, the way the two trees flank the door, the way the path curves, the little wooden-with-metal-roof addition… This, dear friends, is probably a house that I will never ever be able to afford (there’s a reason why we live on the edge of the neighborhood). But every time I walk by I like to look at it and dream. The only possible way it could be more perfect is if it was set on a few acres of land out of town. With a sweet little chicken coop to match the style of the house.

Featured, Posts fall, out & about

Fall harvest

October 13, 2014 Marie 1 Comment

garden2 garden3 garden4 garden5 garden6

I finally stopped putting it off. Yesterday was supposed to be around 66 degrees, and the rest of the week cool and rainy. I pretty much had to do it yesterday otherwise I might never get to it before winter. And you can see in the first photo how overgrown everything is – we sucked at weed control this year and we had volunteer tomatoes that the husband let continue to grow instead of hacking them back to keep the garden neat and tidy. Our garden has it’s own eco system of bugs and spiders which, naturally, I have a love/hate relationship with.

I pulled out the carrier and wore the kid in that while I picked tomatoes. At least for a little while before the extra weight of him got to be too much for my knees (this morning we found out he’s 11.5 pounds, so it’s no wonder!). Those tomatoes weren’t supposed to be that small. They were supposed to be San Marzano tomatoes. Clearly, they’re not. I’m highly disappointed, of course. We plant 2.5 beds of tomatoes – one for sauce, one for sandwich tomatoes, and one plant for the tiny salad ones. And you know what we don’t need? 3 plants full of tiny freaking tomatoes! (We also don’t need 2.5 beds of tomatoes, but the husband insists and then I’m left trying to figure out just what I’m going to do with it all.) It looks like I’ll be ordering a new pack of seeds to start this year since the pack from this last year was mislabeled. Ugh.

I’m attempting to dehydrate a batch of the tomatoes to see how they do (either for use in snacks or cooking, we’ll see). Other than that I’m not really sure what to do with them. The peppers will easily get used up – they’re always the thing we use the most of from the garden. The green tomatoes… I don’t even know. You can only eat so many fried green ones. I could maybe freeze them, but then I’d have to admit that I have freezer bags of tomatoes in the deep freezer outside from… 4 years ago? Things go out to that freezer and then end up forgotten about.

We ended up with monster beets this year. Every year I’ve tried to grow them (because I love them very much) and I rarely ever have any success. Most years none of them ever come up. This year 2 came up in the spring, but by then I was so tired and not in the mood to mess with the garden so I ignored it. I figured maybe it would go to seed so I could save seeds for next year (with the idea that maybe, just maybe the seeds would actually grow this time). We never got any seeds from it – instead I ended up with two giant monster beets that I’m not even sure are going to be edible. I haven’t yet attempted to cut one with a knife yet. I’m going to assume they’re woody and gross inside. It looks like two seeds did happen to germinate late in the season, so we have a small and a normal sized beet as well. I feel like I should give up on my beet dreams, but every year I tell myself “this will be the year!” and it never is. Chances are I’ll try to plant beets again next year. And chances are I’ll be incredibly disappointed all over again.

Featured, Posts fall, garden, home

I’m walking into spiderwebs

October 1, 2014 Marie Leave a Comment

web1

web2… for real. I took the trash out this morning and realized that my rose bush has this giant creation all over it. So I looked around more and found probably 5 more thick webs over other various plants.

I really hate spraying hazardous chemicals around the yard, but it might be time to get some bug spray and spray the foundation of the house. I keep finding big spiders in the house as it is, and it’ll only get worse as the temps get colder. Better to spray now than to feel like I need to nuke the house from orbit!

 

Featured, Posts fall, garden

Darkness, then.

November 24, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

kitchen_lights molly1 molly3Fall is far too quickly disappearing, and the dark of winter looms behind. My beautiful sunlight is going away, there is nothing left to tend in the garden, and the holidays are fast approaching. I leave for the workday in a bit of morning light, and I drive home in the tail end of sunset. Short days and long nights make for what feels like a long winter.

Everything here feels so lethargic. Everything feels like it takes longer – I snuggle up in bed longer because it’s too cold to get up for work, the car takes longer to get warmed up for the drive to work, I move slower and more relaxed around the house with little desire to hurry and get anything done. Even my energy to knit has seemed to slow.

I have little LED stars draped over my kitchen windows, to cope with the seasonal changes, permanently lit to add a bit of glow to the otherwise dark home. The poor pup, normally accustomed to going to bed when it gets dark, crawls onto her bed quite early now and then looks at us as though she’s confused as to why we’re not going to bed as well. So sweet, my little pup, and getting old. She always looks so worried, and she’s never very far from my side. If she’s not on her bed near the couch then she’s on the floor under my feet, or behind my chair in the office, or next to the furnace vent by the sewing machine. The little smarty-pants has even figured out how to bump the door to the second floor so she can follow me upstairs. It’s hard to be mad at such a clever, loving companion. ♥

 

Featured, Posts fall, home

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Pardon the garden. A phrase I’m most likely to utter anytime anyone visits the house during the growing seasons of spring through fall. Sure, there are pretty flowers and delicious veggies in there somewhere, but they might be a little hard to find amidst the mess of overgrown grass, dandelions, and weeds that have found their way in there and haven’t been pulled. Read On

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