Very Productive Today...

I am glad I stopped feeling sorry for myself because I got a lot done today.  Nothing gets me going quite like giving myself a firm talking-to about feeling sorry for myself.  If I can't control what's happening around me, at least I can control some things.  I feel better then.

One thing I did was finally did something about the 23 key limes that my friend Cathy gave me.  As a rule I never turn down free food (within reason).  Especially fresh from someone's garden or fruit trees.  Even if I bought key limes, they wouldn't be this fresh, right?   They have been sitting in a bowl for a few days, while I tried to think how to use them.  Today I cut them in half, squeezed the juice into an ice tray, picked the seeds out (mostly) with a spoon, and froze the cubes.  I will put them into a labeled freezer bag tomorrow.  I figure the few seeds left in there will lend authenticity to whatever I use them for (probably guacamole).  

I started to throw out the peels, but I remembered reading somewhere that citrus peels repel bugs and cats from your garden, so I'm going to cut them into small pieces and throw them under my tomatoes, which seems to have something picking at the lower branches.  

I started to throw out the seeds, but remembered reading somewhere that you can grow key limes from seed (supposedly you can't grow all citrus from seed), so I'm going to give that a go. 

That's what I call a bargain, my friend.  Free limes and uses for every bit of them.  

I also moved some furniture around in my dining room that I've been thinking about, I like it a lot better this way.  It opened up an east facing window to let some real sun in, and provided a place where I put a low table (maybe to be replaced by open shelves) for plants.  This will be a good place for my seedlings instead of under a lamp.  (On a side note--I ADORE my paisley gardening boots!  And Bink's Curious George gardening boots!)

Mopped the floor and cleaned out the laundry closet.  In addition to cleaning the kitchen and getting rid of a bunch of stuff that was here and there and I don't need anymore.  Did some laundry, and I think I'm going to read for a little bit--there's a very compelling book about Compost that I want to finish.  

Random Thoughts...Again....

I've been alone for the last few days, which leads to a lot of thinking.  Thinking leads to a lot of seemingly disconnected thought processes.  I have learned not to question how my mind works because even I can barely follow the logic....   Anyway, here some of my recent thoughts:

• I WANT CHICKENS.  This is happening.  And soon.  I think they will be my birthday present to myself.  Kaleigh and I can build a coop and I think 3 or 4 would be a lovely addition. 
• My coffee sucks.  I'm not sure why I can't make a decent cup of coffee...my sister and I can make pots on the same day, with the same pot, same coffee, same everything, and mine is awful--hers is fabu.  Don't get it.
• I need to water the garden this morning--be right back.......................................................... okay, I'm back.  It seems like my green beans should have beans growing on them.  Maybe it's too early.  Looking forward to that for sure.  There's nothing like fresh green beans.  Well, that's not strictly true, all fresh veggies are pretty awesome.   I can't believe I've never planted a fall garden before this.  Last year I planted a few scraggly vegetables, but didn't really take care of them appropriately, thinking that they wouldn't grow since it wasn't spring.   Now I feel silly about that.  
• Maybe I'll make some curtains for my sewing room today--I've been needing a project to work on.   I'll look through my fabrics and see if I can find something nice to use.  I have some "vintage" (I use the term loosely) sheets that might be good to use.  I wish I had something to hand quilt.  Maybe I should look at my HUGE bin of unfinished tops for something to work on.  It would be nice to have something to do with my hands in the evening.  
• A few days ago, I chopped some herbs from my garden (basil, thyme and rosemary) and put them into an ice tray--covered them with olive oil and froze them.  This was an experiment that I saw on Pinterest (and I think we ALL know that sometimes what people represent on Pinterest isn't what REALLY happens when we try it!) so I thought I'd do it.  I can throw one of the cubes into any recipe for some fresh herb taste.  It worked.  I took the cubes out (they look like green stuff sticking out of lard at this point) and put them into a labeled freezer bag--I think I will throw a few into my tomato sauce later today.  Success!
• I'm missing Hillarie like crazy these days.  
• Looked back in my SUPER-DUPER AWESOME gardening journal to see when green beans were planted, and it's only been a little over a month, it is definitely too early.  They trick me by growing like crazy.  
• I've been thinking about moving the big hutch out of the dining room, or moving it into the corner so I can set up a planting table or shelves there in the sunny window there.  Then I can have more plants inside.  My kitchen window doesn't really get sun, just light so I'm limited as to what can grow there.  
• I need to think about some cooking projects to do with my class.  My assistant is like a genius with play dough, but the kids just love to mix stuff, and eating it is a bonus.  Do some research.

Enough rambling.  I have stuff to do.  I think I'll go mix up my compost and water the pile while I'm at it.  Peace.

Worry...

I've been pretty much moping around the house for the last few days, feeling pretty sorry for myself, and I decided it stops now.  There's a lot to be thankful for, even if things aren't going my way right now.  I took a few days off work--  I don't usually do this because I find that being at work keeps my mind off things, but I just couldn't imagine being able to put on a happy face for my class. 

A friend posted this on Facebook (thanks Kim!) :

Worry is an attempt to control the future.  Guilt is an attempt to control the past.  Let it all go and let God be in control!

Trying....

Anyway, last night I went to the grocery store and got a bunch of marked down tomatoes (not bad tomatoes, just not pretty tomatoes), and when I got home, I started some tomato sauce cooking.  It's been cooking down since last night--in the crock pot, and now the lid is propped open to let some of the water evaporate.  Then I will add onions, peppers, garlic, oregano, fresh basil and whatever else seems appropriate.  I will probably freeze it for when K. comes home--she loves my tomato sauce.  

Fertilized the "orchard" this morning.  (Said orchard being a meyer lemon tree and a key lime tree)   They both look really good.  Everything else in the garden looks good too.  Maybe tomorrow morning I will mulch the cucumbers again.  They are looking droopy.  

Cucumbers are Sprouting!

Went out to the garden this morning--things have been going on personally and I haven't been out there for a couple of days, so I thought I'd water and check things out.  I planted some cucumber seeds on Sunday (this is Wednesday!) and they are sprouting.  Almost all of them.  Very nice.  I don't have much luck with cucumbers here for some reason, so I'm really trying hard to plant different varieties, try different organic pest control applications, water the proper amount, etc.  

Like I said, things are going on personally, and I took the week off to take care of some things.  So today I'm going to get the house in order, mow the grass if it's dry enough out, and work in the garden.  I need some quiet time.  I keep reminding myself that I can't fret over everything, and sometimes things that don't seem good when they are happening, make better things come along.  I TRY to be an optimist.  

Gardening Journal

This year I have made a real effort to keep a gardening journal.  I can never remember what I planted where, how it grew, what kind of green beans were those?  So I've done pretty well.  I keep my very glamorous journal (an ugly spiral notebook--maybe I should glam it up a little, I believe you can never have too much glitter.) on a shelf next to my computer and every night I write a few notes about what I've done that day--if anything.  I write what I bought and what I paid, and if I had to water or if it rained this week, and what I transplanted, or anything else.  I also wrote in there what sproutrobot.com suggests that I plant based on my zip code.  Love that site.  

Cover (specially decorated by me!):

Sample Page:

This is what it looks like--not sure if you can read what's written, but you get the idea.  Each two-page spread has a week listed.  I had divided it up into four sections (showing four years of what happened), but it turns out, half a page isn't enough space for me, so I'm changing to one year per page.  So when the book is open, the left page will be for 2013. and the right page will be for 2014.  I can see from year to year what happened last year.  After 2014 I will get a new book (sometimes I HAVE to spend money--I think it's 99 cents well spent)

I'm not a great gardener, but I've always believed that what I lack in knowledge I can make up in enthusiasm, so I wing it.  It turns out that plants have been growing on earth for millions (at least) of years, and they don't really need much help from me.  They continue to grow in spite of me.  Another beautiful thing.

Simple Sunday...

Simple Sunday is something I made up a while ago to make sure I get a day of peace (or at the very least, a day to stay home) during my busy and stressful week.  I don't always stick to it, but when I need to, I do.

Plan for this week's Simple Sunday...

• Coffee with my sister this morning.  We don't do this enough, and we've both been so busy that we see very little of each other these days.  Sad.
• Plant cucumber seeds in newspaper seed pots that I made myself.  The fall garden is really coming along.
• Read.  I'm now reading three books at one time, which is very unlike me, but they are very different and sometimes I'm not in the mood to read where my food comes from.  It can be upsetting.  So I choose which book I want to read by the mood I'm in.  The books:
• The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  I like this author, but this book is very eye-opening about where food comes from.  Hard to read at times.
• The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel.  One of my all-time favorites, and I reread it now and then.  
• The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah Martin.  This one is like a textbook about compost.  I don't think it's a secret that I have a strange obsession with compost at this point.  But it's not really reading for pleasure.  
• Laundry--I don't mind doing laundry because I can do other things while the laundry is working.  And I love clean-smelling clothes.
• I'd like to do some sewing, but I don't have a project going right now, so that might not happen--I should at least think about a project I want to start.  
• Puttering around my house--one of my very favorite things to do.  Water plants, move this and that, sit in my rocking chair, whatever.  

A Fresh New Start...and more Compost

I am a teacher.  A preschool teacher.  So I guess I don't have to explain why my new year starts in late August, and NOT January 1st.  I love a new school year.  Mrs. Jones (my assistant) and I have had a great first week with our new pumpkins.

Recently, I really feel like my work life is coming together the way it should.  Home life is settling down.  I'm ready to go back to concentrating on me and how I feel and what I want to do.  I am re-instituting the Year of Being Amie.  I did well with it the first time around, but life stuck it's big fat nose in and I got away from it again.  So here we go.

I'm sweaty once again.  I spent a hard hour and a half in the garden this morning.  I took some pictures but it was already so steamy out that they are completely foggy and you can barely see anything.  I'll take some more later and post them. 

I ended up planting some tomato seedlings--I grew them from seed myself, thank-you-very-much--in pots.  They look so tiny.  The "orchard" looks good, considering it's only two trees.  It's looking very garden-y out in my side yard these days.  

Below is my "orchard"--a key lime tree and a meyer lemon tree.  Love them!

Below is my green bean teepee--no green beans yet, but there are lots of flowers, meaning lots of green beans to come!

I mixed up a wheelbarrow full of planting mix, used some for the tomatoes and stored the rest in a Firehouse Subs pickle bucket for later.  I make my mix according (very loosely) to Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening recipe.  Bless Mel for figuring this out for me.  I usually throw a few shovels full of compost (more on that, my favorite gardening subject, later) into my wheelbarrow, then add several shovels full of vermiculite (which I store in a large bin in the garden area outside), and several shovels full of peat moss (which I also store in a large big on top of the vermiculite bin).  Stir it all around with my new shovel, and I use it in my raised beds and my outside pots.  Like I said, I store any extra that I haven't used yet in a five-gallon bucket.  

Compost...is there a more beautiful word in the English language?  What else illustrates the beauty of recycling better than compost?  Throw a bunch of trash in the form of food waste, dead plants, leaves, grass, animal waste (vegetarian animals only), dead yard waste, and it rots into something that helps you grow food!  It's a miracle, really.  AND, if you want to there are things you can do to speed it along...watering your pile, turning it, layering the correct ratio of green things (fresh, plant based materials) to brown things (dead, brown things), but nature does the trick all by itself, even if you do nothing.  Like I've said before--it's a fundamental law of nature--everything rots.  And of course, we humans can't help ourselves but to make a simple process complicated...with tools and thermometers, but they aren't really necessary.  

I do want to say one thing about my process.  I use a bin that I made from three old pallets (see above) and throw all my kitchen scraps in there.  I save them in the kitchen in an old plastic 5 quart ice cream tub and throw them out there when it's full--usually every 1-2 days.  My kitchen has a lot of scraps!  I put tea bags, coffee grounds, vegetable and fruit peelings, eggshells, dryer lint, and anything else that I would throw away except meat and fat.  I don't want any rodents in there!  When I dump my compost tub out there, I usually throw some dead leaves or grass or something over it so the food doesn't attract previously mentioned rodents (I know there are possums around, and squirrels, I don't want to know what else).  I don't really do anything else to this.  And as  a side note, I've read in lots of places that the pile has to "heat up" to do the work.  Mind is never hot--at least not hotter than it gets in Orlando on a summer day.  It just rots quietly.  And it DOES NOT SMELL.  Can't stress that enough.  It just smells like fresh dirt.  

That is Phase One.  Just kidding, that's just one pile.  

Phase Two (okay, maybe I wasn't kidding):  I have another compost pile right next to that one that contains finished compost.  I get some from the landfill, they have this beautiful (well, not so beautiful, but free!) pile of compost on a grassy area and there are always nice people there getting some.  I like to talk to them, much to my daughter's horror.  I don't have a truck, I have a Dodge Caliber, so I put all the bins, five-gallon buckets and whatever else I can find in the back of my car, grab my shovel and go to town (so to speak).  Yes, dirt gets everywhere in my car, but I don't care.  I also put my finished compost--mine takes about a year to stew and get done because I LITERALLY do nothing to it.    My daughter has a friend (yea, Erin!) with horses, and every now and then she drops off a huge bin of composted horse manure, and I add that to my pile of finished compost.  I've also been known to "steal" bags of dried leaves, yard waste, pine needles, etc. from my neighbors' curbs on garbage day.  Call me crazy.  In the spring, when I'm about to plant fresh, I will also buy a bag of several different kinds of compost, whatever I can find.  Mushroom compost, cow manure compost, etc.  Each of these adds different nutrients to the soil for my plants.  I use this to add a shovel full to each pot or raised bed as I replant, and to make my planting mix. 

Phase Three:  This pile is on the other side of the house, where most of  my grass is.  The reason it's there is because it's dry grass.  As I mow my lawn and the bag fills up, I dump them on the other side of my house to dry.  I just leave them there (they are out of sight of the neighbors) in a couple of piles.  As I use the most dry one for mulch (again, not pretty, but its free--I take that back, no mulch is really "pretty"), I add the fresh bags to a second pile.  When the dry pile is gone, I start using the second pile, and putting the fresh bags on the first pile.  

Phase Four:  Leaf Mold Pile.  This one is my favorite.  (I know I'm a composting nut job.)  I have a huge oak tree and other, smaller trees in my front yard, making it difficult to plant there, but giving me a true gift.  Leaves.  I rake these into another pile (behind a tree right in my front yard).  This is amazing stuff.  The dirt under it is black and spongy, and truly a gardener's dream.  When I plant a new raised bed (or bed in the ground), I get some of the stuff at the bottom of this pile and spread it in the bottom, under the planting mix or dirt.  If leaves are mixed in, I'm good with that.  Like I said, everything rots.  Eventually those leaves will nourish the plants.  

I told you this was a beautiful plan.  

This year I plan to scour the neighborhood for more of the neighbors' leaves, etc. and start a lasagna bed next to my driveway, with the goal of a cottage garden there.  Herbs, flowers, strawberries, and maybe some vegetables here and there.  It's ambitious, but it's a process.  Here's the plan:

• gather leaves, yard waste, etc.
• dig out sod, using it elsewhere in yard (low spots, etc.)
• lay down layers of brown cardboard, newspapers, etc.
• cover with free mulch.  
• start at road end (so neighbors are happy) and plant entire area with herbs, flowers, whatever I find that will look nice, and edging with strawberries.  

I think I may work on this in sections as I get materials.  Do areas 4' x 6' at a time, then moving on the next section.  This will keep my yard from sitting "naked" while I wait for materials.   I definitely garden on a budget so I can't go out and buy a yard full of plants at one time.  I'm getting pretty good at propagating plants so that's something that will help.  I do need to think about a low fence or something as a backdrop.  

Wow, this has been a long post.  Not like me at all....