My Inspirational Blogs.

Every once in a while a friend will tell me how they find my blog intimidating. How I'm doing so much stuff. I think that's mostly because I neglect to blog about burrito nights. Or about those free irises we got and never planted and are probably dead now. Or the bowls of saved seed pods that have been sitting on top of the toaster for three months that I never get around to shelling or storing. Or the fact that my garden is infested with symphilids (I think) and all my tiny seedlings are dying, slowly being eaten from underneath. We are shaping up for few to no winter crops, again. Next year will be better...next year will be better...

Anyhoo - here's some blogs that I like to read for inspiration and also for feeling bad about my own garden and skills. I think, though, the reason I like a lot of them are because they share the disasters as well as the successes and tips. After all, the best way to learn is by failure.

Throwback at Trapper Creek
This is from a working farm a bit outside of Portland in the Columbia Gorge. I get some great tips for local climate and varieties that do well here. It really makes me want a greenhouse too. Plus they have cute dogs.

Northwest Edible Life
This one is Seattle-based, so I still get lots of great information for our region's specific climate and needs. It's more urban-based too, so it's more on my scale. It's also a little snarky sometimes, which I like.

Root Simple
These guys are as close to celebrities that "urban homesteading" can get. They are based out of Los Angeles and have two books out now. It's an informative blog for gardening, housekeeping and politics. They had a couple posts recently outlining their summer failures that are pretty entertaining.

5 Acres and a Dream
I like this one because it's just about a couple who bought five acres and are trying to make it work. It's like a potential glimpse into my future. Maybe? There is also lots of home repair and remodeling going on here.

Farmama
This is a family in Colorado who run a market farm. I like it because it's Colorado and because they are making it work, also the woman spins her own yarn from her own sheep and dyes it with natural dyes that she grows herself. Talk about doing everything!

How Things are Going in the Summer
If you knit, this is intimidating. I like looking at it though. Plus she started working on a sheep farm and there are pictures of lambs now in addition to really complex knitted items.

hi how are you?
This is a blog of a friend of mine. It's often entertaining and usually inspiring because somehow she finds time on random afternoons to make jam and can on a whim. I feel like I have to plan for a week and mentally prepare to get all of that in.

So, those are a few of the many blogs I read regularly. I find that while I'm at work I need a high-dose of daydreaming and inspiration to keep going. So, thanks to all the other bloggers out there who remind me that there are different steps on a long path and many opportunities in my future if I just keep working at it.

Picture update: August

I took most of yesterday off work to help tend to Mike, who had wrist surgery on Tuesday. He tended to me back when I broke my arm and had multiple surgeries, so now it's my turn. I did a couple things around the house that I normally don't have time to do.

I baked some whole wheat bread. It is quite possibly the worst bread I have ever made. I let it rise too long and it collapsed in the oven. I also used up some old flour and I don't think that helped matters at all.




I finished up some yogurt I started on Sunday night. A half gallon of milk makes this much yogurt:



Tomato season is here!



I learned a new trick from America's Test Kitchen (I love those guys), if you store tomatoes with the stem side down they stay fresh for longer. Oxygen penetrates the core through the stem and this prevents much air from accessing the fruit. Cool!




I did a brief outdoor tour...Bees in the roses.




We might, might, actually get to eat a cabbage from the garden this year. They were nearly dead, eaten by aphids and cabbageworms. I did two applications of castille soap and water spritzed all over the plant and it did the trick! We've got three cabbages (out of six) that survived. Still not much of a head on any of them though.




The squash bed...



There are two delicata squash coming in!




This happened. One of the tomato plants got too heavy and fell over, bending the wire to the cage. We tied it back up as best we could and rigged a guywire system, but now it's falling over in a different direction. Lesson learned. Next year will be heavy on the pruning and probably trying out a different staking system.




A couple big ones...

Fashionably Late.

Two weeks prior to my niece's first birthday I decided I would knit her a garment. I found a simple cardigan and thought at most it would take me three weeks and it would be fashionably late. Well....it's two months later. But it's done!




Well, I still need to sew on the buttons, but it's pretty much done! I'm still in disbelief that I actually finished this. About the time I realized I had sewed on the front panels of the sweater backwards I started to doubt my ability to finish and very nearly just went to the store to buy a sweater. Hopefully I'll be able to update with a shot of her wearing it soon.

Mystery Squash.

We have a volunteer squash from our compost. Any ideas? It's starting to look like a pumpkin....but I don't recall having any pumpkins last year.

The Experiment.

I have been wanting to try a little experiment around our house lately. Yesterday we finally started. Once a week in the evenings after work we are going for a no TV-Internet-phones-music environment. We could play the music ourselves, but no turning on the iPod or computer for it.

Then once a month, we're aiming for the last day of the month, no electricity. If that day falls on a weekday, I obviously won't be able to not use electricity at work. I don't think my employer would take that as an excuse not to do anything. But, when not at work that day I will not use my phone, I will ride my bike or walk, I will not turn on the lights, when the sun goes down I'll use a candle, we'll use the BBQ to cook or have a salad. I'm hoping that it's a little bit of a zen practice.

When I lived by myself I got in the habit of being at home in silence. I wouldn't turn on the TV or put on music when I got home. I would go about my business of cooking dinner or reading a book without the noise distraction. I didn't do it all the time. Sometimes it's nice to put on some good music and clean the house and chop and saute. Not having that constant background noise is good for us though. It makes us just be with ourselves, which is something that is oddly easy to avoid this day in age. It's so simple to turn on the TV or fiddle with your phone or hop in the car. Going through every day like that you hardly have to interact with the world at all.

I take the car a couple days a week to work to make the commute a little more tolerable and a lot quicker in the mornings. After driving for two days in a row though, I miss riding my bike and the time to myself that I get on the train. I would venture to guess that most people who have access to a car would not opt for a train ride for a commute as long as mine. I certainly didn't want to opt for that in the start. It seemed like such an inconvenience to bike and ride the train than to just drive. Once I started doing it though it wasn't as bad as I thought. It was nice to get in a little exercise, some fresh air, and a little time to read or fiddle with my phone while the freeway slips by outside the window, none of my concern.

I think if we deprive ourselves of some of those luxuries, even for one day a month or one day a week, that we will come to appreciate it more. We will find that those luxuries aren't really that necessary and we are actually happier without them being so present in our lives.

Last night was our first night on The Experiment. We ate our dinner outside. We walked through the garden and discussed the upcoming crops and pest management. We planned out the fence we want to build and figured out the layout. We talked about our future for the yard as a whole in landscaping and gardening. We talked about what we want to do for the wedding. We talked about what we want to do in the future in the grand scheme of things. We got a helluva lot done! Had it not been an Experiment day we would have watched a couple TV shows and I would have worked on some knitting, but we could do that any day.