As you may know if you’re been reading along for a while, we hosted our annual summer cookout this weekend. It was great! Here are a few photos of the setup. I lost track of my phone once it got underway, so no photos during. The weather was absolute perfection. We were so thankful it didn’t rain. For a while it was overcast and we were a bit worried, but that blew over. The sun was back out and the…
tao te ching study group
July 26, 2018Hey gardening friends! For those of you who are spiritually minded, I have created a study group on the blog. I am rereading the Tao te Ching and writing down my thoughts as I go to try and make sense of it. If you want to follow along, that would be fantastic! The text of this short little book is freely available here and there around the web, just do a bit of googling. Note that there are several versions.…
time alone
July 23, 2018I am sticking with my intention to read the book Simple Abundance throughout the year, more or less. I’m not diligent, but I do pick it up every few days and read the entry for that day. In today’s entry Sarah talks to us about spending time alone. Sometimes it is necessary to snatch time whenever we can find it. This may mean in the very early morning, the wee hours late into the night, or at some point in…
i’m digging…
July 19, 2018This week I am digging a gorgeous new canna lily I picked up at Meijer over the weekend. I’ve had cannas in the past, years ago, and then I got over the whole “dig them up and store them inside over the winter for replanting next year” thing. Too much trouble! Am I the only one who thinks this way? Then I met Canna ‘Red Shades’ – WOW! – this one made me change my mind. This is the actual…
black bean & corn salsa
July 16, 2018We continue to gear up for our summer cookout and I am thumbing through my multitude of cookbooks and doing online searches for some great dishes to make. We do our cookouts potluck style, which means there will be a great variety and quantity of food from not only ourselves but also our guests. This gives me a lot of room for trying new dishes – if something fails, it’s no big deal. There’s plenty of other food available. This…
what’s happening in the garden
July 9, 2018Hi all! We are busy bees in our household right now, preparing for our annual cookout. Just popping in to give a quick garden update. These preparations get me outdoors and noticing things I otherwise might have missed. Last year, I saw the sweetest flowers that I almost walked right past, and the year before that I was able to snap some photos of a perfect butterfly, here. We have a bunch of cherry tomatoes. This is the first time…
houseplants, tried & true
July 2, 2018Some thoughts on houseplants…I can summarize my approach by saying: choose 2 or 3 varieties that are practically indestructible and repeat these throughout the house. I know, pretty boring, right? While I have a fairly green thumb when it comes to outdoor gardening, I did not inherit my Mom’s knack for maintaining a glorious array of houseplants. However, I have found a few plants that seem to do well regardless of how much attention they may or may not receive.…
mother nature is taking over
June 25, 2018It seems that the garden is reaching that state where Mother Nature has taken over and I’ve lost all control. The weeds are CRAZY! Does this ever happen to you? I wish that I had some lovely “after” photos to show you, but that is not the case. I will get this situation under control soon, but not right now. Truth be told, my garden started out that way this year and I’ve struggled ever since to reign it in.…
word of the year
June 18, 2018I’ve taken to choosing a word to be my guiding theme during the year for the past few years. The chosen word represents something that might’ve been a challenge for me recently. Some past words were courage and challenge. For 2018, having found that my state of mind and creativity seem to have been blocked for a while, or even closed or fixated, I chose the word Open. I am very happy to report that for the first time since…
how do you grow your garden?
June 11, 2018With the prevalence of hard-packed clay soil in these parts, I’ve become a big proponent of raised beds for vegetable gardening. They allow for better control of soil structure and nutrients, along with better drainage and possibly better protective methods – more on that later. Each year, I add a new raised bed to my garden. Or to be honest, let me say that my sweet and handy man constructs a new one for me. They are made from cedar…
