Sunday, August 22, 2021

8.22.2021

When things feel like they are falling apart, I tend to look inwards and establish some semblance of control. For the last 4 years, it was impossible to not spend absurd amounts of time glued to the news. Lately it has become too much for me. It seems to be a good possibility that the POTUS has dementia, and only now that things are falling apart in Afghanistan has it become ok for the MSM to admit that it might be the case. The scene in Australia is out of some dystopian novel - and is similar in other countries. Lockdowns and madness abound. I just can't look anymore. It has been on my mind to begin writing here again. The hope is that it will allow me to capture the wonderful things that are absolutely happening, and are oftentimes overshadowed by the outside world. I'm trying to redirect my focus inward and not lose sight of all the wonderful everyday magic that surrounds us.

The kids have been back in school for a week now. No masks, and fully in person, so things feel somewhat normal in that regard. Back in 2020, I turned to Amazon and acquired a number of workbooks for each of the kids that covered all the different subjects. I used them to supplement what they were doing in school while e-learning, and continued to use them when the kids returned to school because everything was being done 100% on Chromebook, and I was concerned that my crew would forget how to hold a pencil. Then over this past summer, I stocked back up on workbooks to keep them busy in an attempt to avoid the "summer slide." We weren't always on top of it, but I think it helped. Eleanor attended the Summer Bridge program at our school because she needed a bit of extra help with reading and math. I've had one foot out the door, ready to jump to homeschooling in the event the school district mandated mask wearing or virtual learning. I feel like Eleanor and Jonathan have lost something in the strangeness of the last two school years, so I've started supplemental homeschooling. While they do attend public school full time, I try to reinforce what they are learning at school with additional exercises at home in the same workbooks that we've used during the pandemic. It feels like a good balance for now.

The garden is an unusual spot for August. Usually by now it is a wild mess, but thanks to the helping hands of Josh, the garden is weeded and has many empty spots. This year I finally admitted that I don't really enjoy growing vegetables, but I also was able to admit that I can't let go of it for now because I'm concerned about the grocery stores. We can grow potatoes easily enough - and spinach, too. We've stocked up on dry goods just in case things go really go sideways. I would love to be doing all these things because they were my passion - but honestly, my passion is keeping my family alive, not the garden itself. I've decided that for now it is good enough to keep the space ready to use if things really do get bad enough that we can't rely on buying fresh produce at Aldi's. The rest of the space is being used to grow beautiful perennial flowers and herbs. All that being said - I do hope that I can find some love of growing vegetables again. I think once it stops feeling like a matter of life and death and more like a hobby, the love will return.

There is more to say, but I'll save it for later. I'm setting a modest goal of posting in here once a week.


Monday, July 30, 2018

Does anyone blog anymore? A recap.

I wish I hadn't stopped. So much has happened since my last post (on Jan 2nd, 2017). I think I was a bit jaded at what had happened to the blogging landscape, and I let it deter me from keeping up in here.

I will attempt to briefly catch up with all that has happened in the last year and a half.

-Josh and I adopted a plant based diet. In reality, we are oil free vegan, though we didn't use the term vegan at first because we were primarily concerned about health. We've lost about 30 pounds each just from dropping meat and dairy. I'm still trying to lose more weight --- and he is trying to build muscle.


-The garden keeps growing. I now have two gardens - and they both produced this year! I've run out of sunny spots to grow in the yard, so next year I'm going to work more on vertical growing in the space that I have.


-Michael is 9, going on 15. He loves Harry Potter and devoured the entire series so far this year, and is now moving on to The Hobbit. He still loves video games (pokemon & minecraft, primarily). He is so bright and funny, yet very sensitive. He is mostly kind to his siblings.


-Jonathan is 7. He is a wild man, with the best laugh you have ever heard. The girls appear to be crazy for him, though I'm not sure he knows what to make of it. Reading has been a struggle for him, but it turned out he was a bit far sighted, and prescription lens are helping with that. Wereas his brother is happiest curled up in the corner of a couch with a book or electronic device, Jonathan prefers to spend his time in the great outdoors, hunting for wildlife and hanging out in the "fort."


-Eleanor just turned 4. She is beautiful, clever and a princess warrior mommy. She dotes on her stuffed animals and baby dolls, simultaneously fighting (or making) crime with Jonathan. She makes friends everywhere she goes.


-All three cats (Fitz, Ferg & Fawkes) are still with us, and most recently we've added on Felix, the 8 pound Chiweenie. We love him so (and we love the cats, too, but they are on strike waiting for us to get rid of the dog).






And that should should have everyone caught up now. I'm afraid that blogging may be fading away, but so long as the platform exists, I will try to keep up here.

Monday, January 2, 2017

Growing a Garden: January

Before I knew anything about gardening, I considered it to be a hobby relegated to the spring and summer. Now I know that for every month of the year, there are activities to be tended to to ensure a fantastic garden year round. I stumbled upon this guide during the last year, and I think it sums up nicely what a vegetable gardener in my zone (8a) can expect to get into and at what time. {Monthly Garden Calendar for the Piedmont} Here it is now the first week of January, and I'm getting ready to start my first seedlings (leeks - both American Flag & Carentan) by this weekend. This will be my first venture into indoor growing using Jiffy Pellets & a Shop Light. As is common with me, I tend to stumble upon an EVEN BETTER WAY to do almost everything garden related after I've already committed to something else. In this case, I learned about Winter Sowing the day after Christmas. Of course this was after Santa delivered BIG TIME and brought me a shop light and many many jiffy peat pellets. Alas. I'm saving up 2 liter bottles (I need 33 more) in order to "Winter Sow" my tomatoes, peppers & cukes, and I'll be starting my other indoor starts (brassicas, mainly) under the grow lights.

Other exciting garden endeavors? I went down to Tractor Supply w/ Pa-in-law and acquired 2 cattle panels, and a pile of t-posts. These cattle panels will be used to trellis tomatoes & other vining fruit.

More to come on the gardening front, but I'll make sure to post some pics from the garden soon!


Monday, December 12, 2016

2017: For Every Season...

Hello friends!

I'm so excited to finally pull a seat back up to this place. I've been so distracted for so long. I know that no one single event (*cough* an election *cough*) should consume a person's time for so long and to such great distraction, but that is what has happened to me. C'est la vie. Now that all of this is behind us, I feel like I can finally really begin paying attention to all of the other things that are so important to me (in lieu of never tearing my gaze away from Fox, Twitter and Drudge). For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. Now is the time for nurturing, caring for a home, growing a garden and raising a family.

I have plans for this place - it's original intent was to be a digital scrapbook of sorts for my children. I still want that to be its main purpose, but I would like to expand that purpose to sharing the little bits & pieces of wisdom & knowledge I have acquired along the way. Not only am I going to talk about why it's important to keep a tidy home, I'm going to show you my own methods on video shared through my youtube channel. Cleaning tips, gardening tips, crochet tips, cooking tips - and not just those things, but all things related to our home life. I'll also be sharing my first great effort at decorating our home. It turns out that cozy minimalist is a real genre, and I look to implement that theme throughout our home.

In the meantime, in these last few weeks of 2016, I'll be frantically crocheting some last minute gifts, cooking, cleaning, chasing after the kids and eating well with my people. I'm sure I'll pop in from time to time before January 1st - but if you don't come across these pages until then, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

XOXO,
Ker


Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Do you want to build a (vegetable) garden?

If only I knew then what I know now... and other things I never thought I would say about vegetable gardening.

In the 24 years I lived in Arizona, I never felt much of an urge to grow anything (besides our family). Upon arriving in the South, I quickly realized that gardening is a *thing* here. If folks weren't growing flowers in their yard, they probably were growing tomatoes (at least in a pot). Our first summer here we were the benefactor of many gallon ziplock bags full of peppers and tomatoes. Almost out of nowhere the overwhelming urge to start our very own veggie garden began to weigh heavily on my mind. Then, last spring (after too many springs had passed us by) a neighbor gifted us a raised bed out of galvanized metal. My father in law decided to bring his raised bed down to our place (after vegetables had failed to thrive in his shady yard) and we officially had 72 sq ft of raised beds to grow our own vegetables.

$200+ later, the beds were filled with straw, top soil and mushroom compost, plus peppers, tomatoes, cucumber and sweet potato slips. I recorded a video recapping our first year experience here:


It was so much fun, and such a fantastic experience... but I quickly wished that I had more space to grow, and was discouraged by how much it was going to cost to build the additional raised beds I needed. I needed more raised beds because here in the Upstate of South Carolina, the soil lends itself more to making pottery than it does to growing carrots. I lamented that there wasn't a way for me to just grow right in the ground without the exorbitant cost of bringing in tons of soil/compost. 

Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon the mittleider method, and I was pretty stoked about that. Raised beds full of material that didn't have to be soil (mittleider often calls for a mixture of sand and sawdust to fill the beds), and I just had to feed it weekly with this mittleider mix/plant food to yield excellent results? Sign me up! Then, while researching more about the mittleider method, I started to come across youtube videos with titles like "Mittleider vs Back to Eden"... and because I'm curious, I wanted to know more about the Back to Eden method. Back to Eden lead me to Ruth Stout, Deep Mulching and basically the concept of growing a vegetable garden employing permaculture methods. The basic concept, no matter what you call it, is this: cover your ground with a thick layer of organic material (such as wood chips, leaves, straw... ) and over several months, that material will break down and begin to work wonders on even the crappiest of soil, making it friable, loamy, and full of rich nutrients that will keep you plants super happy! Added bonus - the deep covering keeps the soil nice and moist, so watering is greatly reduced.

So, if I knew then what I know now, what would I have done differently? Well - instead of having my husband blow all the leaves into piles to be mulched off to the side of our property last fall, I would have had him mulch the leaves over where I wanted my garden to be planted. I would have piled the leaf mulch up so high (8-12 inches) and then this past spring I would have planted straight into the ground. 

I am here to tell you - it doesn't need to cost hundreds of dollars in building raised beds and filling them with soil and other fertilizers. Forget all that. If you have a yard and a space to grow vegetables, just cover it with mulch this fall! Next spring you will thank me!

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Fall 2016

Sometimes I forget that I live in such a beautiful place. I thought it might be nice to share some photos from around the yard, and a quick video tour I made today. Enjoy the beautiful leaves!

















October 2016

I'm going to go ahead and call this my last photo dump post. It's helpful for me to have any activity on the blog, but dumping all these pictures in one place without context about what we were doing isn't really staying true to my intention of using this blog as a family photo album of sorts. I've recently started to enjoy making "vlogs" and posting them to youtube (especially about gardening) and I hope to continue expanding on that with videos not only on gardening, but cooking, cleaning and other matters of the home. 

Anyway - here is October 2016!
Jon

Mike

Ellers

Mike promoted to "banana" belt 

Boys @ the dentist - no cavities!

Woodchips piled up in my future Ruth Stout/B2E/Deep Mulch Garden

Garden plans for Spring 2017

Beautiful Dogwoods in all their fall splendor

The boys enjoying the view from Pretty Place Chapel, SC

Ellers & Daddy at Pretty Place Chapel

Pretty Place Chapel (Aunt Sarah officially made Bryan "Uncle" to the Beasties)


The boys & Uncle Steve right before Sarah & Bryan's wedding

Ellers was a kitty cat again this Halloween. She makes one cute kitten.