Choosing to Die

In any garden there has to be death before there can be life.  A seed, in itself, is not a living thing.  From its state of death it wakes up and grows into something beyond itself.  Old tomatoes, banana peels, caps from strawberries, and the lettuce gone brown decompose to become the nutrients to help a new plant flourish.  Without death there isn't life.

The same is true for my kiddos.  I have recently realized that the more I "die," the richer I make the soil in which they grow.  It is H-A-R-D for me.  Children, playing with toys, relationships and conversations all day long--all of these things are so very beyond any comfort zone I've ever had.  Give me a computer, a stack of papers, and a calculator.  That is where I feel normal, feel competent, feel rejuvenated.  Alone in a house with three small children?  H-A-R-D.  It is so much easier for me to retreat into a set of tasks than to respond to the calls from the toy room to play.  But, where there is death, the soil is fertile.  When I do the hard thing and put aside my desire for what is best for my kiddos, that is where they thrive.

Isn't that what I want?  Kids that are healthy and happy and a blessing to those around them?  When I stop to think about it, the answer is yes!  Of course I do!  That's my job as a mother!  But during the day, I don't stop to think about it. (Some days I don't really have time to stop to use the bathroom!)  During most days I think about how I need to get the dishes into the dishwasher so that we will have clean forks for dinner.  I know that if I don't do it right now, I will get interrupted 15 times before I get back to the dishwasher, which will be 5 minutes before we have to eat dinner.  I'm sure I'm the only one, right?!

Choices.  We all know that life is the sum total of all the choices that we make.  And I'm choosing to die--to let projects go unfinished, to find the pause button for life dreams, to play Thomas instead of checking email, to do craft time instead of making phone calls.  Wow.  This is hard stuff.  But they are worth it!

Our resident artist.

Is there a better place than a playground for a four year old boy?

Thomas.  Enough said.

What do you do to get balance in your week?  What safeguards do you have in your day in order to focus on relationships while also making sure there is food to eat and clean clothes to wear?

Walls 'o Water

Since I'm still in the age group of ladies who are birthing babies, I must say that the first time that I heard "Walls o' Water" I thought of pregnancy and bag of waters.  Now, on to the real posting.

I live in Zone 4 which has a very long winter (and when I say long winter, I mean six  months of snow and eighth months of bare, leaf-less trees).  It isn't technically "safe" to plant warm weather crops until Memorial Day.  Any planting of corn, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and zucchini before Memorial Day is like playing Russian roulette with your plants.  In addition to a very short growing season, we also have a dry climate, a lot of wind, mild summer temperatures, and nightly temperatures in the low 50s.  Seems like an impossible climate to grow tomatoes and peppers in, doesn't it?

I found out about "Walls o' Water" in May of this year.  The gardening guru who introduced me to them said that I could plant tomatoes as early as APRIL 1st with them.  (Just to give you a little perspective on how ridiculous this seemed to me--there was snow three times a week, on average, this April.  Who plants tomato plants in the SNOW?!)  If I didn't know this lady personally and if I didn't know she had tried them with success in Montana, I would not have believed her.  (Mountain man was skeptical anyway!)

At $10 for a three pack, I bought two packages that afternoon and started using them on my tomatoes.  We had daily highs in the upper 50s for most of May, so it was still a good opportunity to try them out.  The tomato plants that started in the Walls 'o Water are almost twice as big as the plants that I set out without the Walls o' Waters.  In fact, I harvested two little roma-size tomatoes yesterday.  In June.  (Again, I wish my warm-weather friends knew how ridiculous this is!)  In addition to keeping the tomatoes warm, it also protects the plants from the crazy wind we have here!

I was told that you can use the Walls o' Water for peppers as well but I haven't tried it yet.  I have 18 tomato plants and 16 pepper plants, so I saved the usage for my tomatoes.  I've also heard that you can use them to protect baby squash and cucumbers.  I tried doing that with a hill of cucumbers will little success.  It may have worked better had I just had one plant in each Wall o' Water.

Another added benefit of the Wall o' Waters is for catching flying bugs.  When I was having a fly problem with my leafy-greens, I found quite a few of the little guys floating around in the Wall 'o Waters.  It was much easier to show the bugs to my bug expert for identification that way rather than trying to catch the little garden-killers without squashing them.

So, there you have it. My whole-hearted endorsement of Walls o' Waters!  Let me know if you decide to use them next year!!



The tomatoes in the front are the first tomatoes that I set out with the Walls 'o Water.  They grew larger than the top of the WoW, so I caged them and moved the WoW to the next row of plants to jumpstart their growth.



My backyard

In efforts to expand our food production, we did major renovations to the backyard this spring.  I couldn't find a picture of the backyard with the huge lilacs along the back fence.  You'll have to use your imaginations!  The entire back third of our yard was covered by the shade of the massive bush-tres. Here is a picture just after the lilacs were cut and before the garden plots were created:

Sometimes a lady will do some crazy things to grow green things!  My dear sweet mountain man cut down three 14' lilacs, moved a 8' x 10' sandbox, moved five existing raised beds, and cross fenced the yard.  He loves me.  A lot.  Here is what the garden looked like last week:

This is the left side of garden.  We have raised beds along the outside edges of the garden with open planting space in the middle of the garden.

This is the right side of the garden with raised beds on the outside edges.  The green tubes are Walls 'o Water for my tomatoes.  I will have a post about these soon!

This is an up-close picture of the left side of the garden planted in the Square Foot method.  Pictures of raised beds to follow soon!

Ma Ingalls

I've been doing a lot of crafting with my Friend.  I made a hat for my husband (well, I crocheted until I ran out of yarn!).  We made a trip to Jo Ann's.  I learned to crochet flowers for little girl hair bows (Picture to follow!  So very cute!). Last night I was teaching Friend how to cut out a pattern and make a shirt.  In the midst of said project she was texting a mutual friend of ours who affectionately said that I was turning into Ma Ingalls.  Really?  Ma Ingalls?  Makes me feel like I should grow my hair out and put it up into a bun.

In reality, there ARE a lot of changes going on in our house.  Most of them started last year.  I've never lived through "hard economic times." If this was (is?) the "Great Recession" what was the Great Depression like?  Curious, my mountain man and I started reading about the Great Depression.  (Yes, we are nerdy that way.)  At the height of the Depression, unemployment was 25%.  (Currently, true unemployment is about 16% in the US.)  People survived mostly because they owned their house, grew their own food, and knew basic "life skills."

What we learned about the Depression stirred up our thoughts. We are making payments, but we don't own our own home.  We grew enough food last year to feed ourselves for about one month.  We didn't know how to grow very many vegetables, to preserve food, or to make clothes.  We had no way to heat our home if something happened to supply lines to Montana.  All of a sudden, this very independent-minded lady (as well as her very responsible mountain man) felt lacking in our abilities to take care of our family.

We decided to make some life changes.  We expanded our gardening efforts.  We bought a woodstove.  We learned how to can salsa, applesauce, and pickles.  I started learning how to sew.  I started learning how to crochet.  By no means do I consider myself proficient at any of these things, but I know more now than I did last year!  Even if our economy somehow rebounds and life returns to "normal" in this country, I now know how to do things that most of the world for all of history knows how to do.  Things can be taken away but knowledge cannot.

Part of this blog is to share how I am growing in these skills.  Maybe you'll want to learn along with me?

My mountain man making applesauce to can in January.

My and my sweet girl making hats and sewing.

Growing Old Friends

My mom has a garden flag that says "It Takes a Long Time to Grow Old Friends."  It's the truth, isn't it?  In our world of instant everything, wouldn't it be great to have instant friends?  On a rare occasion we may find a kindred spirit, one of those people who thinks like you, parents like you, loves their husband, loves their home.  Even when we find such a soul, the friendship with that person still must be built as joys and sorrows are shared. It may take years.  The absence of these types of friends can seem almost overwhelming at times.

Right now I have the joy and privilege of sharing a week of my life with one of my dearest friends.  She and her five kiddos are making their way around the country visiting friends as their husband/papa is serving a 13 month tour in Afghanistan.  Their visit is like water to a thirsty woman. In the midst of conversations that last for hours on end (after children and interruptions are down for the night!), I can't help but question how to build this type of friendship with the women who share a ZIP code with me.

Just as plants need nutrients, sun, water, and the right temperature to grow, our relationships need love, attention, compassion, forgiveness, and most of all, time to grow.  Sometimes the wait can seem more than we can bear when we desire companions to walk along side us and live life with us.  But we have to commit ourselves to investing in the lives of those around us.  We never know when that relationship will bloom into something absolutely beautiful.

Rhubarb Pie!

We don't yet have a rhubarb plant (although we are going to procure one this fall!), but I do have a fabulous rhubarb pie recipe (from AllRecipes.com) that I am happy to pass along.  Enjoy!!

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Fresh Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients:

6 cups chopped rhubarb

1 cups white sugar

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie

Directions:

-Preheart oven to 450 degrees F.

-Combine sugar and flour.  Sprinkle 1/4 of it over pastry in pie plate.  Heap rhubarb over this mixture.  Sprinkle with remaining sugar and flour.  Dot with small pieces of butter.  Cover with top crust.
-Place pie on lowest rack in oven.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking for 40 to 45 minutes.  Serve warm or cold.  (If you eat it warm, make sure to have some vanilla ice cream in the house!!)

Shoes!

Here are my FAVORITE shoes for the garden--the Alice Work Croc!  Super comfortable, super easy to clean (just take a water hose to the dirt and mud!), and when purchased in pink, they are super cute, too.  When investing in gardening gear, this is a must have!

Pictures from my community garden

A close-up of our potatoes in the community garden

I live on a city lot that is less than 1/8 of an acre.  When we bought the house, the lot was measured in feet.  It has always seemed backward to this east-coast transplant that Montana is the land of the "wide open spaces" but also the home of teeny-tiny yards. I found out about my city's community garden program last year and rented a 25' x 30' plot for only $25, which included the water.  (In Montana we have to water at least three times a week in a normal year due to lack of rain!)  As you can see, the community garden is a fabulous deal!  ven though last year's garden wasn't as productive as we had hoped, it was a wonderful learning experience for us.  In addition to expanding our ability to grow food, we were also able to meet experienced gardeners and ask questions, which is always a great thing!

We have the same community garden plot this year, and last night we went there to hill up our potatoes (a "potato primer" post for my friends who have never grown potatoes will come in a few days!).  Here are a few pictures from last night's family work party.  Because of the expanded garden we have in our backyard, we gave 1/4 of the plot to a friend of ours so that they could get their feet wet in gardening as well.

You can almost see that I divided the garden into four sections.  In the upper right are potatoes, in the lower right is corn, the lower left is our friend's section, and the upper left is filed with squashes, cucumbers, and melons.

It's never too late to learn how to water!  Here is my 4 yo crazy man manning the hose.

 

My dear, sweet mountain man going for yet another wheelbarrow full of grass clippings for the potatoes.

I shot the messenger

Well, I didn't exactly SHOOT the messenger.  (Jeremy would like to take a pellet gun to the birds in the mornings, but there is a $5,000 fine for shooting birds in town.)  I did, however, target the wrong culprit.  Have you ever done that before?  After further inspection of the garden yesterday, I found similar bite marks my cabbage and my beets that I had found on the chard and the spinach. Hmmmm....those plants are not close to the raised bed that was getting chomped on.  Hmmmm.....

I did what any sane newbie-farm-girl would do and call my new friend Amy, pest expert extraordinaire!  Seems she had the same problem with her swiss chard last year and had to use diatomaeous earth on the pill bugs that were eating everything in her garden and her greenhouse.  After the kids went to bed I water the garden well (rain and dew just do not provide enough water for plants in the typical Montana garden) and then my dear husband donned on face mask and gloves and spread the DE around the plants.  (The link above gives a fabulous explanation of what DE is, how it works, and how to use it.  For those unfamiliar, it is an organic pest control measure that is non-toxic to humans if ingested, but harmful to lungs if inhaled.)  It should take a day or two to see results and the DE makes the bugs explode from the inside out.  Is it evil to think the buggers deserve it for chompin' on my chard?

The birds weren't the only messenger who got it yesterday.  Although more self-controlled than usual, I also shot at the messenger that told me we need to pay almost $5,000 for a new boiler in the house we are trying to sell.  It is amazing how emotions can overcome reason and how the messenger can get the force of the emotions when bad news is shared.  Just like the birds were showing me that I had a bug problem (by visiting the pea patch and eating the buggers when they came out of their holes for their evening snack of pea leaves), my dear husband was just letting me know of the problem we were facing together.  We have a choice in those moments, don't we?  Fear or faith.  Falling apart, or looking to our Source of strength and wisdom.  I would like to think that in my almost 32 year I would be able to hear bad news and remain unshaken.  I'm still working on it.  The only way to get better in my responses is to keep having bad news come my way (not something I'm asking for!)  But maybe when bad news DOES come, I'll think of the birds and try not to shoot the messenger :)

The carnage

I took some pictures last night of the damage by the birds.  I read that birds are scared of shining metals and that aluminum foil can help to deter them.  You'll see some pieces I've patched around the raised beds.  There was no damage to the new lettuce heads that I transplanted yesterday, but I may put foil around those, too, just to keep them safe.  There is so much damage, it is hard to tell if the birds had breakfast in my garden.  I suppose if the swiss chard completely disappears that I'll have to try another remedy!

I've also read that moth balls keep birds and squirrels at bay, but they are toxic to kids and animals.  Not something you want floating around in an almost organic garden! (Miracle Grow is my one non-organic addition!) I've thought of putting a pint canning jar halfway down into the soil and then putting the moth ball in the canning jar.  It would keep the moth ball from melting into my soil and poisoning the food but the smell would keep the critters away.  Anyone have thoughts?  Do you have a proven method of keeping birds and squirrels out of your garden?  It's the blessing of living in a concrete jungle that I don't have bunnies to deal with, too!!

Poor little swiss chard.  My sweet girl planted these and was NOT happy with the birds!

See the chunks out of the upper leaf?

My attempts to scare away the birds.  Not exactly a Better Homes and Gardens shot!

You have to start somewhere

We've all been there--at the very beginning.  The beginning of a not-so-fun task.  The beginning of a new adventure.  The birth of a dream.  The birth of a child.  All of them can seem overwhelming.  We usually don't feel as prepared as we would like.  But you just have to start somewhere.  My little gardening adventure was much like that--I just started.  Four tomato plants in 5-gallon buckets.  Four cucumber plants where the grass used to be.  Some dill, some basil, and a few peppers.  All of a sudden, I was a "gardener."  I didn't feel like one.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing something!  I looked like a gardener on the outside, especially to people who didn't know a cucumber from a cabbage.  But I knew the truth--I had no idea what I was doing!  Wasn't it the same when I started my first job?  When I got married?  When I had my first baby? I looked like an accountant, a wife, a mother, but I had no idea how to do any of it.  (Except, of course, what I had read in books!!)

I was a CPA for 9 years.  I've been married for ten.  I now have three kids and have been doing the mommy-thing for almost six year.  It all started with a first day.  And four years later after that first tiny little garden (that became even smaller with a June snow two weeks after we planted!) I'm gardening almost 1200 sq feet of space.  There is much I still don't know, but I'm still learning and still doing.  We can't learn anything but just sitting around.  We have to start somewhere!

We started small....current pictures to follow soon!

Sweet Girl eats candy while mama plants cucumbers 4 years ago.