Family

Recently we traveled to visit some extended family a couple of states away. Family means everything to me, and I've come to know that the reason for that is my parents always put emphasis on family. We were (are) a pretty tight knit family, my parents, sisters, and me. We spent holidays with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles. There were various family reunions to attend and occasional telephone chats with far-flung cousins.

As the cousins grow up, and people move farther away from their "roots", I see this changing. When my great-aunts and -uncles are gone, will we still keep in touch with their children? I was lucky enough to be brought up with old-fashion traditions regarding family. And I intend to do my part to see those traditions continue.



Sit long, talk much





Young meets young-at-heart

Museum visits

I'be been kinda busy lately, so haven't been blogging. I spent a few days in Memphis with my parents, sisters, and nephew. Unfortunately my husband had to work, so didn't get to join us. The first day, my sisters, nephew, and I went to the Pink Palace Museum. We've been a couple times before, although not in years. Unfortunately, J was scared of the animatronic dinosaurs. He was interested in the miniature, hand-carved, working circus though.




The next day, along with my parents, we went to the Childrens' Museum. But don't be fooled---just because it's a museum aimed toward children doesn't mean the adults can't have fun too!














Who says the whole family can't have fun wherever you go?

My garden

The garden is growing like crazy right now. We've got plenty of squash and zucchini. Also we've got:



Cucumber plants growing nicely. I probably will pick the first cuke today.





Watermelon. I only planted one plant, just to see how it would do in the raised bed.





Broccoli! We've got lots of it, which is great since we are big broccoli eaters around here.

double nephews

At a family gathering recently, our great-nephew and nephew were together for the first time. They are 7 months apart in age, but they managed to play together a bit, and watch another nephew outside who was shooting fireworks.

Recent guests

We've had some guests to our home lately. First off is this lovely lady:







It's not unusual for us to have deer, but they're not normally this close to the house.


Our next visitors were a couple of these:




They just appeared one day, taking a dust bath in the hole my dogs dug in the backyard when they were mole hunting. We've got an adult red tail hawk that hangs out in the lower front yard and feasts on the crawdads in their little mud castles, so we're wondering if these are a couple of baby red tail hawks. Whatever they are, they're adorable. They've made 2 appearances so far.

Saturday market goodies

This was my first visit to the Saturday market in a neighboring town. There were several participants, and I found lots of goodies:

nice red onions with tops still attached
organic yellow squash
organic elephant garlic with top still attached
organic turnip greens
French bread
homemade granola


Next time I will take my own repurposed plastic bags. I don't normally use plastic bags, but my mom will give things to me sometimes in one. Normally I just take them to the grocery to be recycled, but I'll save a couple for weighing produce at the market.

The makings for aloo gobhi

This makes me smile.



Having grown the 2 main ingredients that I need to make one of my husband's favorite dishes. And the fact that they are ready to harvest at the same time.

The two faces of Gabby

Here's Little Miss Innocent, lounging on the back of my chair:




And here's The Tiny Terror, lounging on the guest bathroom floor amidst her handiwork:

Black and red beauties

I picked the first blackberries and raspberries of the year today! The bushes are loaded with unripened fruit, so in the next few weeks we will be doing a lot of harvesting. The wild blackberry bushes along the edge of the woods are a little behind, so we should have berries for a while to come.

weekend of ordinary goodness

This past weekend was a good one for our family. My husband got his bicycle back from the shop, and proceeded to ride 70 miles on Saturday, then came home and mowed as long as the rechargable battery on the mower held out. We did a few of the 'little things' that get put off all the time--hosing out the trash can, recycling containers, hampers, etc and letting them sit outside and be sanitized by the sun. Much laundry was hung on the line, in anticipation of more rain coming a couple days later.

Sunday my husband rode his bike the 30 or so miles to my parents' house, I drove over, and together we spent most of the day with them. We all spent a few hours outside, pulling bugs off the squash plants, using the hoe on weeds, digging up spontaneously-growing heirloom tomato plants to send to my house, transplanting lots of marigolds (what a stinky flower!) next to the squash plants to try and keep the bugs away. My husband again was mowing a yard, but this time he used my parents' riding mower. He managed to get in an hour or so playing tennis with his brother and nephew as well.

We came home dirty, sweaty, and quite frankly stinky, but we both felt the satisfaction of a day well spent.

Springtime goodness

Yeah, I didn't get a whole lot, but I only planted a few green peas, just to see if they'd grow. I took this whole first harvest and put it in a big pot of veggie soup I made tonight. Yum!

Freecycle

I love giving things away on Freecycle! Really, how can you beat it? It's free, it's a wonderful way to recycle, and you get that good feeling of knowing you are helping someone out. In the past we've Freecycled:

a treadmill (to a Humane Society--for people *and* the animals to use)
big bags of styrofoam peanuts (part of a tactile experience for autistic kids)
truck box
used VHS tapes (to a Vo-Tech school)
women and men's clothing
2 kites
loveseat and couch cover

Today I gave 35 plastic flower pots, in various condition, to a local lady. She was so excited to get them, and I was so excited to get them out of my house (first stored in the crawl space, then in the garage for the last couple of months.) Some of them are pots we purchased plants in at our local nursery, and some are the type pots you can buy at any big box store.




By the way, my CSA gladly takes back the little flimsy four packs that I bought plants in from them, as well as the hard plastic trays. Check with your CSA, local farmers, or nursery. I bet at least one of them would be glad to reuse them and not have to put out the money that each container represents.

What's growing in my garden

Cucumber



Dill




Bell pepper



Cauliflower! This one deserves an exclamation point because I did not think it was going to happen. I've never grown it before, and the leaves just kept getting bigger and bigger, until I thought it was going to be just leaves. I was ready to cut them down and start something else. But I'm glad I waited just a wee bit longer. The husband will be having plenty of aloo gobhi, that's for sure!

I've also got zucchini and yellow squash blooming, but no pictures of those.

What's growing in your garden?

Drying rack or kitty jungle gym?

I usually use my outside clothesline but for a while we had day after day of rain, so I pulled out the drying racks for backup. Apparantly this presented a wonderful climbing opportunity for Gabby. Can't say I blame her--looks like fun to me!

Garden visitor

I love these Asiatic lilies in my backyard. There are so many that they will have to be split when the time is right. But even better is when I see hummingbirds or butterflies enjoying my flowers.

Freebies

Everyone loves freebies, including me! These are a few of the items we received at the Chicago Green Festival:




We tried hard not to take anything that we wouldn't use. The magazines will be read, then passed on to my family, and then donated to the Friends of the Library bookstore so they can be sold.

We only took food samples of items we knew we would use. Same for the coupons. The movies from Earth Cinema Circle will be watched, the makeup and sponges will be used (and since the sponges are biodegradable, they will go into the compost when they are worn out.) And of course the ChicoBag will be used!

Chicago trip report

We’ve been back from Chicago for a week now, so I guess it’s about time for a trip report. The drive up went very well. We stayed in a suburb because the hotels near the Navy Pier are way out of the price range we want to pay for a hotel. Once you got into the Chicago area, the traffic was awful. The one nice thing about that for us is that this is where the Prius really shines. We ran on battery pretty much the whole time we were stuck in traffic.

After checking in and getting Gabby settled, we headed out to Veggie Bite for some vegan fast food. My husband had a Reuben and I noshed on a burger and fries. We then followed up with milkshakes. Never mind the cold, rainy weather. We weren’t going to pass up the chance to have a vegan milkshake!

The second day was all about the Green Festival. This was our second year to attend, so we knew not to eat much breakfast, because there are so many yummy foods to choose from at the festival. (I’m sure you’re seeing a pattern here. Yes, when we go to a big city, it’s all about the food choices, and we do indulge ourselves.) We had free passes so that saved us $15 each in admittance.

The festival was packed with all sorts of vendors giving out free samples, selling products, getting you to enter free raffles, etc. There were also speakers all day both Saturday and Sunday. We attended a few of those as well. By late afternoon we were headed back to the hotel for some relaxation time.

Sunday we decided to skip the festival. While it’s a lot of fun and very informative, we felt like most of the vendors were the same as the year before, and many of the speakers were talking on subjects that didn’t interest us. We headed out to Ikea where we were delighted to see this sign:





And of course we took advantage of the special treatment! We shopped around Ikea for a while. I only had a few specific things I wanted, but it was fun just to look around all 3 floors. I came home with 6 glass storage jars, 2 dishtowels, and 2 bath mats. All things I had been wanting for a while, and no junk. And then we went to the little grocery store for the husband. He stocked up on jams that we can’t get elsewhere, and a few other grocery items.

A little Indian food for lunch, a little Whole Foods shopping for things we can’t get at home, and then it was on to Chicago Diner, THE vegetarian restaurant in Chicago. We wound up with another Reuben and country-fried “chicken” with mashed potatoes and gravy. For dessert we had a slice of cake that was chocolate to the max and a piece of cheesecake.

The next morning it was time to check out and start heading home. We drove highways for a while, until that got boring, then got on the interstate to make the trip go faster.

Oh, one more turn of events. Somehow when we were stopped in a parking lot, I managed to slam the corner of the car door into my head. I thought it was just a painful bump until the husband mentioned there was blood. My eyelid turned some nice colors for a few days, but now it’s just sore, and I think I’m going to have a small scar.

How 'bout them apples?

Yes! We have apples! They are babies of course right now, but hopefully will make it to be full-grown, delicious, honeycrisp apples.

And now, just to balance things out, here's our newest cherry tree:




Yup. It's dead. We bought it as Lowe's, and we're going to see if it's guaranteed. We'll probably be buying our fruit trees from our local nursery from now on. Lesson learned.

Rain barrel

A few weeks back we installed our second rain barrel. The first one we've had for a couple years behind the house, but because we now have a veggie garden in the front, we needed one around there too. One good rain fills each barrel. We put this new one up on 3 layers of blocks so we would have gravity to help us out, then attached a curly garden hose. So far it's working great!

The first picture above shows the view as you are walking down the sidewalk that goes to our front porch. You can barely see the rain barrel from this angle. It *was* completely hidden at first...but we had a little (ahem) accident when it filled up the first time, tipped over, and took out a huge bit of one of the burning bushes. But it will grow back.

The second picture is taken from the sidewalk, right in front of the rain barrel.

Garden update

Here's how our raised beds look now:








Since this is our first year with the raised beds, I had already declared this my "year of experimentation" as far as the garden went. Failure, successes--both are welcome this year as I learn what grows well here and what won't.

In the first bed I planted kale, potatoes, bush beans, green peas, onions, and carrots, and squash. The kale is still small, and the carrots made tiny sprouts, then just withered away to nothing. I think the kale might have been planted too late, because we didn't get the beds put out as early as we would have liked. Everything else looks good so far.

In the second bed we have cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, red bell peppers, and head lettuce. The lettuce looks great, and one end of the bed has some great looking cauliflower and broccoli plants. Oh, can't forget the dill that is also doing well. I've already been harvesting and drying the dill.

I'll probably go ahead and harvest the little bits of kale that we have so that I can plant something else in their place, and also plant something where the carrots are.

New family member

We were a contented family of two big dogs and one cat. In the past we were at 3 dogs, 3 cats, but unfortunately lost a canine family member to old age, and 2 feline family members to cancer and diabetes, respectively. We had no intention of ever adding another cat into the family. BUT THEN (of course there is always a but)...

We went to visit the in-laws 2 1/2 weeks ago, and there was this tiny little mewing thing in a cage on their porch. My husband's brother found it under his home, along with another assumed dead kitten. The mom was not around. My in-laws were going to take this baby to the animal shelter, and being so young and high-maintenance, I'm sure she would have been killed right away. At many shelters, surrenders are killed as soon as they are brought in, and it's only the strays that are picked up that are allowed to live for a few days to see if they are claimed.

We just couldn't allow that to happen to this precious little kitten, so we decided she would come home to live with us. We broke our Wal-Mart avoidance long enough to buy kitten formula and bottle. She was rather lethargic but perked up after a couple of good feedings.

So now Gabby is with us as a permenant member in her forever home. :) She is currently about 6 weeks old and starting to eat moistened solid food and "get" what the litterbox is all about. She's too young to leave alone at home while we're gone to Chicago, and since she's not had shots we won't board her, so she's traveling to Chicago with us. Should be interesting!

Fun ahead

We are leaving for the Chicago Green Festival soon, and we can't wait! Last year was our first time attending, and we could hardly squeeze in listening to all the speakers, eating all the delicious veg food, and visiting all the booths before the two days were up.

We will have an additional um, living creature on this trip with us. Post and pictures to follow!

"Processed People"

While I am certainly not perfect about it, I try to eat an unprocessed diet most of the time. Along that line, I thought I would share a couple clips from a documentary called "Processed People." I can't wait to see the whole thing!

More firsts

First peony bloom of the year:

My first attempt at growing potatoes:

They finally bloomed!

My mom gave me some irises a few years ago, and I placed them in a small planter next to the back of my house. It gets some sun, but not a lot. The plants grow and become green every year, but never bloom. Until now! I'm so excited to see these beautiful blooms.

Taking time to enjoy spring

We had a big parade in or town yesterday. The weather was perfect---mid 70's, windy, and we lucked out with a wonderful shady spot to sit. J, our nephew, was content part of the time to sit on my husband's shoulders. It was a great day!

Seedlings

The seedlings are up, and I'll be thinning them soon. I've got squash, zucchini, 2 types of cucumbers, and a bean to plant. I used the most environmentally friendly planting system I could find at the store (more on that later). Next year I will use the cardboard from toilet paper as my pots.

Refrigerator pitchers

So we're making our own soymilk now, and I think we've finally perfected the recipe. Yesterday the husband proclaimed the latest batch "the best soymilk he's ever tasted."

When the milk is freshly made it is HOT! So that meant we didn't need to be pouring it into plastic pitchers. I decided it was the time to invest in some glass refrigerator pitchers that I bought here: http://tinyurl.com/cjbhrv.

They are perfect for our needs. I might be buying a second set in the future.

Birdhouses

My dad grew gourds last year, let them dry over the winter, did a bit of drilling and cutting, and now he has lots of birdhouse gourds. I took four, and we hope they are occupied soon. Now we just need some bat houses.....

Tunies

The last few days have been all about enjoying spring and getting outside when we can. One day we had to travel to a bike shop to get the husband's bike seen about. He is an avid bicyclist and is ready to get out and take long rides after the winter.

The second veggie bed is now planted (save for the carrot seed which is going in today), and so are 2 bags of iris bulbs my mom dug up and shared with me. I love sharing flowers and other plants with family and friends!

Today I'm enjoying having the clothes out on the line, swinging in the wind, and planted 3 hanging baskets for my front porch. In the past I've always bought those plastic pots that are already planted. What in the world was I thinking? It's ugly plastic and I always wound up throwing them away. This year I bought reusable woven pots and planted some beautiful petunias in them. My Granny had a green thumb, especially with petunias, so anytime I look at that particular flower, I always remember Granny and her "tunies."

Finished

The raised beds are finally constructed and ready to go. Actually, one is already filled with broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce. So of course we had a hard freeze last night. Tomorrow I'll be planting the other bed with onions, a few potatoes left over from my previous planting, kale, and carrots.

Raised beds are constructed!
Mower arrived!
Ditto weed trimmer!
Bed near driveway is weeded and few cool weather plants in the ground!

More to come.....

So I'm back, and hoping to stick with it this time! Here at the Green Veggie household, we've decided it's time to start doing a few more green things:

1. We're mowing our own yard this year. We have a bit over 1 acre, and the past few years we've had someone using their commercial riding mower, gas-powered weed trimmer, and cleaning up with a gas-powered leaf blower. Not green at all! Our solution: battery-powered push mower, battery-powered weed trimmer, and a broom.

2. We're putting in raised beds this year. The front yard gets much more sun than the back, so that's where they're going, smack in front of the house. Mr. Green Veggie and I are building them, which is a fairly easy task.

To be continued later!