working girl

I start my new job tomorrow. Did I mention this? Maybe I passed it around so much offline that I forgot to post it here. I got a library job! Okay, before we get too wound up, it's about as entry-level as one can get. Part-time, after hours, temporary position to re-label and tag all the books in all the branches. Given that criteria, the pay rate is rather sad, too. What the heck, I'm not getting into this gig for the wealth it will bring me, right? The late nights mean a couple of missed family dinners, but I'll still be able to pick up Small Person from school and have some afternoons together. It also means my mornings can still be spent at my volunteer shift doing different repetitive library-type tasks. Let's face it: I'm thrilled!

Small Person is back in school after a leisurely Spring Break. We didn't plan anything special, aside from the birthday party and a few days at day camp. The break started me wondering (worrying) about what to do for her Summer vacation. I'm leaning heavily toward the local YMCA day camp. As much as I hated it as a child, Small Person is not me. I know, we can all breathe a sigh of relief! Point is, she's so much more social and eager to participate in new endeavors and really thrives on variety. Even if I was in a position to stay home with her all summer, neither of us would be satisfied with it in this post-kindergarten frame of mind. Not to mention, we would both be pretty annoyed with one another after the first two weeks of mom-projects ran out. I know, it seems early to fiddle with this. I'm still not used to the school-year mode. Seriously, camp sign-ups start this week, and if I'm not on top of it, we'll miss the desirable open slots. Or any slots at all, really.

Other Spring-related news: we have compost! I know, save the dork comments, let's take them as a given, shall we? Anyway, I've been slacking my duties to turn, rotate, turn, lather, rinse, repeat. Ha! It happened anyway. I mean, the pile could use a little sieving, and we'll continue the process, but I'm not going to have to buy any compost for this season's garden. Which we are woefully far behind in planting. I should have had seeds started and stuff in the ground already. Last weekend we cleaned and prepped and tossed some flower seeds around, but the serious veggie planting has yet to begin. Or serious planning. Sigh. That plan has to fall in line behind the dishes.

winter wonderland

We got our xmas tree this weekend. The subsequent schlep home and decorating got Small Person so riled up as to make for an extremely frustrating bedtime scenario. Who am I kidding? Bedtime is always frustrating lately. 'Tis the season for all-nighters and middle of the night holiday prep, anyway, so it's not like I'm really missing out on my own beauty sleep. Having to shove a half-knitted hat under the couch cushions every time I hear the hinges creak on Small Person's bedroom door doesn't do any favors to that pattern, though. Fortunately, it's a forgiving fuzzy yarn, and she'll never notice anyway.

Okay, pardon the complaint tangent, back to the tree. The tree! We went for a potted one this year, and we'll try to remember to water it this time. No ornaments were smashed during the process, despite Small Person's best efforts and grabby hands. She did a fantastic job decorating one square foot of tree to the maximum saturation point, then was a good sport when we suggested a few relocations.

There are no presents under the tree, yet. There is shopping and crafting and online ordering to do this week, so it will stack up fast. Small Person is the only grandchild of a ridiculous amount of folks (thank you, blended families!), which means I can usually get away with a couple of strategic mom gifts and leave the spoiling to others. 

Awkward segue to: the latest garden news.

That is a photo of the freezy frost on our garden this morning. I admit to being a total wuss in cold weather, so I'm not particularly excited by this. But, it did thrill my black heart to see that my latest slug trap was doubly effective. Intoxicate 'em, then freeze 'em to death! I know, totally disgusting. Isn't that what the interwebs are for, after all?

Those funny things in the background are my recycled bottle cloches. Trash into treasure, that's my motto. Translation: I can't bear to throw that out, let's just hang on to it a little longer....?

I'm still here

Obviously, the first thing to drop off the to-do list mid-semester is the blog updating. One of these days I'll follow through with all my grand organizational and time-management strategies. Until then, I'll be catching up on "Project Runway" when I should be doing any number of useful things.

I have a mid-term today, which I'm not too worried about. One thing I never have a problem with is keeping up with my course reading, and just by virtue of that and conscientious note-taking, I'm pretty sure I've got it covered. My first article is due next week! I've still a couple of interviews to do, so I'm in the stage of amassing information and sorting it appropriately. I found it surprising how easy it is to arrange to interview someone. Everyone likes to talk, apparently, and are delighted to be asked their opinions. That definitely makes it easier for me to fake my social graces, in a chatty, cocktail party way. Just wait until I have to deal with some controversial issue and ask real questions. Yeah, right. There's a reason I'm more interested in magazine writing; fluff, all the way!

The job is going well. I do manage to stay organized and tidy there, at least. Every day has a large chunk of standard stuff to do, and then some diverse and changeable projects. I really like this kind of schedule; it prevents boredom and allows more job creativity. We have a friendly, efficient office and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I'm not spending as much time in the garden, lately. Hopefully today I'll be able to get out there and muck about. The little rain that we've had made everything perk up. I'll probably take out a lot of the summer stuff today, except the tomatoes. We're still picking those every day, and loving them. We've already started eating greens; delicious! I pulled all the basil last week and made enough pesto to eat and freeze for a few meals. It's one of the few green things Small Person will eat, so I like to keep that well-stocked.

Otherwise, the house is a mess, laundry needs doing, dinner is unplanned, and I stared into the fridge for five minutes this morning awaiting lunch inspiration. You know, the usual.

garden update

I haven't done one in a while, so here we go.

We ate some tiny, mutant corn this past weekend. Despite (or, perhaps because of) its stature, it was sweet and tasty. Lemon cukes are producing several a week, perfect to make cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches for Small Person's lunch. The cherry tomatoes are wonderfully sweet and prolific, we munch them whenever we're outside. Radishes are sprouting, kale and mustard greens are ready to eat, zucchinis not too overwhelming. We have one bright orange pumpkin and several green ones of various sizes creeping along. The butternut squash is slow, though I'm still keeping my fingers crossed. Many things were just started too late to get a full harvest.

But, I have high hopes for our Fall garden. The greens are happy, I'll probably put in more, since I love them so. Carrots and beets are looking well, broccoli started, cabbages healthy. I've been relying on my folks for lots of garden advice (and veggie starts!) and, boy, have they been helpful. Stubborn, silly me, to avoid any garden work, and thus practice, until I can do it all on my own from scratch.  What the heck, it's all an experiment, right? At this point, I'm still surprised when we do harvest something; I'm not quite my own sole purveyor, yet.

I'm not spending as much time on the garden in general right now, since I started working again. Theoretically being more busy means I should be more organized to deal with it, but... Let's just say Young Fellow has been doing a lot more watering than usual the past couple of weeks.

I'm growing my own food!

Apparently I'm writing a gardening blog, since I'm always excited about it lately. Here are the latest baby pictures:

Little kale, collards, and mustard greens under our elaborate shade protection.
Mini watermelons!
Button squash, with bonus aphids. I'm having trouble staying on top of both of these.
Cherry tomatoes sprouting like crazy. I'm planning to make some slow-roasted tomatoes when they all ripen at once.
Finally, the world's smallest eggplant. So cute!

busy

We've now had a full week's worth of kindergarten and school for mom and dad and, although we are all excited and stimulated and enjoying ourselves immensely, we are tired. Kindergarten is half-day, which means a little bit of running around coordinating rides and schedules. We are also still getting used to school day and night routines and chores. Alarm clocks and lunchboxes and homework, oh my! All this fun and futzing makes Small Person slightly more tired and thus drama-prone than usual, and me slightly more crabby than usual. Not a good combo. We're working on it.

In the meantime, we continue with our crafty projects and other extracurriculars. For example, mobiles made of old cds and stickers to hang in Small Person's "clubhouse." Yes, it's an old tarp and frame we salvaged from the yard. You were expecting a Craftsman bungalow, perhaps?

Wax paper and crayon project, that my photographic skills are too weak to do justice:
Mixed up crayons made from the leftovers of above:
Beer trap to rid the garden of snails: 
It's a good way to go, don't you think? And our ongoing collection of rose petals from the bushes that are blooming like crazy right now. These I am specifically saving for Kathi for her wonderful soap. These ought to be enough to barter for a bar or two.
There must be some other stuff going on, so I'll post just as soon as I remember what it is.

this new house

This is our new hen house. We converted an old doghouse that the previous tenants left in our backyard. It already had the open door (duh) and hinged roof, so we added legs, perches, a nesting box, and a piece for the door. It's not quite hen-ready; it needs a fenced run, for starters, since our yard is wide open and poorly fenced for completely free-range chickens. However, we're also planning a portable run of some sort to let the girls out for fun and forage. Yes, girls. We have no plans for a rooster as yet. There are a couple already next door, and that's enough for this neighborhood for now. If our preliminary small flock works out well and we're ready to increase the size of the house and the flock, we'll consider our options then.

In the background, you can barely see four of our six garden beds. That is some short corn, but we're still hopeful. I am almost ready to plant broccoli and greens, plus some cabbages promised from my dad's garden.

bug fun

We found this guy in the garden yesterday. I was so excited to see a real, live praying mantis in our yard! I've never seen one outside of the monsters inhabiting the bug house at the zoo. We had to (gently) examine it a bit before reinstalling it to the tomato box. It's a beneficial predator bug, so we're happy to give it a home. Go, mantis, go!

fruit of our labor

I picked the first zucchini out of the garden today. I know it's itty, but that's part of my strategy to stay on top of a potential glut. I plan to grill it with a couple more from my dad's garden as part of tonight's dinner.

In other garden news, the corn is finally getting tassels, the tomatoes are ripening, and the pumpkins are swelling. Yum! The cucumbers never sprouted, despite three separate sowings, so we'll chalk that up to bad seeds. I might try one more time, considering we still have a couple of hot months ahead of us. The beans don't seem to be very excited, which is odd; I've always had luck with even the most poorly tended bean plant. They had a hard time of it with slugs, though, so they might not have recovered enough. I'm optimistic about the peppers and eggplant, although the latter is barely limping along. Most of the sad plants have a lot to do with starting the garden so late and having to make do with the last lingering vegetable starts available. But, at least we're well-prepared for our fall plantings!

lady grey

Kathi's recent post reminded me to share our new combined laundry and watering system.

I know I'm desperately nerdy for admitting this, but I love a good grey water system.  You know, the kind that takes the outflow from your kitchen sink, say, and uses it to water your ornamental landscaping.  I've seen (or more likely, read about) some pretty awesome systems that send everything but the toilet water through an elaborate filtration system encompassing gravel beds, aeration fountains, and plants to purify the water enough to use it as irrigation for food crops.

Ours is not nearly so fancy, but it's still pretty keen.  Since our laundry outflow was previously uncoupled from the septic system even before we moved in, we were able to set up a simple system fairly quickly.  From the washer, water goes to two storage barrels that have free-flow irrigation hoses hooked to them.  The hoses go snaking along the property, through fences, under paths, around landscaping to drip on all of our ornamental borders.  Yes, we use eco-friendly soap.  No, we don't use the water for anything we're planning to eat.  With five people in the house, it's easy to do at least one load of laundry a day, more often two.  Which, coincidentally, is the exact proportion to fit on our newly-installed clothesline.  We'll just pretend we planned it all that way.

squashed

The garden is coming along nicely. I’m wilting in the recent hot weather, but the plants are delighted. Squashes of various sorts are spreading leaves and tendrils in all directions, the corn gains inches behind our backs, and the tomatoes are exploding in blossoms.

This is my first real garden. As a kid, my participation in the various family gardens was limited to eating the produce. Well, I could occasionally be talked into toting rocks out of the beds, but only when my dad paid me for it. At ten cents per bucket, I think he got the better end of the deal.

Anyway, I am excited to be running the show myself this time around. Okay, not really “I.” That just means that I boss and let everyone else do the building and heavy lifting. But, really, I’m happy to be getting out there early in the morning to water and evict snails and give the daily pep talk to the cucumbers. I’m ambitiously awaiting the moment when this project moves from experiment to actual food-source. We specifically planted things that are both easy to grow and beloved by most of the household, so we don’t get burnt out in our first season.

I am amassing a master file of zucchini recipes, though, just in case.