A little visitor

Today I saw a bird in the brush that was rather plain looking but had a beautiful song. I watched him perched on a branch, his throat rolling up and down as he sang his heart out. I tried to memorize his coloring and his beak shape, although as I said he was pretty plain. Once inside, I became a little frustrated, because all my bird books wanted me to believe it was a bushtit,

 

photos via Cornell Lab of Ornithology

and I thought it looked like one too but when I researched it online, the bushtit didn't have the same lovely song I had heard.

A little more digging revealed the wrentit, which is much more rare, but has the lovely song. If you visit this page and scroll down, you can click and listen to the second of three songs listed. That's the one.

~~~

This little bird brought a big thought to me today. How sad it must be, I thought, to have no distinguishing features. In fact, if it wasn't for his song, I would've marked him off as a bushtit and called it a day. But he would've been quite misunderstood.

Sometimes I can feel like my life is pretty non-descript, or even that I might honestly be labelled as plain. I'm a pretty simple person and I don't have the exciting lifestyle that so many of us dream about. But I also believe that each person was made uniquely by God for just such a time and place as they are in now, that each person has a destiny. And our destiny is to, in our various ways, sing our heart's song to the world. What a lovely thing it would be to stop our work every once in awhile, lift our eyes from the task at hand and just listen to someone else's song - their life story, their passions, what makes them unique. I think we will find that no one can ever truly be described as plain. We each have a part to play in a Great Symphony.

Easter Wheatgrass

I remember seeing in a magazine one time these Easter baskets with live grass in them. And I thought, "Oh that's cute and folksy and eco-friendly and old-fashioned. And I'd probably love to do that but who knows if I ever will." In other words, I filed it away in my mind. I don't even think I had kids then. And Easter has never really been a very "big" holiday in our family, so I had no need to use it right away.

A couple of years ago my mother-in-law gave my older son a basket with real grass and I told her how much I loved it. The mental file was brought to the front of my mind.

This year, we are going to be visiting some of my nieces and nephews for Easter. So my basket tally went from maybe 2 to a possible 6. Obviously I started thinking about what kinds of things I would want to include in these baskets, the first I have ever made, by the way: healthy treats and small books are a nice alternative to too much candy. Maybe a toy or two but I like to keep things simple in the baskets so that it doesn't distract too much from the meaning we find in the holiday. 

Then there was the grass! I finally had a reason to attempt it, but I wasn't sure where to begin. A quick call to my mother-in-law revealed that she had bought a whole bag (albeit the smallest one available) of actual lawn grass from the home improvement store. She figured she could always use the extra in their landscaping. Well... I would've been down for that. Except the smallest bag I could find was $15 and I knew I could figure something else out. Also, I wasn't in the market for leftover lawn grass at the moment.

I researched other grasses, and I finally decided on wheatgrass. If you are interested in doing something like this, you can easily buy wheatgrass at your health food store already grown and just pop it in. Easy peasy! But it was gonna cost me about $5 a pop so maybe $30 for all. Plus, you know I like doing things the hard way. Haha. So anyway, I decided I could probably grow my own. I walked around the corner to the next aisle over in the health food store and found hard wheat berries or wheatgrass berries in their bulk food section. Grabbed a few scoops full, up the the register and bam - 65 cents! That's more like it...

I found several versions of how to grow wheatgrass, but I went with the instructions I found here.

Here's how we did it:

Soak berries overnight. I read to make sure you don't soak longer than 24 hours as they may go rancid after that.

Line a basket. You can use an old plastic grocery bag or saran wrap. Or anything else that's water proof. If your basket is somewhat loosley woven, you can lay some fabric down first to hide the plastic. Add a layer of soil to about 1/3 the height of the basket. You don't want too much dirt, because it will make the basket heavy.

Spread seeds (or "berries") in a single layer across the top of the basket. I found a handsome helper to assist me with this step.

Then we soaked the seeds with a water bottle and left them in a sunny spot with a little saran lid to keep the moisture in. I'm told the trick the first few days is to keep the seeds moist.


Boy, you know what? If anyone ever feels like they have a black thumb or gets discouraged in their gardening endeavors, growing something quick like wheatgrass sure is encouraging. :)

We were very excited to see this is what we had on day 3:

And only one week from when we planted the seeds:

Ten days old here:

 

Wow, that grew faster than I thought! At this rate, my problem is too much grass! I will have to trim it before Easter and I hope it will still keep growing in green and lush and not turn yellow on me or something! That would figure. If I do it again next year, I will wait a bit later, like 2 weeks before Easter instead of 4 weeks.

But, that also means that you still have plenty of time to try this out if you want to. ;)

Follow up: yarn bombing

It's hard to believe it's been almost three years since we talked about yarn bombing in this post.

A couple of days ago, Lion brand yarn shared this photo on their facebook page, originally found here and the work of Lorna at Knits for Life.



I find it clever and fun to look at. And obviously no one is using the phone anymore anyway...

Of course, the comment section exploded with opinions ranging from admiration to disgust. As usual, the knitting community seems pretty torn over the subject.

One woman linked to an interesting interview with Ishknits, who may or may not have been yarn bombing phone booths before anyone else. If you visit her website, it's kinda neat to see the commissioned work she has done as well.

The interview... for your consideration:)  American Hipster Presents: Ishknits Documentary

Starting the New Year off with a (delayed) bang

Well hello again!

 

It’s been many months since I visited you all here at the blog. Mostly, I’ve been busy with our second son, whose birth we celebrated at the end of October. :) He is healthy and beautiful and we are slowly working our way, day by day, through the hard first months of no sleep and constant feedings.

 

Needless to say, the list of things I “should” do, and even would like to do, seems to grow longer every day, as taking care of the boys is always my number one priority. For every one thing I cross off the list, it seems two more things get put on. And blogging is definitely not one of my more pressing concerns. But new adventures have called me back to the blog spot. We are gearing up for a new year of improvements around the house and my first attempt at a veggie garden. So here now, while the baby is finally finally asleep and I “should” be taking a nap myself, instead I have stolen away to share my plans with you.

Where to begin. My mind is reeling. Well, these are the plans we have for the garden this year:

I think for the sake of time and attention, I'll try to be brief. :)

 

• First of all, raised beds are in the works for our garden. Right now they are mostly in our imaginations, but as each day goes by I get more and more anxious that they should be built by now. We went very quickly from me thinking I’d make them for free out of used pallets, to Joel thinking he’d make better ones out of cedar or redwood, to finally deciding that cinder blocks would last longer for our dollars and were quite versatile: since we won’t be mortaring them together, we can rearrange, add onto, or resell them at any time. The onlyreason why it's not already done is having to borrow a truck to pick up the cinder blocks as well as a load of compost from the city.
• Side note: I find it hilarious that I get charged to have my green waste collected and then the city tries to sell my green waste back to me after composting. Something is wrong here, isn’t it? I know I could compost my own, but I think I will have to hold off on that for now…

• Next: Gardening by the moon! Have you heard of this? I came across it online somewhere and thought it sounded almost superstitious more than anything. But after a little research, I realized it's been practiced for hundreds of years by renowned gardeners, so I think maybe there is some science behind it. I wonder if it has to do with the moon's gravitational pull and if it effects moisture in the soil the same way it effects tides?! I polled my friends on Facebook: half had never heard of it before and the other half swear by it. Basically the idea is that certain days of the moon's cycle are best for planting certain veggies. And other days are less favorable. There are even some calendars that go so far as to occasionally say something like "anything planted on this day will rot," which I think is kinda presumptuous. But who knows! Then I found out that not only does the good old trusted Farmer’s Almanac have a moon-planting calendar, but that it is probably the most popular one by far. I decided I should pick an Almanac anyway, since I need all the help I can get! So I got one from my local bookstore. Saved money on shipping. ;)

You can find more info on moon gardening here.

• AWESOME FIND: Seed Swapping. Another new idea to me. A local CSA here that also has gardening classes hosted a seed swap last weekend. The idea is that no one really needs all the seeds they get in a packet in any given year, so everyone brings in their open seed packets and everyone shares with everyone else! I got loads of seeds for totally free! This swap was super casual, so they didn’t even require that you bring seeds of your own, which is cool because I didn’t have any. Haha.

Here is my loot:

            
 

So at first I thought – this is great, why don’t more places arrange this kind of thing?

 

And then I thought - you know what, ANYBODY could arrange a seed swap! In fact my neighbor and I are swapping after the big swap. And a friend of mine who is gardening in Santa Rosa agreed to swap with me by mail! Amazing fun! And if you wanted to go bigger than just a friend or neighbor, you can plan a place and time, put out some flyers and make it happen! So simple.

 

 

• I couldn’t find artichoke seeds anywhere locally so when I saw an artichoke starter plant at Home Depot today, I picked it up.

• Got a starter of strawberries too :)

• Still want to get: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. Then we can read the book Jamberry and have a jam jamboree. :0)  
• Here are some other seeds I got this weekend. Spent good money on these ones:

• Then my neighbor just came over this afternoon and brought over a box FULL of organic seeds and told me I could have first pick of the year! This is her version of "seed swapping" although I have very little to offer her in return, and probably nothing she doesn't already have :} What a blessing she is!
 
• Joel’s grandma recently gave us this lily. I like how lilies look. I hate how they smell and shed pollen. She said we should plant it in the yard. I’ve never heard of anybody planting a lily before, I wonder if it would work. Anyway, it’s NOT staying in the house, so I guess I might as well try!

 
 
• I have a gorgeous flower garden in my mind for the side of the house. It’s a shady spot, so I found a bed plan for a “shady garden” that I think will work out nicely.
   
• I planted some other bulbs: mostly Angelique tulips and iris and some daffys in the front of the house. But I know I planted then way too late (like in January/February) so it will be interesting to see if they even bloom this year. If not – oh well, I will call it a big head start on NEXT year! Wow, yeah, that feels a lot better. Now I’m way ahead of the game. Haha.
 
• Several other experiments in the works on my first year of gardening:
• I saved seeds from two store bought bell peppers. One is organic and one isn’t. I wonder which will grow better and/or produce more peppers. Although I must admit to being biased – no matter how they grow, I’d prefer the organic one anyway!
• I will be purposefully planting a few seeds against the moon cycle to see if it really makes a difference.

***Awfully AMBITIOUS aren’t I? Yeah, I know. It scares me, too***

My plan is to utterly fail completely, that way any success will be a sweet surprise. One of the failures I foresee is based on the number of bugs and birds there seems to be in my yard. I’m bracing myself for all-out war with them! We shall see how the battle may rage and who will claim victory there. Until then – off I go to start me some seeds before the moon begins to wane. ;)

Photo Project Complete - Autumn

Today is the first day of autumn. It might be one of my favorite days of the year, because of its promise that cloudy weather, beautiful fall colors, rain, and the holidays are just around the corner. 'These are a few of my favorite things.' :)

Also today, I bring my nine-month-long photography project to a close. I have photographed these same spots now on the First Day of winter, spring, summer and fall, respectively. Always at the same time of day (so that any lighting differences are actually an indication of the earth's orbit).

There were quite a few different spots that I photographed, but for the sake of your time and attention, I'll only share the most interesting. (you can click on the photos to enlarge them if you want to)

winter

spring

summer

fall

 

I don't know if it's the preggy hormones running through my veins, or if I'm kinda sentimental anyway (probably both) but taking these last photos got me to thinking about the seasons changing, not just in the natural world, but in my personal life as well. I thought about where I was a year ago. Or even nine, six, and three months ago when I came back to the park to take these photos.

winter

spring

summer

fall

 

It was a year ago today actually that my mom passed away. At the time, although I knew it was coming sooner than later, it still pulled the rug out from under me and left me reeling. As Lemony Snicket writes... "It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one.... It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise..." That was definitely a hard season, but some might say as inevitable as the biting cold will arrive in January, the one that makes you ache to your bones. When you draw into your lungs the frigid air of long, dark winter nights like that, it imparts its stillness and loneliness to your heart...

It took a good long time to get over that one. I spent most of the winter wallowing in depression and self-pity. But I allowed myself those feelings so I could walk through my grief properly and come out to the other side, to the spring.



Also a year ago, we had been wanting another baby for quite awhile, and I was feeling discouraged that it was taking so long. But six months later, we found out we were finally pregnant and one week after that, I was shooting the spring photos... :) My belly has grown progressively bigger as I've shown up to the park in summer and fall. And now here we are, only about a month away from his arrival.

winter

spring

summer

fall

Another dream that we had for several years was to own a home. As of winter, we had been looking and making offers off and on for about 7 years. By spring, we had made an offer on a cute little fixer-upper, but I didn't have my hopes up too high. But by summer, our dream had finally become a reality and we had moved into our first home, deep in the throws of a major remodelling project.

winter

spring

summer

fall

 

So as I look at these photos and study the changing face of the seasons, how the same spot can look so different over such a short amount of time, I correspondingly marvel at the changes in my face. A little more weathered, a little older - a few more wrinkles from new projects and less sleep, a few more gray hairs of grief and worry, skin a little darker from working my land, a twinkle in my eye for a new little one to love, and the woman in the mirror seems more of a mother to me now and a little less of a daughter.

 

So much has happened this year, I can only imagine what the next season will bring...