Faith as small as a mustard seed

I'm not a naturally patient person. I try. I put forth the effort. Sometimes it involves clenching my teeth, putting on a far too large smile and faking it. But I tend to get impatient.

So when the seeds I had planted and set in the window hadn't come up after two weeks I was, shall we say, concerned. I checked out my trusty friend Google and confirmed that I had somehow screwed something up and all my seeds were dead.

And it was possible. I had kept all my seeds together in a single envelope and during a cleaning frenzy they had been placed in my large kitchen window. While perfect for seed starting the window can get very hot and given the strangely warm weather it was completely conceivable that I had fried my seeds.

I grieved. I wept. I moped.

You see, I'm a seed snob. Sure, I could buy the plants from the store but in terms of saving money there is no cheaper way to do it than by planting seeds. PLUS I have the luxury of having heirloom, non-GMO seeds growing things I just can't buy at the nursery. The nursery doesn't carry carrot plants at all but if they did they wouldn't be the sweet Chantenay Red Core kind. And while they have plenty of pepper and tomato plants they don't carry my Sweet Yellow Stuff Peppers or my Fox Cherry Tomatoes.

Too late to place another seed order, I stopped by the nursery on my way home from work one night and picked up another round of green bean and cucumber seeds and resigned myself to buying tomatoes plants in a few weeks when the weather was right.

Imagine then my surprise when I came home to find 2 possible squash/pumpkin plants growing in my front yard. And then in the raised beds I spied 3 sugar snap peas finally poking their heads out.

I could have cried.

Until that point I was pretty sure the only thing I was going to manage for the year was garlic and weeds.

Now, a few weeks later I have 5 -6 squash or pumpkin plants in my front yard (they look the same and I possibly planted both close together), 12 pea plants coming up and at least 3 cucumber plants poking their heads out of the ground. Additionally I have a melon seedling of some kind hanging out with the garlic (thanks 2 year old son) and my potatoes are finally starting to poke their eyes above the dirt.

I suppose it just goes to show. I needed only the faith in the mustard seed. Or was that faith like the mustard seed?

I'm a seed hoarder

I had actually meant to start a few seeds inside in March but it seemed that time kept getting away from me. Today, with only a few weeks to go before when I should be transplanting I took some time, pulled out my seeds, and began to plant.

I love the smell and feel of the potting soil. The colors on the seed packets are always vibrant and make me long for the sweet smell of wet earth and fresh carrots.

I realized though, when I pulled out my seed packets, that I perhaps have a problem.


Hi. My name is Lacy and I'm a seed hoarder.

Every year I buy my seeds and instead of throwing out what I don't need or better yet, passing them on to others, I put them in Zip Lock baggies, label them and put them in the garden shed.

I was surprised that packets of the same kinds of seeds seemed to purchased year after year for now three years in a row. (I'm looking at your Green Beans) Frankly, it was a little embarrassing.

I also noticed that my gardening know how and ability seem to have increased.

When I first started I just grabbed whatever seeds in the garden store looked interesting. Not sure what I was thinking when I bought jalapeno seeds. I don't even LIKE jalapenos!

Now I only purchase heirloom seeds and I think long and hard about how I want to eat what I grow. I wont plant lettuce again since my family are not big salad eaters. We love cucumbers though and I think we need a few more plants around here of those.

This year I'm trying a couple of new things. I'm going to try and grow watermelon and another kind of melon. I've added garlic.

And I threw out the old seeds. Anything from 2010 just had to go. A couple of the 2011's went too.

And I planted tomatoes. Amish Paste and Fox Cherry. I also planted mini yellow peppers. Just for fun. (And because my girls will eat them.)

I find when I do my gardening outreach it's always good to have something people can pop in their mouths right then and I hope those peppers do it for them.

Viva la Tomato!

Real Prepping

I am totally and completely blessed with the family God gave me, not just the one I married and the ones I birthed but also the extended family such as Aunts, Uncles and Cousins.

This weekend we will be visiting one of favorite Aunts and her family for Easter. I am beyond excited because I will get to see two of my cousins (I have a total of 11 cousins. My family is Irish so it's considered a small family.) and rub their baby bellies and just allow my kids to be in the presence of family. They live in a small town and even by the towns standards they live outside of town. They still have dial up. They just got cable and only because we visit and might want to watch something. I love being out there because it's so remote and we aren't able to be distracted by the hum of every day life.

One of my favorite things about my Aunt's house is that she and my Uncle Prep without meaning to. I've actually mentioned them before and my secret coveting of their cold room.

Something that has come up recently for me though is that I have ANOTHER Aunt and Uncle who at one point did a lot of prepping. They bought water and toilet paper and buckets of wheat in preparation for Y2K. Once Y2K passed they let it go and have since stopped any type of prepping as well as they stuff they USED to do such as canning their own food and raising their own chickens.

I love and admire my all of my family but I have to be honest. Y2k never scared me. The economy, solar flares and peak oil. THAT scares me.

In the end I don't think growing and eating your own food is just for preppers or just for locavores or just FOR anyone. I think it should be for EVERYONE.

19 Days

My approaching for preparing for TEOTWAWKI, in whatever fashion that takes, has been a two sided approach.

Buy food storage and supplies for the immediate future and learn to do on my own and reduce/reuse for later.

It was a suggestion to me when I mentioned my anxiety and the feeling of being overwhelmed that I felt when I thought about prepping and just what needed to be accomplished. It has served me well and helped to lessen my fear and anxiety about whatever is coming.

I try to spend my money and time wisely and equally on both. To that end my family budgets about $100 a month to these items. In the last 4 months I've used that money towards food storage. I buy my food storage in what some might call a haphazard fashion but I do it with meals in mind. For example one month I focused on chili and the ingredients I would need to make it. So I bought #10 cans of kidney beans, pinto beans, small red beans, black beans, tomato powder and ground beef. Now all of these ingredients can be used for other things as well so it was win win for me and my budget.

I decided to use a Food Storage Analyzer to keep track of my items and to assess the nutritional value of my food storage. (For the record I used foodstorageanalyzer.com)

After spending roughly $500 between the 4 dedicated months as well the occasional other items acquired in the last few years according to the analyzer my family of 5 (3 adult eaters and 2 child eaters) have...........wait for it.........19 days worth of food. Not even three weeks.

I'll admit that was eye opening and slightly disheartening. One the one hand, I had hoped to be better prepared by now. On the other, it just means I need to work harder and spend my money a little smarter.

Hopefully the garden produces more this year.

What's in a number

For lots of people out there bargains are sometimes "felt" rather than really "seen". Retailers use the simple trick all the time of charging $3.99 instead of $4 so that we feel like we're getting a good deal. "It was less than $4.00 I hear them say" and I think those retailers are pretty smart people.

For those and others something doesn't really hit home until it reaches a certain dollar figure. I found that out for myself as well as friend Thursday.

Gas prices are rising. In my neck of the woods I've seen as high as $3.79 per gallon for regular unleaded. Nothing special. I realize that there are lots of places out there that have seen much higher than that in recent years and even now but for me, that's the highest I've ever seen it.

I have an 11 gallon vehicle that I fill up roughly once a week. It normally runs me between $30-35. I will admit here that I sort of stopped paying attention to the exact amount. I just knew that it was still within my gas budget.

My friend and I were chatting Thursday after I had seen the $3.79 gas and she remarked that she had heard it would hit $5.00 a gallon in the summer. Now, I know I've heard that prediction before and it never came to pass so I nodded and then dismissed it. "Whatever. I'll cross that bridge when I get there."

But the number bug was planted and the $5.00 per gallon nagged at me all day. Finally, that evening, as I was doing some HR math* for another friend of mine we started talking about gas prices and since I already had the calculator I figured we could talk the price out and I could figure out why it was bothering me.

If gas were to hit $5 a gallon that means I would be paying roughly $55 a WEEK for gas. It was easy for me to dismiss $30 gas but $50 gas grabbed me. And him.

I fill up my car once a week so that means per month I would be spending $220 in gas. My husbands car is roughly the same which means we would be paying $440 a month in GAS to get to work. That's significant.

$50 had my attention. $440 certainly had grabbed me.

My house could manage it. It wouldn't kill us. But it would hurt. It would mean some other pretty tough choices around here. After school daycare might have to be reconsidered. That fancy cheese my husband likes for his sandwiches would be out. So would all soda consumption. And treats in general.

$20 more a week in gas doesn't seem like a lot when you say it. But $40 is something. $160 extra a month is really something.

And it got me thinking, what about those who can't afford $50.00 a week. What do they do? Where do they cut? And even if they can afford it with cuts their family would have to make and my family would have to make what does that do to our still battered and bruised economy?

And that's just my family and fuel for our cars. What about the rising prices of everything else? Food costs and clothing costs, electricity, entertainment, it all goes up.

I don't have an answers. But its certainly worth thinking about it and it's certainly food for thought.

And all because $50 grabs my attention far faster than $30.

Too much space?

This spring my husband and I, with the help of our 7 year old and 2 year old have been tackling the back yard. I've lived in this house for 7 years now and the backyard has always been just a pit of despair. 2 years ago I introduced some containers of vegetables into it. Last year I added some raised beds.

This year we are cleaning the whole thing out and landscaping it while also adding TEOTWAWKI/homesteading items to it.

Last weekend we cleaned the side of the house which I've always avoided because it was scary and strewn with trash. I was certain if I had snakes in my yard they were in the side yard.

Turns out no snakes that we saw and now that it's been raked and cleaned out it seems like it could be a pretty useful space.

The question is, of course, useful for what.

My husband indulges my SHTF worries and allows me a certain amount of leeway with gardening and food storage but at the end of the day, we are still going to have grass in the back yard and not an orchard or raised beds as far as the eye can see.

That said, when I started talking about putting in some raspberry bushes I could see he wasn't entirely on board with the idea.

So take a look and tell me what YOU think I could do with the space.

It's 8 feet wide and roughly 15 feet long. The sunlight in the picture is at 12:30pm MST today, March 24. Yes, there is a tree behind me making a shadow over the space.

My mother in law suggested using it as storage. My husband has shrugged his shoulders (but assures me there aren't going to be raspberry bushes.

Hater.

So do I make it a small garden? A play area of the kids? Nothing? I want it to add value to my property and add value to my preps without being obvious, if that's possible. I'd prefer not to put a tree there since it's kinda close to the house.

Thoughts? Ideas? Help?

$500

I recently came into a little money, nothing life changing and after paying some bills and letting the husband have some fun I have about $500 to use towards anything I want.

If you had the extra $500 and wanted to use it for prep items what would you buy?

You don't have to know my circumstances, I'm curious about you and your dreams for your prep/self reliance/I just want it closet (or garage or bunker, I'm not picky).

$500. Go.

We have had a very mild winter which may or may not be a good thing. This weekend while Micah and I were cleaning the backyard of the dog "presents" and old leaves it dawned on my to check my garlic.

There's something I never thought I'd say. Check my garlic. Almost sounds like code for something else coming from me doesn't it?

Anyways, last fall, probably in October, I decided to expand my gardening horizons and picked up three varieties of garlic and then promptly forgot which kinds I had picked up.

In any case I planted them in my half whiskey barrels and walked away. Leaves collected in the barrel and I thought nothing of it really until Sunday.

Sunday I looked in the barrel and initially saw nothing. Which good because it's early March and the chance for snow here is pretty high. I learned that at the end of April 2 years ago when a large snow storm hit after I had transplanted all my peas and tomatoes.

Then, upon closer examination I started to notice a little green.





I've tried to cover them with some leaves but they refuse to be denied sunlight. I truly feel sick to my stomach that they are growing in so early but can hardly blame them. Today we hit 70 degrees at a time when the average temperature is around 54 degrees. So it makes sense that the garlic bulbs think they have hit the jackpot and are sprouting early.

After all, they aren't alone. I found this stowaway in my larger raised beds. This must have been a pea that dropped and hid at some point and has now decided to sprout WAY ahead of schedule.


My yard work assistants were pretty intrigued with all the green. Wilbur offered to help "pick" while Lizzie Lou just wanted to hear what all could be eaten with garlic.



I hope our lovely weather continues because I'd really like for all my plants to live. I really hope that groundhog was a liar and there is no more winter.

Just in case I think I'll pick this weed...

Already December

I wish I had far more interesting things to write about but I simply don't. My two oldest girls are spending Christmas with their father and that has left me pretty emotional this holiday season. My youngest child, my son, is 2 and has graduated from nice boy to tornado on feet. I feel like I spend a large portion of my day running after him and so find my computer time even more limited. While I personally enjoy winter I can tell he does not and we hope spring comes early, if only for his sake.

This year for our Canned Family I feel a little short. I managed to make the Cherry Amaretto, Blueberry Butter, Blueberry Grand Marnier, Plum Chutney and White Peach Sauce but that was about it.

I'm already plotting for next year though and have had 3 co-workers beg for a class on canning so hopefully I'll be able to get that going next year. I find canning to be so worthwhile I hope I can pass on that excitement to others. I know they see it differently than I do. I see it as something that may have to feed my family because there are no other options while they can not fathom a world where there may not be jam on the grocery store shelves someday.

Aside from that I spend most of my time paging through seed catalogs these days. I make a plan for the raised beds and then find myself changing it within a week. But all the planning and plotting is in good fun and I haven't even spent a dime yet!

I've been stocking up on the freeze dried and dehydrated food but still feel like it's not enough, mainly because I know that should things go downhill rapidly our family will need assistance and we have already agreed we wont be able to turn them away. Although I know I don't even have 3 months for our own 5 person family when I take into account the rest of the people who may need assistance I worry that we don't even have two weeks of food. It's something we keep working towards though, just keep plugging along, otherwise I begin to feel incredibly anxious.

So that's my update, not much and yet lots of anxiety going around. Hope about you?

Clean up

This weekend we cleaned up the garden and the backyard in general. I was a little sad that I never got my tree but I'll just have that much more to look forward to next year.

Overall my little garden did okay. My tomatoes didn't get nearly as prolific as I had hoped until of course this last couple of weeks. My peas, which I had thought were pretty much dead still gave me a large handful of peas for snack and my carrots ruled the middle square.

I have gotten so many compliments on the taste of my carrots I'm pretty proud. They were Chatenay Red Core and certainly aren't your grocery store carrots. They are short, fat and sweet. In a word they are amazing. I've shared them with friends and family alike and am bringing in this last little bit to work tomorrow to share. I will be getting those again next year for sure.

This year was a good test of what I have patience for and what is just a waste. It also helped me figure out spaced and location for items which is helpful.

Lesson I am most taking with me? While lettuce is incredibly easy to grow we just don't eat it, no matter how healthy I wish we were. With that in mind I don't think we'll be planting that again.

Spinach on the other hand.....I may give that go.

We are due for snow this week but the weather report says it should melt by the weekend. I'm debating if it's too late for fall garlic. What say you my readers?

Holy Cow

Oh my. Apparently my last post was in AUGUST! How the time slips away....

It's rainy and wet here today, our first real indication that fall is upon us. I need to harvest my remaining items tomorrow and I think just clean out the garden and ready it for my garlic planting.

Lessons from this year ....

Tomatoes-

I need a lot more plants. I grew about 6 different plants, 1 beefsteak type, 1 cherry tomato type and 4 roma's. The space they occupied needed to larger, or they needed to be farther away from each other and I should have secured them in cages MUCH earlier. Overall I didn't get nearly as many cherry tomatoes as last year and while I got a decent amount of romas they tended to come in 2's and 3's and I never had the patience to freeze them and save them up to make sauce.

Carrots -

Did awesome. I planted two rows and have eaten several lovely orange babies already and need to harvest probably 10 more tomorrow. Overall I was pleased with the type and will buy those again next year.

Peas -

These were my struggle. Initially they experienced some pea wilt and I thought they were a goner for the year. They managed to come back and did pretty well in production, both the Sugar Snap and the Alaska Pea but overall just not in a quanity that would feed my family for even a meal. Next year I'll raise the height of the fence they grow on.

Cucumbers -

I got a few pickling cucumbers but overall just didn't pay as much attention to them as I should have. I already have a space for them picked out for next year.

Lettuce -

We don't eat lettuce. It grew but I never picked it so it was a waste. Lesson learned.

Pumpkins -

The vine has done well but while I had plenty of blossoms I still have no pumpkins. Not sure where I went wrong on that one but I think I'll attempt this again.

Zucchini -

I didn't even GROW these and I have two huge ones in my kitchen. I have no idea how to even shred the darn things nor do I have equipment to do so. Any ideas? I'd like to do something like a zucchini banana bread but the frankly pornographic size of these things is throwing me off my game.

Blueberries -

One plant died, the other has grown but produced no berries. No surprise there though as this was only it's second year.

I STILL have no gotten my cherry tree (I've decided to plant cherry instead of apple for now). My mother in law is coming to our house tomorrow I think I may try and convince her to go with me and get it. It's October for crying out loud, it's TIME.

Aside from that I'm trying to think of things to do with apples. Any ideas for canning aside from applesauce or applebutter that will expand my food know prep knowledge?

I hate people

Recently I've mention that I work in HR. Which is short for Human Resources. Which, in my case, means I deal with people. All.Day.Long.

I used to really, really like people.

Now I generally hate them.

This has spilled into my private life in a way I was surprised about.

I've been slowly coming to the realization that I hate my neighbors. I hate my suburban life. My neighbor on my left mows AND weed wacks his lawn BOTH days of the weekend. At 7am.

Then neighbors to the right of me feel as if their lives are not complete unless they have a party and invite the entire state of Rhode Island (who feel obliged to show up. EVERY WEEKEND.) and leave their dogs penned up in a crappy homemade 6 x 6 pen attached to my fence. Which means the dogs bark everytime I go outside.

The neighbors across the street hate each other. I know this because I hear them screaming at each other every 2 days or so from the happy spot in my living room. They are both screaming "I hate you." Good times.

The neighbors directly behind me are a blended family who are having trouble blending. I hear them fight with their kids, each other and at nothing. Plus their teenagers like to light fireworks when their parents aren't home.

I can not enjoy my back yard. I can not enjoy my front yard. I can not enjoy the sanctuary of my own home.

So I am done.

I've informed my husband we need to pay off all remaining debt in order to save money/afford a larger mortgage payment and get the flock out of here.

I don't think he minds the idea. He's been looking forward to getting away from barking dogs, angry people and stupid teenagers since he moved in here 3 years ago.

Wish me luck!

Canning Lessons

I may have mentioned this before but in the outside world I work in Human Resources. I solve problems for employees of my company. I'm good at what I do.

I also teach my co-workers proper procedures and practices. Every job I've ever had that was a team environment I have always ended up teaching and training. Which is interesting since I don't ever see myself going into training (an aspect of HR) and the thought of formal teaching makes me roll my eyes.

Recently my teaching and HR world collided with my prepping world in an interesting and mild way.

I was mentioning that I had canned the Cherry Amaretto Jam a few weeks ago and a co-worker said that sounded incredibly interesting. We talked about the process (easy) and I guess I began to get a little passionate about it because the next thing I know she's telling me she'd love to learn how to make it and I'm telling her I'd love to teach her.

Within a few days she was at my house learning to make Blueberry Jam. Well, Blueberry Grand Marnier Jam.

I find making and canning jam to be incredibly easy and so it was that Sunday. It took about 3 hours and she left with 10 half pints of blueberry deliciousness. I traded her one of her pints for one of my pints of Cherry Amaretto.

Monday we brought in bread and the new Blueberry Grand Marnier plus last years Strawberry Vanilla and Carmel Apple Butter.

Which lead to lots of oohhhs and ahhhhhs and "Ohmygoshthisissogood" mumbled around bread stuffed mouths. My ego was thoroughly stoked.

But it also led to more "I can't believe you made that" discussions in which both I and my new canning friend assured everyone that it's not as hard as it looks.

Which led to me offering to do another "Jam session". Probably later this month I'll gather strawberries from the strawberry farm and at least another 3 co-workers and we will make strawberry jam.

Well, they will. I'm considering Strawberry Margarita jam. I'm going for a boozy kind of year.

Who would have thought that last year when I make my first batch of Strawberry Vanilla Jam that a year later I'd be teaching corporate women how to make their own?

Prepping sometimes can be funny that way I guess.

White Peach Sauce & Cherry Amartetto recipes

True Texan asked for my receipe for the White Peach Sauce and the Cherry Amaretto Jam and I've been lazy to post them.


Let me first say I don't know that I personally would do the white peach sauce again. It might have just been the peaches but they were such a pain in the BUTT to peal I would be hard pressed to want to go through that again.

10 pounds of peaches, halved, peeled and chopped
3 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup lemon juice

Cook the peaches down in a large pot. I used my immersion blender to blend the peaches but you could use a potato masher to help them break down and release their juice. I just like smoothness of the blended peaches. Add the vanilla extract and the vanilla bean seeds and the pod so that the vanilla flavor will infuse all the peaches. Stir occasionally.

After approximately 20 minutes over medium heat, the peaches should be fairly well cooked down. Remove the vanilla bean from the pot (making sure to squeeze all the goodness from it).

Taste and add sugar to achieve your desired sweetness. I found a happy, flavorful place at 3 cups, but depending on the innate sweetness in the peaches, you might be able to stop at 2 cups. You could also add peach juice or apple juice to cut the sugar but I'm lazy and tend to just use the white sugar.

Pour peach sauce into pint jars, leaving a bit more than an inch of headspace. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar and stir in with a chopstick or plastic spoon. Wipe rims, apply lids and process for 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

If you want to make butter from some of the sauce, reserve 6-8 cups of sauce and cook down in a slow cooker (making sure to add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice for every two cups of sauce at the beginning of cooking).

Cherry Amaretto Jam

· 8 cups cherries - pitted and stemmed (about 3 lbs - ish) Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1/2 cup amaretto Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1/2 cup water Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1 1.75 oz package NO SUGAR NEEDED pectin Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 2 tablespoon lemon juice Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1 tablespoon vanilla Ask a question about this ingredient.

· 1 teaspoon almond extract

Basically I pitted and chopped the cherries and threw them in a pot with the everything but the pectin. Cooked that a bit, hit it with my immersion blender (what can I say, I like my jam smooth), added the pectin and then put it in jars and processed them for 20 minutes since I live above sea level over 1000 feet.

So far, DELICIOUS.

This weekend I will be making blueberry almond butter and teaching a co-worker how to make blueberry grand marnier jam. It's beginning to feel like a lot of the stuff I can this year may include alcohol.

What does that say about my year?

Bite

Earlier this summer I thought my peas were done for. They had this weird yellow wilt going on and my research indicated that they were doomed. That was pretty depressing since the old remedy seemed to double dig and hope for the best next year.

As the summer as continued my peas have rallied and I have been able to pick a handful of pods every couple of days. Normally I stand outside and munch on either the pods whole (I have sugar snap peas in one area), or open the peas and eat them raw (and Alaskan Peas in another part of the garden).

Tuesday though my not quite 2 year old saw me open a pod and raising his hand up to me said "bite?"

So I crouched down and let him pick the small green pea out of my hand. He popped it in his mouth, looked at me and said "MMMMMM".

That right there made the entire raised bed building, filling, planting and water system insanity worth it.

Because you see, he won't eat canned peas from the tin cans found at the grocery store and who can blame him. If you ate one of those and then a fresh pea from the garden and didn't know they were related....well..you would doubt they were related frankly.

Admittedly, my garden isn't producing a majority of our food right now. It might not ever.

But my son ate 20 fresh peas from that garden and loved them.

And that was worth it to me.

Where have I Been?

I have been meaning to blog but my nights, my "free time" seem to get lost and slip away from me lately.

My peas in my raised beds have some weird pea wither and are yellowing from the bottoms up. Best I can tell I'll just have to double dig and hope for the best next year which is incredibly disappointing.

My tomatoes are huge and I've seen plenty of flowers but no tomatoes yet.

Cucumbers are going crazy and lots of little yellow flowers there with tiny cucumbers behind them. Can't WAIT.

In canning news I've made 3 pints of Cherry Amaretto jam and 3 pints of white peach vanilla sauce.



A little foamy for a couple of the cherry jars but overall still delicious.

I should be back to posting at least a little more regularly in the coming weeks as new job becomes old hat and family time settles down around a not quite 2 year olds schedule.

Getting it all in

At the beginning of this weekend I had begun to despair.

Only the tomatoes I had raised from seed seemed to be doing anything in their new home and thriving would be an exaggeration. The carrots, lettuce and peas just weren't making a showing at all. I knew it was all the rainy weather.

I despaired.

Yesterday when I came out to the garden to check on the tomatoes I noticed a few slivers of green. I looked closer and behold! Carrots making a slight showing. And what's that? Peas? Both Alaskan and Sugar Snap? My word! And finally the spinach and lettuce have green plants peeking out of the soil!

And then the watering system my husband so lovingly installed failed.

If we leave it running for too long it begins to flood. The only way to fix it would be to dig up the entire bed and either rip it out or replace it.

I just want to cry.

I've decided to not rip it out just yet. It's already late in the season for some of these poor little plants to get started and I certainly don't want to waste a year because of bad plumbing.

I'll just hand water them until the season ends. Then we can dig it up and move on.

But it sure was an ugly fight getting to that conclusion.

Those carrots better be delicious.

In the front yard the herb garden simply gets better and better. I lost one of my Echinacea's so I replaced it with lemon balm. I also added Chamomile and lemon verbena (in a pot) to the mix and lavender paired with semi-prostrate rosemary.

In the window boxes I have herbs such as peppermint, chocolate mint, parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, oregano, and tarragon.

I have a pot of lavender and rosemary as well. Basically the front yard smells wonderful.

It's shaping up to be a really great year I'm thinkin.

It's spreading

It's hard to know if it's me, them or the world around me. 3 years ago I was an avowed "black thumb". There would be no gardening for me, it wasn't interesting and held no appeal.

1 year ago I thought I might grow a little blueberry bush in a small container. Before the blueberry plant had even arrived I had begun to sprout other small things in containers in my window and then eventually along the back of my house.

This year I have a raised bed with more space than I can comprehend.

It's been a relatively short road.

But what blows me away is how many OTHERS I meet who are thinking the same way. My mother in law I've mentioned but I have 2 co-workers who are doing small container and suburban backyard gardening.

What is MORE interesting to me is both of these co-workers are single people in their late 20's or early 30's. One is a man.

We talk about cucumbers, tomatoes and what else they are growing. We all share a love for tomatoes and cucumbers and peas but they are more adventurous, growing peppers and pumpkin and squash while I remain undecided or even a little timid in my gardening choices.

This week we've lamented the rainy weather which kept us from fully planting our gardens. And I am even more amazed that I'm having this conversation instead of talking about sports, pop culture or the latest whatchamahoozit. Instead we are comparing types of plants and nursery vs. seed growing etc.

Bizarre. But so glad I'm seeing it.

Starting to see the changes

When we started gardening and changing to a more productive backyard last year I accidentally insulted my mother in law.

She was suggesting some plant for my front yard and I said, "Yes I know it'll look nice but I want my yard to actually DO something."

She kinda snapped back at me "My yard DOES something you know."

Her yards, both front and back, are indeed beautiful and she has spent YEARS perfecting them. We eloped in her backyard because it was so beautiful. They do something. They just do something DIFFERENT than what I want mine to do. They don't produce food.

Throughout this year though when we've been working on my yard or visiting and touring her backyard I've made little comments here and there and it seems like they MIGHT be finally starting to make sense.

It started when the vining clematis on her shed died. She was wondering what else to plant and I offhandedly suggested vining fruits of vegetables. I believe I suggested cucumbers. She informed me last week they've decided to take my advice but are going with peas because it's a cooler area of the yard. I smiled and offered to give her some of my seeds.

After putting in my planters a couple of weeks ago my father in law decided he wanted planters in HIS yard. They spent the entire day today getting rock and wood to build their raised beds. To be sure, theirs will be far fancier than mine; they have plans for a walking path through them, a sitting area near them and according to my father in law he printed a companion gardening plan for his beds.

My mother in law informed me that they bought heirloom seeds and plants for the beds as well today. She talked about non-GMO plants and seeds etc.

I smiled.

No need to be pushy, sometimes it's just the little suggestion and seeds in fertile soil that changes hearts.

Mothers Day Gifts - Food

This took much longer than I anticipated, so sorry for that.

Another idea for Mother's Day Gifts is food. Not just a box of chocolates though, not with a prepper's mindset!

If you're giving to a total non-prepper there is always the homemade goodies such as jams, jellies, butters etc. Or even homemade herbal tea if you're particularly talented. Actually those are great gifts for preppers too, what am I saying?

For those who are getting into the swing of food storage you could always provide a Meal in a Jar (or mylar bag) to even just the book if you're feeling uninspired.

Then of course there is always #10 cans of freeze dried or dehydrated foods either ingredients or meals.

Bon Appetite for Mother's Day!