This Afternoon

March So Far

Daylight savings, lots of citrus, pi day, St. Patrick's Day, so many hours spent playing in the front window looking for dogs, a big snow storm to round out winter, almost an 8th birthday, climbing on everythign, way too much fighting, I started a new part-time job again...March is flying by!

Right Before Spring

It's cold outside. Not freezing in a below-zero snow-on-the-ground way, but the kind that just sort of bites at you as you get closer to spring and want the warmer weather.  The kind that makes me want to sit with seed catalogs and a hot cup of something in my hands and plan summer gardens. We had unseasonably warm weather last week and it made me itch to get my hands digging in the dirt.

We have a lot to do. Last year we didn't do much. It just felt like too much. We had a pool for the first summer ever (it came with the house, we wouldn't have voluntarily chosen to have one. In fact, it was on our list of things we DIDN'T want, but here we are.) We had an infant.  I was still trying to kick PPD/A in the face and it was just too much to think about the work and money involved in starting a new garden.

This year it's all feeling better.  I'm still trying to kick PPD/A in the face, but I'm making progress. And Ben is bigger.  And we can manage to wrap our heads around starting new garden areas from scratch.

As I started planning and figuring out how many veggies vs cutting garden flowers I want, I looked back at this post and this post it made me feel hopeful. I cannot believe I grew so many flowers that season!  If I could plan and do that, I can certainly get some seeds in the ground to grow some veggies for our family this year, even if it does still feel like a big task to dig out and start a new garden spot from scratch.  We're using existing space and I'm trying to combine my cutting garden wants with perennials and landscaping to work on our yard a little bit while I still use it as garden space in a few different spots that still don't have permanent landscaping.

None of this includes our whole front yard that needs to be landscaped because when we moved in we had to have everything in the front ripped out to fix a basement water problem.  So that's happening, too.  One step at a time.  I may or may not have much time for blogging this spring and summer!  

As usual, I have no idea what the heck I'm doing, but I'm going to do it anyway...

Fall Produce

I've been doing some small blog updates lately since I hadn't done much in a long time .  It made me realize that even though photography plays a huge part in my life, I haven't talked about it much on here.  I'd like to change that without getting all romanticized and hipster and too serious about it.  I just like it, it makes me happy to think of a photo and actually create that photo, which is the case with these. They're from a few falls ago (Novemberish of 2014, I think) and I never shared here (at least I don't think I did!) The colors were so intense and the light was so pretty that day and we had gone to our farmer's market.  I remember being in our old garage and using the top of our freezer first, then the top of a ladder to get them and shivering in the chilly air while I tried to capture the details of all of these veggies and fruit.  I don't even remember now what I made with them, probably some sort of soup or a sauté, to the point of crispy, with garlic for the chard and kale.  The apples probably disappeared within hours or days and the cabbage probably sat for far too long until I decided to do something with it.

January

Here's what I've got right now.  

January was a blur of snow and sickness and morning (all day) sickness. 

#3 is on the way! 

How was your January??

On the First Day of Fall

I'm drinking pumpkin spice coffee and my toes are chilly in flip flops.  There's a little pile of leaves in the backyard that they raked this weekend and they're already jumping in the pile.  I'm thinking about picking out front porch pumpkins and mums and trying to make myself wait until October 1st, though I'm not really sure why. There's an entire dogwood tree in our backyard (our only official backyard tree right now) that has already turned completely red.

Fall is always such a strange time.  It's my favorite season for the weather and the fun and my birthday, but it always feels like such a whirlwind that starts in September and ends with a snowy January and you look back and wonder how the heck it all flew by so quickly.  So I kind of don't want to do much. Is it weird to acknowledge out loud that I'm a lot better at doing seasonal projects than I am at just keeping up with the day-to-day stuff that needs to happen in our house?  John is a million times better than me on most days, especially when it comes to dishes and laundry.  So this year, I want to focus more on just keeping more basic holiday sanity by keeping up with the normal, everyday stuff.  I've already decided that there's only one thing we (John and I) "need" to get for Christmas: a dishwasher.  ("Need" obviously being completely relative since we don't truly NEED one at all. ) And there's not any sort of great space in our kitchen, so we're thinking about one of the small versions on a counter.  We have a perfect corner that's basically unused space that would work well for a counter top version and I keep reading that they rate a ton better than the portable options.  Anyone want to give any input or share experience?

In the meantime: I'm getting some mums and pumpkins to place outside my door and if I can be patient, I'm making myself wait a few more weeks for them.  Nick is being the same thing for Halloween that he's been the past 2 years (a firefighter) and Mia just needs a cape and vampire teeth to be Dracula.  Throw in a day of pumpkin carving with friends and the possibility of a Libby's pumpkin bread kit and I think we're completely set for fall.  If we feel really crazy, we might pick apples.  But we probably won't and I'm kind of happy about that.  I'm feeling the same about Christmas. (Am I annoying you by talking about Christmas already?) Usually I make a million lists and plans and all sorts of stuff, all in the name of trying to keep it simple.  So I think I'm going to skip the lists and if I feel motivated for a holiday craft for the kids, get out the red and green construction paper to make chains.  Maybe slice and bake some oranges.  I'm not wrapping books, I'm giving them to the kids in a big basket to go nuts.  After all, she can read now.  And he's trying  Which means she can read all of the Christmas books! And I wouldn't want to deprive them of any reading time by having the books wrapped;)

Does someone want to remind me that I said all of this in the next few months when I start thinking about making lists??  All they really care about is the time with family and putting up a tree.  A few presents are the icing on the cake and the rest is just gravy if we have it in us to make it happen.  I need to remember that.