i love seed catalogs (and a review of our 2013 garden)

Right about the time Christmas cards started arriving in our mailbox, so did a smattering of seed catalogs. Mail doesn't get any better that the combination of both.

I love these catalogs. Similar to the way I used to pour over the toy section in the JC Penny catalog, I pour over heirloom tomatoes, a variety of beets that spans the rainbow and sweet corn.

Rory and I have gone on two dates this week (gasp!) and on both dates we spent most of our time talking about our 2014 garden. I even brought a seed catalog and a notebook in to the chinese restaurant last night and we sketched our game plan for the garden ahead while eating pot stickers.

Our 2013 garden was a pretty great success. We started with a lawn and ended up with awesome BLT's, lots of potatoes, sweet peas, eggplants, beans, onions, peppers and sweet corn. I'd consider that a success.

Here's my greatest gardening take away point (I think I've said it before...I'll probably say it again): gardening is all about trial and error. You try things. And some seeds, plants or methods of gardening work great, and others don't. So the next year you course correct and try something different. Sometimes you know why a crop didn't produce well, sometimes you don't.  I remember feeling pressure while planting our first garden to "do it right." And though there are rules in planting seeds that you should follow, there is also a whole lot of wait-and-see in gardening. So a girl like me needs to just relax. And then enjoy how amazing it is that we are planting teeny seeds that have life in them and will grow to produce food for us to eat!

Our garden in 2013 was basically strips on lawn that Rory rototilled up. Then he painstakingly went up and down each strip with a pitchfork and scooped the sod into the wheelbarrow. It took a long time. With each pitchfork he had to loosen the grass, shake the dirt off and dump it into the wheelbarrow. But he kept at it.

We planted berries in the front of the garden, in two patches running horizontally. We prepped one patch for blueberries, getting the soil to the right acidity level so we can plant blueberries this year.

Our only water spigot is way up on the side of the house. Which would be a pretty long way to drag a hose. So one Friday afternoon Rory ran an errand and come home with a trencher and proceeded to put down hose that would reach a second spigot out near the garden.

When he was done with that he built his own drip irrigation system out of pvc piping. Because in his words, "I'm not going to go out there every thirty minutes and move a sprinkler around. This is way easier." And of course in the long run it was easier. But watching him diligently drill holes every few inches down his pvc pipes didn't look super easy...

He used extra pvc to built a trellis for the sweet peas and for a while we protected our baby tomato plants with cement cylinders.

The potatoes were heaped with hay and for a while our garden was looking pretty impressive.

So much so that we had to put some fencing up to deter the animals. But my budget-happy husband only spent enough money to fence three sides of the garden. The plan was that we'd buy more fencing the next month when we had more money back in the "lawn-and-garden" category of  the budget. But that never happened, so we had a three sided fence all season. And actually not a lot of critters either. I think the animals haven't found us yet...

We were gone much of July and came back to a very overgrown, but wildly producing garden. This is the joy of gardening! Our first tomato was celebrated with much enthusiasm. Until Ivar tried a bite and threw it "far, far away."

And even better than the first red tomato, are the first fried green tomatoes. My absolute favorite. One of the biggest reasons I enjoy a vegetable garden. I think I made fried green tomatoes six or seven times last August and September.

This 2013 garden was largely Rory's venture. I wasn't really interested in helping out. But something has changed in me for 2014. I have been looking at canning books and working backwards: if I want to can this many quarts of tomato sauce, how many plants do we need this year? I have a sketch of our garden all figured out after our date tonight and I'm excited. And Rory is thrilled that I'm joining in.

And if I loose motivation, I will just look at this lovely picture and remind me: it is totally worth it. Because this BLT killed me. It was so good.

And now, if you'd like some seed catalogs to come to your mailbox, click on these links and fill out your address. It makes for happy, happy mail and makes for much easier garden planning. Burpee Catalog, Johnny's Catalog and Rare Seeds Catalog are my three favorite. And this site has links to 68 other free seed catalogs! (In case winter has got you down and you're needing A LOT of happy mail.)

i love this bedtime book

I found this little board book at a garage sale for 50 cents. And it has become my favorite bedtime book. It's a sweet and simple prayer, thanking God for many different things.

But there prayer is simple and one that I have had memorized for a long time now, after many, many nights of reading this one with a baby in my lap.

"Thank you for each morning that we wake to a new day.

Thank you for the friends we have, our games and fun and play.

Thank you for the winds that blow, tossing leaves on high.

Thank you for the sun and clouds, racing through the sky.

Thank you for good tasting food, for eggs and fish and meat;

thank you too for lovely fruits, ripe and full and sweet.

Thank you for each drop of rain and thank you, God, for puddles.

Thank you for our special pets who come up close for cuddles.

Thank you for the silver moon, the stars that shine and peep.

And when the day is over we thank you for our sleep."

The book is illustrated by Stephanie Longfoot. Copyright Brimax Books Ltd 1995. I tried to find a link online, but I have a feeling your best bet is to find this book at a garage sale too. :)

i love mr. rogers

I really loved sharing things that I love last week. So much, that I decided to keep it going a bit longer. It's fun to think during the day of all the small things that you appreciate and love. I've got much more to share!

Rory started taping Mr. Rogers for the kids to watch. But it's actually turned into the family favorite that all four of enjoy watching. It's a calming and relaxing show with an incredibly slow pace. A very noticeable contrast to the flashy kids programming of today.

I am so excited I found the video of the segment below because it stopped me in my tracks. Mr. Rogers is talking about friends and says "some people think that friends are always happy, always having fun. Well that's not true. Friends often have hard times and sad times. But friends can come together again and again, and build a stronger and stronger friendship between each other."

Mr. Rogers was speaking to me. And I was so taken aback by how plain his lesson was. And how absolutely true it was too. it's not often that you hear someone speak so plainly about the reality of relationships. There was no animated happy ending to his lesson. He just spoke the truth.

Throw in a visit to the graham cracker factory, and you have yourself one quality children's program.

i love the olympics

This winter has been freezing cold. Which is why I feel so grateful that we have sixteen days of awesome television to enjoy while we continue to hunker down.

It's no secret I adore the olympics. I'm a huge fan. Love the back stories, love the panoramic aerial shots of the surrounding area, love the music that leads to and from commercial, love the P and G commercials about the mom's, and I enjoy the sports themselves. (Though I am no a huge fan of the team sweaters this year...a bit too reminiscent of an ugly sweater christmas party. But whatever...they're olympians...they can wear whatever they want.)

So bring it on Sochi. We're hoping our new couch arrives in the next sixteen days so we can have friends over to watch and share in another international smorgasbord. (Fun fact: we found out we were pregnant with Ivar during the last winter games. Crazy the changes in four years: two moves, two kids...)

I'll leave you with a favorite commercial so far that got me excited for all the fun that is to come.

i love samoa creamer

I just googled how to spell Samoa...and apparently these little cookies are now called Caramel Delights. And for some reason I took offense at that. Maybe because I went door to door peddling these cookies for many March's of my childhood.

Anyhoo. This stuff. It is my happy juice. I don't drink coffee in the morning, I wait until I need it most. Which can be any time between 1:00 and 3:00. If the kids nap, I save it for when they wake up. If the kids don't nap, I listen to them cry in the monitor until I have made (and drank) my happy juice. I consider this practice a healthy boundary.

I have never been a coffee drinker. Not through college, not after. But little kids sort of necessitate a caffeine hit. I know many get stuck on the stuff and later try to get off of it. But most of those people are in the 40's. So I've decided I'll try to kick the caffeine in my 40's too.

This non-dairy-what-is-it-then creamer is yummy. So yummy that a few weeks ago when I met my friend Erika (one of my bridesmaids, now living out east) who I haven't seen in forever at Starbucks, I brought my 2 Tablespoons of creamer in a little tupperware. It took me about twenty minutes of catch up to finally dig in my purse and tell her, "I love this stuff. Don't think I'm strange that I brought my own creamer to starbucks."