Minions!

I needed a new project after the fairy lantern, so my minions conspired to prepare their own garden. I'm hoping to add some other plants to this later on. 

So that was another 20 minutes. Now I need ANOTHER new project. 

Project update

The fairy lantern turned out pretty good, but it didn't take very long to make so that left me needing another new project. 

And here's a plant update. Remember the tiny little palm tree?

It's all grown up now...

I guess it was happy in its little home, but it outgrew the space so now it's free to take over the windowsill. 

Bonsai again!

Finally!

I've mentioned before that I'm obsessed with bonsai and I've tried a million ways to get one that have been unsuccessful because bonsai take time and I'm impatient, the ones they sell for indoor use are outdoor trees that are destined to die for $40, and growing a tiny tree from seed produces a sapling, not a bonsai.

The other week I was looking at some dead shrubbery that needs to be removed from the front yard and I came across two small boxwood shrubs that were half dead hiding in the shadow of a taller bush. I noticed the nebari [root system] on them and I was impressed. I decided pulling them out and repotting them wouldn't be a loss - they weren't going to make it anyway, so I had nothing to lose. 

This is the second tree which turned out just exactly like the mature bonsai tree I've always wanted. I bought a shallow pot at Lowes and replanted it. Hopefully it will survive the shock and become a flourishing outdoor bonsai with a little hit of fairyland thrown in. It needs time and some work, but I think I've finally got the tree I've always wanted. 

"Mindful" as a buzzword

 This is my carrot soufflé - it turned out delicious!

 

 

I’ve been doing a lot of research on topics like:
 

 ‘no diet diet’ {most hits turn up a diet]
 

Mindful eating [a lot of the hits are good, but many of them are focused on weight loss through mindful eating rather than actual health through mindful eating]
 

Intuitive eating [same as above]
 

Ditch the diet [also same as above – ditch the diet but do something ‘else’ and you will lose weight]
 

So a lot of the research just feels like being sucked into the diet industry cesspool through a different sewer. It’s like bait and switch.
 

I really need to stop researching all together, but that’s a therapy topic for another day. Research is one of my coping mechanisms. If I learn about something I can control it better. So I do a lot of peaking into topics to try to find support for my opinions and beliefs. That in itself is problematic because I need to embrace the idea that I don’t need justification for anything. If this is what I want to do and the way I want t live, I don’t have to see if it’s okay with anybody else, or if research supports it as a good thing or if someone else has had success at it. All I need to know is, this is what I WANT and therefore that makes it okay.
 

I really need to turn my newfound energy to a new project, but I’m torn as usual. There are a lot of things I want to work on, but one of my problems is always feeling like I should be doing something other than what I’m doing. That’s another project in itself – getting to the point where what I’m doing is okay, not because I can justify it by saying it’s the most opportune time to read as opposed to crochet, or I should write now and exercise later because the weather will be better later or I should I exercise now for half an hour and then do laundry for seventeen minutes…
 

It’s an exhausting way to live and I’ve done it for far too long. I’m working on being Zen in that area of my life too. What do I WANT to do? What NEEDS to be done – laundry? Okay, I’ll do that. Then I’ll cook something, then I’ll write if there’s time unless I feel like going for a bike ride, then I’ll do that and to hell with writing. I’ll wash the dishes later because I want to go out in the garden now and I want to write a blog post because if I don’t, I may find myself ruminating on the topic and that will interfere with my calm thoughts.
 

I bet you think I’m going nuts. I may be. But this is all about engineering improvement in whatever way works.
 

As an aside, I finally got myself a bamboo plant and added it to my indoor garden. It’s going to be the start of my mini zen garden.
 

 

 

 



6 of 30

It's always when I'm in a hurry that Blogger acts up... I'm rushing off to sit down and watch a movie after being on my feet all day - and of course nothing I do in Blogger works right tonight.  Ugh.

 

Anyway - I'm not planning on updating every 3 days, but since I made it to the weekend on Whole 30, I want to crow about it. I got this far! I'm pretty amazed that I've been able to say no to chocolate all week. It has NOT been easy.

 

The week started off rough - I was cranky, tired and hungry. Today I am FINALLY less tired. In fact I got a surge of energy this afternoon that I'm still riding on. I hope that means all this good food is finally kicking in. My mood is decidedly better and I had the willpower to walk away from mini-donuts at the flea market even though I was hungry. I've eating good food all week and I found I've really enjoyed my food. Fruit has never tasted better and I appreciate every bite of everything else - probably because I'm so hungry.

 

Tomorrow I'm breaking a cardinal rule of Whole 30 and I'm making paleo pancakes for breakfast.

 

Why?

 

Simple. Whole 30 doesn't tell me what to do. And some stupid rules are made to be broken. I get why the authors of the book FORBID pancakes of any kind. 1) They're pandering to people who enjoy that feeling of having to 'be good' in order to prove themselves worthy. I got nothin' to prove. 2) They want you to get used to not having some of the trigger foods that can lead you down the garden path to bad eating. I get that. A paleo pancake is perfectly fine - but if you get used to eating pancakes every day, what happens when paleo pancakes aren't available? You'll just have regular pancakes and that's a different animal altogether. I get it. That's why I'm allowed to break the rule. It's like in writing. Know what the rules are and break them only for a good reason. My good reason is this: Eating right is NOT about never having something you like or about having the will power not to make something decadent out of good ingredients. LIVING WELL is about LIVING - not about sticking to arbitrary rules.

 

So, I'm having paleo pancakes because I can eat an egg and I can eat a banana and that's fine - there's NO REASON I can't mix them together and cook them and eat the result if that will make me happy, fuller, well fed and give me some variety. Arbitrary rules are stupid.

 

That being said, I am having the food dreams that so many people report having. In my dreams I've eaten corn, walnut chicken with soy sauce and bleu cheese - and I felt bad about it each time. But I did it anyway.

 

On that note, here's a before and after photo of one of my terrariums. Interesting to see the difference a year has made.

Then

 

 

 

Now

  



 

Only if it's purple...

As promised, the desk accessories:

 

The washi tape accent really makes it.

 

 

I also redid some of my gardens:

 

Here are two red maple saplings I rescued from the front yard. I'm hoping to turn them into bonsai - my new obsession. The sweet little pot is from today's garage sale excursion.

I bought a sedum mat at Lowe's today and used pieces of it everywhere. A nice sized piece of it makes a fantastic ready made fairy garden in a glass ivy bowl.

The ivy terrarium was doing really well on my desk, but I just wasn't happy with it, so I replanted the ivy into an open jar and turned it into a proper fairy garden using some pink fencing I found at an estate sale and that cute little terra cotta pitcher I've had floating around in my junk box for years.

 

AND...

 

I've also discovered the Japanese art of Suiseki - or the contemplation of rocks. Of course real suiseki is one amazing rock, usually that looks like a landscape set in a custom made wooden tray. This is a set of rocks in a heart shaped wooden bowl, but you get the idea. I plan to contemplate them.

 

Over dinner we did a lot of talking about a major paint job for the basement...so it looks like in the next couple of weeks I'll be working on the faux rock wall along the basement steps.

 

I have to say that my guilty confession is I have let go of writing. I do still have to complete a novella, but I'm in no hurry. For the first time in about 10 years, I don't feel the need to write, or the guilt of not writing. I'm just living my life - and as much as writing has been who am for the last 38 years, I feel a tremendous sense of freedom in NOT having to do it. I'm sure I will go back to it. There are still things I want to write, but for now, I feel incredibly liberated and I'm enjoying so many more things now that I don't feel like every moment not spent writing is a moment wasted. Is that wrong?



Project salad

A little bit of everything...

My organization obsession is still in full swing.

 

 The Filofax and planner have their own drawer along with a cute little pouch to hold supplies.

 The garden is going along. Potatoes are taking over their pot, and the salad bowl garden is doing great. The cool weather has been nice for the lettuce and spinach. Carrots, radishes, beans, cucumbers and peppers are holding their own. Hopefully warmer weather will speed up the growth process because a lot of the plants seem like their in stasis, just waiting for more sunlight to kick start them.

Lastly, I've planted another DIY bonsai...

 

A little maple I found growing near the deck and some fern that was clinging to the barren eastern side of the house along with a lone moss patch. I'm still scouting for more bonsai pots - that's my garage sale mission for the summer.

 

Yesterday's project involved working on redoing my desk accessories. Pictures to come of the repurposed pen holder and the footstool shelf.

Bonsai!

No, this has nothing to do with Buckaroo Bonzai being my favorite movie.

I love bonsai trees. Who doesn't? But they're expensive and easy to kill, so I decided to make my own invincible bonsai tree.

 

 

I used the small pot I had originally put my baby Groot in - since the clay Groot did not really turn out so well or last long because the air dry clay cracked. The pot was actually a perfect Bonsai pot and was probably the one my original bonsai came in years ago.

 

I took a cutting from the unkillable bush that grows next to the deck. I've been hacking away at that thing for years and it just keeps growing. I've cut branches from it that have started growing on their own a day later, so I realized, hey, this thing won't die. Cutting it down and sticking it in a tiny little pot won't hurt it. A short branch that already looked tree-trunky made for a nice bonsai starter.

 

I added some moss dug up from beneath the back step - also probably unkillable. I added some stones and put it all in a nice potting mix.

 

I figure I can trim this thing all I want, and it will just keep going like the Energizer bunny of Bonsai - unlike those frail but pretty little juniper bonsais that wither after a few weeks outside of the care of a seasoned professional gardener.

 

Just for good measure, I popped another cutting into the fairy garden behind it where I'm growing one of my mini-lawns. I figure I'll do the same with that one.

 

Stay tuned for pictures of my sproutlings. The lettuce, spinach, radishes, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes and beans are all in their permanent homes and starting to green up.



Time to get dirty!

With my room within my room project done, I turned my attention to the garden. I set up my critter-protection and I'm preparing for a bumper crop of organic produce:

 

I decided our yard is useless. The kids are too old to 'play' outside anymore, no more dog - so we have a postage stamp of land that does nothing. It's high time I took it over and made it do something, so my enclosed garden begins.

 

I also prepped a new fairy garden and cleaned up some of the old ones:

 

 

I added a little bit more to this one today - changed out the bench for a white one and transplanted the moss from my indoor moss gardens to fluff it out a bit.

 

Can't wait for the lawn I planted in this one to start growing.

New projects to chase away the cold

As if winter couldn't get worse, it's freezing and all I can think about is gardening.

In anticipation of spring, I'm prepping more fairy houses. This is an old flower pot with some embellishments. I made a mushroom cap for it to be added later today. I just need some varnish for the whole thing so I can put it outside.

My latest obsession is fairy doors, so I ordered a mini on line and made this for my desk. I have a larger door on order, but it hasn't gotten here yet so last night I started making rustic fairy doors from popsicle sticks. I'll post those finished projects soon. The whole fairy door idea has me completely bowled over - I can't get enough and my fear is that I will run out of wall space hiding little fairy doors all over the house.

 

Then again, how bad would that be?

 

In other news, I joined Pinterest in earnest and I'm liking it. [In time I'm sure will come the inevitable crash and burn of this social media relationship] but for now it's cool.

 

And I planted my coffee beans - so in two years I should be able to brew a cup of coffee from my very own blend!

 

So done with winter

It's been a while. I've been busy writing - yes, I finished book 1 of my sci-fi series, got it edited and am planning on an April release!

I've been fighting the winter blahs - I used to like winter .I had a great excuse to stay in side and read, write, create - but now that I seem to have kicked by reverse seasonal affective disorder, I get regular seasonal affective disorder and winter [after Christmas winter] makes me depressed.

I can't wait for the warm weather and to get outside and get back to work on my gardens. Today, we went to Lowe's in the snow and I plunked down $20 on my seeds. The only thing I didn't get was strawberry seeds - and I figure I'll have to invest in some plants when the season starts. I caved and bought carrots again - only because of the colorful variety and went with two types of beans [couldn't resist the purple ones] and multicolored peppers.

I also put my coffee seeds in water to soak and I'm planting them in their mini-greenhouse tomorrow. It takes 3-4 weeks for them to sprout, so I'm thinking by the time they're transplantable it will be warm enough to put them in a greenhouse at least.

I'm working on some fairy garden accessories and I plan to have some authentic fairy gardens this year. My indoor plants are hanging in there after some major trimming today. There's been so little sunlight, it's a wonder they're holding on, but they are.

Here's to warmer weather - it can't get here fast enough!

Seeing the forest for the trees

Fiona seems to be doing better. I added a little fence and some mushrooms to cheer her up and with the midmorning sun from the south facing window, she's perking up. 

 

 



The view of my project board through the branches of my lemon tree. The tree seems to have reached its growing capacity in the pot its in. Now the question, do I repot it this spring and see if it will get any bigger? Then have to lug a bigger pot inside next winter, or do I leave it like this keep it this size? I despair of every having home grown lemons - and those thorns!! But I wanted trees, so now I have trees. 

A better world?

Yesterday I was taking a walk and thinking about how I wanted to live in a different world this year - meaning I don't want to live in the publishing world so much this year, and I don't want to live in the cyberworld. I'm enjoying my blogging, but I find that most of the time I spent on the computer is NOT productive time. And when I get on the computer with the ambition to do something productive, I end up wasting time. Then I'm too tired to do something productive so I log off having accomplished nothing.

You would think my goal would be to put my computer time to better use, but alas, my goal is really to have less computer time all together.

Don't know how that's going to work out, but I'd like 2015 to be the Year of Good Health, not the year of blankly staring at the computer wishing I could get back on the writing train and start raking in the bucks that other people are raking in.

I spent this afternoon noodling around in my gardens. Added glass mushrooms to the terrariums to combat the melting the and mold that happen with the clay and resin ones.

I then fixed up my now non-living beach terrarium, inspired by the terrarium book I got for Christmas.

The pretty little starfish I had in there disintegrated, so I put a shell over the remains and tucked some dried moss in to look like something is growing.

Then I created another bottle garden - this one using the quilled plants that I made years ago. They used to be in the faux fairy garden I made, but that's getting tossed in favor of other real plants.

Now my real question for the day was this... Which is really the better world to live in? There's a lot of strife and argument between the people who live in the present and the people who want to live in the past. My question is, which makes a better world:

The commercialized present, where holidays are about retail sales, the seasons dictate what we buy and big business strives to keep us artificially happy by constantly providing us with new things to want and to need so that we work hard to have money to spend on things, things, things - and everything is shiny and bright and new and somewhat hollow... or

The 'idealized' past, where religion rules and tells us we must look askance and things that are new and commercial, where we should be working hard not to earn money but to earn our place in 'heaven' and government and church work to keep us artificially unhappy so that we are always striving to be better and more pious so we can attain our reward in the afterlife?

Is it better to be happily rushing off to the mall to pick up the latest tablet and video game and new flavor of shampoo that will give us shiny hair, or is it better to be trudging off to church or synagogue or mosque where we will be reminded that we are sinners who are worth nothing until we atone for something that supposedly happened centuries ago?

Is it better to pretend to be happy in a world with no sustenance, or is it better to be oppressed by a system that only allows us happiness when we're dead?

I know the latter isn't a world I want to live in - and really, neither is the former, but living on the fringe of both is rather frightening. Do you fall into the commercial present and be sucked into the next Black Friday or do you continue to resist the religious past where your soul is sucked out and sold back to you through prayer and atonement?

Maybe this is why I like to live in miniature world of my own creation.

I have a Groot problem

I sometimes make the mistake of saying I like action figures a little too much, and then I get them as gifts.

Here's my collection of Groot figures. I do love Groot - in fact I adore Groot. So I suppose I can't complain.






I gave the figures a place of honor among my relocated terrariums. After rearranging my art supply closet and switching it with my office supply closet, I also moved some of my terrariums from my very crowded garden shelf to my desk where they won't get as much light, but they really shouldn't need as much. This should free up some room for my Norfolk Island Pine and the gardens I plan to add later in the new year. I have to be careful about how many plants I 'rescue' - I'm severely limited in my space. Hopefully the Groots will lend their support to my jar plants and help them grow.

A gardener's Christmas

Apparently there was a meeting at some point of people who wanted to find ways to combine the love of terrariums with the love of coffee. They were obviously thinking of me.

This is what I got from that collusion of geniuses:

A terrarium to grow coffee plants! And a coffee mug with terrariums on it. From two different people who apparently did not confer. I'm so excited to get started growing coffee. I'll have to add that to my crop list for 2015.

I also got myself some tiny gardening tools which should help me take care of my growing indoor garden and will make work in next year's fairy gardens a lot easier.

Now I should be able to root around in my tiny little plant homes and clean them up nicely. Off to the gardens. Now all I need is a pair of overalls! Or green jeans... [JK, I hate overalls and jeans.]

Merry Christmas!

Just because you CAN

Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should.  I probably just got myself into a Facebook flame war over the stupid movie controversy going on right now. {And I should know better than to enter into a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, but sometimes I just can't let stupidity lie.]

Here's the sitch in a nutshell. A stupid group of actors and writers and directors made a stupid movie about the assassination attempt of a stupid [but still living] Asian dictator. Said Asian dictator found out about the stupid movie and got mad. [Not defending him, because he's an asshole, but really, who wouldn't get mad?] Cyber terrorists apparently strong-armed the movie company [Sony?] and threatened horrible things if the movie wasn't pulled. The stupid people pulled the movie.

Now the Internet is broken over whether or not they should have backed down and how they were just exercising their right to be assholes to free speech.

I gotta be honest - I hate asshole dictators as much as the next person. HOWEVER, I can see the merit in NOT making comedy movies about assassinating living political figures. It looks bad. It makes asshole dictators mad and while asshole dictators deserve to be mad, when they get mad, they can make things unpleasant for innocent people in ways the stupid movie makers never even imagined.

So crying that we have the right to free speech and we should be allowed to say whatever we want may sound like the rallying call of 'patriotic 'mericans' but really, it's the whine of the rampant moron. BECAUSE, just because you have the right to say whatever you want to say, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD. It's not always wise to run off at the mouth.

So while 'patriotic 'mericans' think that American filmmakers made a funny movie and some asshole dictator got mad and some cyber terrorists got involved and made the filmmakers pull the movie and that's so wrong -- what REALLY happened was, some brain dead American filmmakers made a stupid movie that made them look like a bunch of idiots and an asshole dictator got mad and some cyber terrorists strong-armed them into pulling the movie which they did, telling the world that these strong arm tactics may be used freely the next time some asshole dictator gets mad about something.

They made the US look bad and added fuel to the fire burning under a volatile political situation.

I call that treason. Other people - let's say...stupid people... call that 'freedom of speech.'

'nuff said.

On to more interesting things like my latest plant rescue.

Meet...Fiona. She's a Norfolk pine tree.

I found Fiona dressed in Christmas finery and languishing in the lobby of the local CVS pharmacy. She couldn't stand on her own. Her root ball was dry as a bone and falling out of the pot. They had spray painted glitter on her needles and hung some cheap ornaments on her branches and were selling her for $6.99.

I could not leave her there to die, so with a $4.00 coupon, I rescued her and took her home. She has a new pot and a spot of honor in my indoor garden where she should be able to soak up some much needed sunlight and enjoy the company of my other indoor plants. Wish her luck!

My indoor garden

 

Despite the lack of sunlight this season, my little indoor garden is managing to eek out a living in the only south facing window in the house. This bowl has parsley salvaged from the dismal outdoor plantings and some lethargic basil that I grew from seed. It also has some of the polka dot plant cuttings that are doing pretty well. You can see Nathan, my rescued aloe plant, in the background, still clinging to life now that he's been replanted in sand and marbles. Less water, more light seems to be helping him, but not much.

 

Here's the thatch house garden. The polka dot plants are second generation, since I cut the long stems off to make new plants I've gotten these more compact, leafier plants that look a lot better.

 

My plan for next winter is to replace some of these 'home made' plants with a couple of nice starter gardens from a plant store so I'll have something a little heartier to look at over the winter of 2015-2016.

 

Can't wait to get back out and work on my container garden for next spring.

 

I've narrowed my crops down to the following:

 

Parsley

Lettuce

Spinach

Garlic

Green Peppers

Jalapeños

Cucumbers

String Beans

Tomatoes

Strawberries

 

Ten crops - all fairly easy to grow. The garlic is already bedded down for the winter and I have Jalapeño seeds. I've decided rather than buy a pricey seed bank with a lot of stuff I'll probably never use, I'll just invest in some good quality seeds of the things I really know I'll use.

 

On the writing front, I did some editing and came up with a mini-plot for a new story. Maybe working on that for a bit will get the creative juices flowing. Two cups of coffee has revitalized my brain a bit, so we'll see.

As promised...

Fairy gardens!

My sister-in-law and my niece wanted fairy garden terrariums, so using the gorgeous glass jars I found at a garage sale coupled with the rocks and marbles and gravel I've been collecting, and some new little plants from Home Depot, I put together two pretty cute ones. The polka-dot plant I bought for them was quite big, so rather than chuck the leftover stems, I HAD to make a fairy garden for myself too.

 

 

The yellow fairy's garden home

 

The green fairy's garden home

The blue fairy's garden home

 

I had a ball making these, except that I could really use some terrarium tools. Even jars that are large enough to get my hand in still present a problem when the plants are in, getting the decorations situated. It was somewhat of a challenge, but the results were better than expected.

 

A bigger better terrarium

The marathon garage sale day turned up this loot - a fantastic, giant glass jar for $1.00 [complete with blue gravel], a bitters bottle, a miniature clear vase and a cute hurricane lamp that will be a great home for a tiny plant - which I haven't found yet.  I ran right out to buy something for the big jar because it needed to be a home to a needy plant ASAP.  Here's how it turned out.

The tree-like plant turned out to be bigger than I wanted it to be. I was really hoping to find some tiny plants, so they'd have a lot of room to grow big, but this isn't the season apparently for small plants. Hopefully the tree plant won't grow too big too fast. I added the spare bird's nest - and I'm pretending it's a blue-footed booby nest rather than a robin's nest. I set this in the bedroom window, we'll see how it does. I also grabbed the last of the ivy from outside [I did a much better job of eradicating it than I had really planned on, so I cut two small springs and planted them in the round open jar where i used to have the polka dot plants that weren't doing well.

I'm starting to outgrow my very limited indoor area for plants and I've got to bring my lemon tree inside soon, so things are going to get crowded for the winter. I think I have a plant addiction. Is that a thing?

Ridiculous happiness

So much time and money is spent on trying to find happiness. If anyone asked me, I would say the problem, why no one seems to be able to find happiness, is because everyone is looking for something big. Happiness is winning the lottery, having a huge wedding, getting a new car, a bigger raise, a bigger house - but those things don't happen to people every day, so they spend most of their lives unhappy, waiting for one of those big happy moments to happen.

The 'secret' to happiness, I would say, is to find happiness in the little things that can happen any time. This weekend, I was ridiculously happy - because of potatoes. The ones I planted in the summer from that vine that was growing in the pantry were finally ready to pick. So yesterday, while it rained like crazy, I dug them out of the container. This is what I got.

Gorgeous, right? Most of them were tiny but the I was really surprised by how big the biggest ones were. I'm inspired now to plant a lot more next year - I can't wait. My goal this season has been to grow enough of something to make a side dish for a family dinner and tonight I did that.  Here they are, cut up in preparation for roasting. 

Even more gorgeous, right? And they turned out great! A little olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder and they were amazing. I've never eaten a potato that was picked yesterday. To be honest, I was really proud of myself. I really feel like I've succeeded in changing by brown thumb to green.