garden update

Sad.. everything is slowly rotting in the garden :/ A high of 62 this week. We do have sunshine, for a cumulated 90 minutes a day. Then we have grey, and rain.
It's making me quite sad. Also the fact that it's getting really hard to go out.
My older child loves the outdoors. But he now whines "cold mama" when we get out :/

Let's be positive:
the mint is doing great :) I planted 3 kinds of mint last year. Two really came back, the marrocan mint and the chocolate mint, and now the third kind is back too!!! :) Milly Mint.

The tomatoes are probably not going to turn red this year :( But we can make fried green tomatoes and maybe salsa or chutney if they grow a bit more.
I had to remove the leaves that were covered in mildew.. Not much left after this.

 Beans

 Peppers, barely flowering now so I don't expect much..

Pumpkin are growing nicely! Crossing fingers for those!

The hops are taking over the deck!

And the corn is now taller than us, but no flowers yet..

This season really taught me how important the weather is when you grow food. I am very thankful for grocery stores, that we don't rely on our own production only.

Little changes a.k.a. not going back to storebought

Implementing little changes around the house, I realize a lot of things can be homemade, no matter where you live and how much land you have..
Recently I've been switching to 99% homemade for laundry products and I am actually happy with the results! :)
I had given up after my husband requested a more scented laundry, but it works super well with some essential oil!

My recipes:

-For laundry detergent:

melt one bar of soap in 4 cups water
pour 4 gallons of hot from the tap water in a 5 gallons bucket
add your melted soap
add about one and a half cups of washing soda
stir well (I use a whisk)
cover with lid and let sit overnight.
I store the huge bucket next to the washing machine, and use an old laundry detergent container that I refill when needed, it's smaller and easier to use.
In the little container I pour the detergent (using a ladle or an funnel) and I add 5 drops of lavender oil + 2 drops of tea tree.

-For softner in the washing machine:

I simply use a bottle of white vinegar in which I add 10 drops of lavender oil

I hang the laundry usually. But we recently invested in a dryer.. because the wheather has been so humid, nothing gets a chance to dry before it smells like mold :/


-for dryer sheets:

I have a bottle of left over homemade softener (the "ecological-green" kind)
in a small box with a lid (it previously held frame hanging bits from Ikea) I poured a couple tablespoons of that storebought softener, then a couple tablespoons of my vinegar thing and filled almost to the top with distilled water.
I used microfiber cloths to act as the sheets themselves. I'm pretty sure any cotton cloth would do just fine.
wring out liquid and toss in the dryer.
the dryer sheet can go straight back in the box after using.

in the drawers, against moths:
little bags filled with lavender 


-for ironing:

I don't iron much else but shirts and dishrags (they are stored in a drawer and need to be extra flat to fit all at once)
I switch from using plain tap water to distilled water for calcium reasons. We have really hard water here..
Now I use a one liter bottle, filled almost to the top with distilled water, to which I add some vinegar and a few drops of lavender oil.
It turned ironing in a very pleasing experience :)

The best part: you can buy all of those products in a store, but rarely can you find them all with the same scent. Now my laundry smells "match" lol. It's not an overpowering smell, but I am very pleased that it's not a battle for the strongest scent between the detergent, softener, shower gel etc.

And added bonus:
WAYYYYY cheaper!!!
way better for everyone.

Some progress on the herbarium project!

I ordered a book about botanic and just began reading it.

 I haven't got around to reading much because at home I always get busy (or on the computer) during my not-with-kids time, and at the park I would feel like a show off reading it.. Plus I can't focus very long there..
I only read it on my way to the driving school, as I wait for the train.

As I was waiting for the train I saw one of my not-so-young friends and we had a little chat. And as she saw my book we talked about plants and botanic and...
tada!!! Her son studied biology and made an herbarium for his studies, 10 years ago, and she LENT me the book!!
It is beautiful!
What a great example!

 Now all I need is
-some material aka paper, labels, and those little white sticky papers, whatever they are called
-a better way to dry my specimen
-and more specimen hunting!!!
:D

How exciting!!

This week in the garden

rain!
ha! how surprising...
We had so much rain this year.. This week we had about 3 sunny afternoons. I love sunny afternoons because I can take my busy toddler to the park! 
The garden is not going so great. The tomatoes are barely coming out. Not close to turning red at all..
The peppers are just now blossoming. I don't think we'll have peppers this year.. And they were supposed to be hot peppers but I think they'll be bell peppers at best.
We harvested our 3rd strawberry!  And some blueberries are starting to turn blue!

What grows :
-the rhubarb
-the pumpkins seem to be growing fine
-the beets are not really big but they are certainly bigger than when we planted them
-the corn has now grown taller than my husband! It was falling over and he had to put tiles to prop them up.

In other news I received 6 eggs from my friend's chicken :)
And a little pot of honey from an other friend's beehive!

Growing your own turns out to rely a lot more on chance and weather than on hard work and sweat alone.. :/

To end this on a positive note, we had a real slug problem this year (surprising with all the rain) and I installed beer traps. They seem to be very efficient!! I set up only 4 so far and I have to empty them regularly, filled with slugs and snails.. :/ It's pretty gross but I'll get used to it..

Spring is gone, and no sun yet...

Spring is over, summer is supposed to be here, but we had so far about 10 sunny days, since the beginning of spring.
the upside of this is that we don't need to water the garden. The corn is growing great!
But the downside.. :/ It's been raining for days and days and weeks and we are getting cabin fever.
We go outside everyday, rain or shine (mostly rain apparently..) but not enough.
We usually have errands in the morning, or I take a nice walk so that's about one hour outdoors,then we go to the park from 5 to 7pm more or less, so that's an other two hours.
But the few days of sun we spend the entire morning out, in the park, garden or forest, and I let the toddler run, no stroller. With the rain I can't just let him take his time, we'd all be soaked before we reach destination..
On sunny days we also take the afternoon snack in the garden, and play for a while before going to the park.. 
I am so frustrated about the weather. :/ It's really depressing. I wouldn't have thought that it could have such a huge impact on my mood!
trying to keep the toddler busy, indoors. Coloring is not working, for now. He does love chicken though :) and crayons!
and eggs! Can't wait to have our own chickens!
The happy baby :)

Anyway.
In the past couple weeks we harvested :

-some rhubarb (enough to make a quart of compote)
-lettuce, then I took it all out because the slugs got the best of it
-lavender!
-exactly 5 pea pods. lol again, our friends the slugs ate everything else before the flowers even came out.

and foraged from the park:
-redcurrant (eaten on premises) 
-raspberries! SCORE! not a huge amount but it was such a surprise. They were growing on the very top of an old wall, surrounding the play area. Corbi and I ate about 20 each and we brought some home to decorate a cake.

The weather has been so bad, that we got a dryer.

 
I can't keep up with the cloth line. It takes only a couple hours on warm sunny windy day.. But it's closer to 3 or 4 days because it gets almost dry, then it rains on it.. pfff and by day 4th the laundry smells moldy and I have to wash it again.
Now that we have a dryer, I am thinking about cloth diapering.
To be continued!