May 28, 2020 Okra & “Fire Lilies” Today we planted okra. Three long rows of okra plants just far enough apart to walk through the rows with the mower for easy weeding, pruning, and harvesting. Yesterday and Tuesday were the 6 by 4 corn patch. The 5 by 4 corn [...]
May 26, 2020 Life is Risk Life is risky. How many people get out alive? (I’ve heard that from two sources this week, and it got me thinking…) Our goal since the beginning of time has been to build this net of safety around our family to allow our offspring [...]
May 20, 2020 Peppers Have you ever seen a pepper seed? If you’ve had crushed red peppers shaken on your Italian food, you’ve seen the small whitish yellow seeds; the crunchy non-red parts of the seasoning. They are very small – not carrot seed small, but almost four times smaller [...]
May 18, 2020 Watermelons In our garden there are these long snaky vines that we keep training to stay out of the peppers, stop invading the carrot patches, and keep your green tendrils off of the zucchini! They start as wavy delicate yet determined sprouts. Nothing, not even the largest [...]
May 16, 2020 Shattered Again. Shattered Again. This is what strikes my heart again. Of course, in the big scheme of things I realize, this is tiny. This isn’t losing a family member or going bankrupt. Logically, my brain tells me that this isn’t really a bad thing and there [...]
May 14, 2020 Hidden Treasures When we grow our garden, we come across some interesting plant discoveries (probably because seeds are lost by little helpers in odd places) and have found some amazing co-growing companions. This tomato was just found in the lily patch and we potted it as it [...]
May 12, 2020 Blighted Tomatoes Today Louis, Thea, and I spent hours clearing the blight from our tomato bushes in the faint hope that we can eradicate the fungus or at least keep it away from the healthy tomatoes until they are harvested. Blight starts harmlessly enough – it looks [...]
May 10, 2020 Culture: The Importance of Family Imagine you are raised a young woman, married a few years with two children. Your family is part of a group sojourning in a land with people hostile to you. In your family’s culture, women are to obey their fathers and later [...]
May 6, 2020 Monopoly Crazy Yes, my family is crazy. Maybe. We love board games – especially if it involves everyone. This is difficult as most games like battleships, mancala, and chess are two player or maybe four player like labyrinth, the mall game, trouble, spelldown, scrabble, and Lord of [...]
May 4, 2020 Tiny Specialized Chicken Coop In preparation for our move and new gardening regime (Louis is moving to raised garden beds), we made our specialized chicken coop tractor. I know, that sounds funny, but our goals were lightweight, easy to move, sturdy, storm proof, and hopefully predator proof. [...]