Category: Kitchen and Garden

The Year is 2020

The Year is 2020

Posted on by jess

The year is 2020.  I spend an inordinate amount of time making cloth masks on my 1930s Singer.  I’m hooking a Pandemic rug.  It’s snowing in May.  My hair is purple.  Life is different.  Worse.  Better.  Changed.  Evolving.  To be determined.

 

Face mask with wording, "I care, do you?"

I feel like we are living in a Snow Globe.  Shake it to enhance the innocence, naïveté, denial.  Hide behind glittery objects.  Oh, so sparkly.  I can’t explain what’s going on.  Why is data (science) a four letter word?

Still, I find joy in the garlic–planted last fall during more hopeful times–persisting in pushing through its straw mulch.  The seedlings that lay in wait to put down roots in the garden until this snow and minor league temperatures pass.    The patio slowly taking shape as I lay it down stone by stone.  We have a home, a garden, a patio.   All of them riches, by any measure.  We are still trying to decipher the world and determine how to help make it a better place for everyone.  And, yes,  I entirely acknowledge there’s not much in the way of grammar going on.

Be well,

Jess

The garlic coming in before the snow.
Budget Garden Tricks

Budget Garden Tricks

Posted on by jess

The news is overwhelming.  I am not surprising any of you with that statement.  Of course, I take solace in my hooking, my fabrics, my knitting.  But I also find hope and inspiration in the newly popping seedlings lined by my windows preparing for garden season.  I don’t usually attempt seedlings, preferring to defer that task to my wonderful neighbors at Morning Dew Farm.  But there were a couple things I wanted for my garden this year that weren’t available, so I took the small task of starting a few thing on for myself.  And immediately ran into problems.  I’ve cataloged for you here a few of my little low to no budget garden tricks to keep this train on the rails.

Paper Bag Seedling Pots
Sunflowers don’t like their roots to be disturbed. To start them inside successfully, they must be in a container that will biodegrade when planted in the ground. I made these pots out of paper bags and they’ll go right into the soil with their seedlings when the weather warms. I just need to remember to remove the tape, which does not breakdown.
After two weeks, my hot pepper starts had failed to break ground despite keeping them near the wood stove. Looking for a quick fix, I put them in a storage bin lined with Christmas lights and topped with a piece of Plexiglas glass. I confess, I always give my husband grief for his hoarding tendencies.  But being to assemble this little contraption from our barn stash has quieted me for the moment. Within Hours, my seedlings started popping.

 

My little bean seedling has a new home in a pot made from scraps of my rug hooking linen.
I have a drawer full of rug hooking linen scraps that I’ve deemed too large to throw out and too small to be particularly useful. Then my pole bean seedlings outgrew their egg carton start. My little bean seedlings now have a new home in pots I made from scraps of my rug hooking linen.  You could use any scrap fabric on hand.