Weekend Wrap-up

So I turned what started as a bad weekend into a good one. My vending job did not go as well as...well, it was the worst. So Saturday I played hooky and spent the day exploring Kernersville, NC with Adam. We checked out the K-ville Indie Flea which was very cool. I knocked out a couple of Christmas presents there. I'm hoping to find a free Saturday in the next month or two to go out and set up my own table. Then we walked around the Honey Bee Festival. The weather was beautiful. Adam really enjoyed watching the iron works demonstration while I browsed the booths.
Tonight we wrapped it up by getting some end of summer chores done. We made pesto and cooked some eggplant to freeze for making baba ganoush when we need an appetizer for entertaining friends. I also tried my hand at making homemade crackers. This recipe comes from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I think they are going to be tasty and they were very easy and economical. I think we'll have fun experimenting with different herbs and seasonings on these. Tonight I just did a basic sprinkling of sea salt, wheat berries, and flax seeds.
In crafting news, well, I hope there's no where but up from here. I got a lot of encouragement from friends and then found this in my in-box tonight. This local blogger put one of my pendants in her weekly etsy treasury. Click here to check out her blog, especially if you're in the Triad area - she's got lots of info on the local scene!

Starting Over

I've been hibernating for sure. Even from the internet. However, I seem to be coming out of it. Tomorrow is the first day of September. Of course that means we have a few more weeks until the first day of fall, and here in the Carolina's it will be summer still for every bit of it. But tomorrow marks the beginning of the end.
Here's a run down of the season. The very ambitious garden did not do so well. It was so hot that even if I had spent more time out there, it probably wouldn't have helped much. I spent some time out there tonight pulling up squash vines that never produced and digging up the very few potatoes that grew. The craft shows have not been profitable at all the last couple months. My table is still full of half finished projects, projects never started, and some projects have just been forgotten completely. The house is still a mess, sometimes feeling like it's going to come down around me. It feels too full so I've slowly been trying to sort through our stuff. No major house projects got done this summer either. I spent this last evening of the month having my first meeting with a personal trainer who confirmed that I'm more out of shape than I even imagined (take note people - just because you're thinner at 30 than you were in high school doesn't mean you're in better shape! Apparently my non-office job doesn't help much either. Our health is more important than fitting into our "skinny" jeans!). And looming farther out on the horizon is Adam graduating this semester and looking for jobs. While we would like to stay put a couple more years, we don't know if that will be possible.
This all sounds kind of negative doesn't it? Very much like causes for stress. But tonight I'm not feeling the stress, I'm seeing the opportunities. This is the last day of the last fully summer month. Tomorrow starts a month that will see us into a new season. I'm seeing a new season for myself as well. I see a more restful period for the garden, maybe only growing a few potted vegetables this fall and focusing more on tidying up (I figure that if I plant a full fall garden, that will insure that we have to move). I see me getting through sorting out the rest of the house and getting a few things done. I see a better craft show season as people start preparing for the holidays. I see proving to myself and the personal trainer that I can get in better shape and enjoying all the benefits of better health. I see employment and location questions finally being answered, and see the celebration we'll have when Adam graduates (I'm so proud of him!).
We shouldn't wish time away for sure, but neither should we stop looking forward to what comes next. And I think (and wish and try) we should wake up every day and "start over". Put yesterday down and see what we can do today. So tomorrow when I wake up, I'll be ready to tackle the day!

Today's Garden Visitor

You are very welcome here! Eat bugs, have babies, live long and free.

What's for Dinner?

I rarely get all Betty Crocker when I'm home by myself for dinner, or anytime really. Cooking is something that I wish I could learn to enjoy. But tonight I was trying to fix something semi-healthy with what I had. Egg sandwich, broccoli and carrots, and a black berry smoothie for dessert. Not bad! I think I have one more small serving of broccoli before the plants are all done. These are the secondary heads after I cut the first ones back. They went to flower during an early spring heat wave before we could eat them.
We're getting quite a few blackberries from our few canes. I couldn't stand to put the bird netting on them after last year- we caught more birds than we kept out! While picking the blackberries, I noticed a spider web on the top of one of the canes. Then I realized that it was filled with hundreds of baby spiders!!! The little white specks in the photo are the spiders.

Ode to Spring

There's something about this time of year that makes me want to live more simply.

That makes me want to wear holey jeans and rubber garden shoes as a daily uniform.

That makes me want to hang the clothes on the line intead of throwing them in the dryer.


That makes me want to plant more vegetables (peas, onions and garlic).

That makes me want to play in the dirt (Beulah taking a dust bath),


look at the flowers (didn't intend on getting azaleas at the Farmer's Market this morning but have you ever seen such a deep red on one?),



and feed the birds (the house finch Ella's babies in the vine on our front porch - I'm really going to miss them when they all fly away).

That makes me want to spend more time in the kitchen making homemade cookies, pizza, and coleslaw (thanks to our friends who surprised us with a present of cabbage!).

How has spring fever got you?

Welcome Spring!

I think it kind of snuck up on me this year. I always know that January and February are going to be rough months for me so this year I told myself to stay busy and don't think about it. And then I look up and wow! We've been very busy getting ready for a new season. The warm season veggies have been planted under the grow light in the dining room. We pulled up the last of the fall carrots in order to plant our peas, onions and garlic. We also have broccoli, potatoes, and brussel sprouts planted. We hit the farmer's market this morning and I bought a few artichoke plants to try (again). In fact, that was the only green I bought. In a room full of vegetables I pick out baklava, baked goods (I think I'm in love with a French woman) and dog treats for my doggie-nephew. I'm pleased. I've yet to hit that spring garden panic that usually comes every year when I have fifty pages of a to-do list. I'm actually feeling pretty zen even though it's gardening season, my first craft show is next Friday, and I'm getting the spring cleaning itch for the inside of the house. Let's hope it lasts!
In chicken news, the girls got a new run built for them a few weeks ago so now they have their own yard. We kind of hated to do it but they were destroying the garden and leaving the whole yard a mess, not mention a couple of escape attempts (well, one succeeded, right?). We spend a lot of time sitting outdoors when it's warm and figure they can have field trips outside of the run on those days. The silkie has decided that she wants to sit. We weren't planning on any chicks until we went to the feed and seed today and saw the babies. Now we're thinking about it. It just might be easier than trying to trick her off her nest!

Sweetie's Grand Adventure

So here's the more detailed story if any of you care to know it. I thought that after Sweetie's appearance in the newspaper and her being mentioned on a couple of radio shows this morning, that I should elaborate a bit.
Friday afternoon we were in the house when we heard Spooky squawking. That's what she does, so much in fact that we didn't look outside to see if something was going on. That's how she got her name, you know, because she gets upset if a leaf falls too close to her. So that was mistake number two (the first being that we had not clipped their wings since the chicks hatched- this is a learning process remember). The next mistake was not going out until after dark to close up the chicken coop. Adam locked them up and didn't think to count how many were in there (why would he?). So Saturday morning Adam went out to open the coop (We let them out everyday to wander around the yard. Keeping their wings clipped keeps them from hopping the fence but that idea rarely occurs to them anyway, being perfectly happy being close to their food, water, and shelter. At night, they put themselves to bed back in the coop with no help from us.). Only three chickens came out. When you consider the place of the chicken on the food chain you might understand how we assumed the worst from the start. We were upset, but for the most part, we took it like farmers. We said it was a shame since she was the pretty one, the sweet one, and then we went on with our day (I have spent the last couple days trying to explain to my city-centric friends, who assume our relationship with our chickens is like our relationship to our cats, why we're not devastated and trying to explain to my more rural friends why a missing chicken would make a good human interest story).
Sunday morning I got a message on Facebook that Sweetie was seen the morning before by our neighbors a block away. We quickly got dressed and drove around the neighborhood hoping to spot her. We came home and I posted a message on our neighborhood list serve. A couple hours later our neighbors called and said they could hear her squawking but couldn't see her. Again, we drove around and walked around with no luck. Another neighbor called later that day to tell me that another neighbor reported a couple of hens in her backyard on Saturday, one matching the description of Sweetie. So apparently she had made friends. Maybe there's a roving gang of chickens and Sweetie has just fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Yesterday, Dioni Wise from the Greensboro New and Record called Adam after seeing our message on the list serve. That is how Sweetie got into the paper. And apparently into at least two radio show's morning conversations.
So here we are rolling our eyes, muttering "chickens" under our breath, which has sort of become a joke around here. We're hoping she's alive and well and that somebody will see her and call us! And for my part, I'm hoping that this is Sweetie's 15 minutes of fame and not mine. I'd hate my legacy to be that I lost a chicken!