I’m back! I’ve taken a long hiatus from posting this Spring while Rich was in Australia and the kids were away, but now all is right in my world again. My family is home and once again it’s tomato harvest time…
A look at some of the tomatoes and other vegetables coming ripe in the garden. Looks like the reflective tape is keeping those birds away…
There’s lots happening in my vegetable garden this week – the carrots are out, I’ve started pulling my bulb onions, the spring crops are going gangbusters, and we’re finally getting some rain after a very long hot and dry period…
Believe it or not, the first tomatoes are ripening. Not mine, of course, but some of my neighbors at the community garden are already harvesting Supice tomatoes. I’ve got green tomatoes on all of my plants except the Isis Candy cherry tomato, so it is time to think about protection…
How to live slower while working full-time? This is my new concern since I started a full-time contract position in February…
The final fruits of the winter garden are ready. Carrots, green onions and beets are now on the menu…
I’ve taken a while to try to get my thoughts in order around my goals for the year. In the end many of my goals are continuations of last year’s, with a bit more structure involved…
My little Christmas gift bags. Each bag contains one of my cold-process soaps, peppermint lip balm and rosemary-mint massage oil – all home-made from natural oils and scented with essential oils. These were a lot of fun to put together. I found the gauze bags for the soap at Jo-Ann Fabric’…
Starting my third tuque for #25000 Tuques — a global charity project to collect hand-knitted hats to send with warm wishes to Syrian refugees arriving in Canada…
‘Tis the Season…of holiday parties and get-togethers – a time for sharing and fellowship with family and friends. It should be a joyous time, and often is, but I have to admit that sometimes hostessing one of these events stresses me out.
Hospitality is an important duty in Christianity, especially when offered…
Have you wanted to try making your own soaps but you were intimidated by the process? I wanted to replace our commercial bath soap with hand made soap, but I was NOT keen on heated pots of oil and caustic lye. I also didn’t want to invest in a huge amount of soap…
It’s Back-to-School, yay! It’s great to get that school-year rhythm back. Genevieve’s back at college, no longer a Freshman, but a wiser Sophomore. Tristan’s beginning his Senior Year of high school with all the excitement that goes with that, and Rich is back teaching…
Part of my intention in downshifting is to take better care of what we have. That means I need to have a schedule of daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks that will help organize and maintain our home life.
One of the challenges that I face by working from home is creating a daily rhythm…
I believe it was sometime in mid 2012 when a co-worker introduced me to Leo Babauta and his blog Zen Habits. I was a big iGoogle user and had my Firefox homepage set to my iGoogle portal with all of my widgets, including the RSS feed reader Google Reader. I think Zen Habits…
Yesterday I harvested my first tomato and pepper of the new vegetable season, along with the first batch of green beans. Here’s a photo of my “first fruits”…