I admit that I have gotten lazy with keeping up with my commitment as a Keep Austin Beautiful Adopt-a-Creek volunteer. Cleaning the creek was part of my promise to promote a wildlife habitat, live a greener life and protect the environment. It was always something we enjoyed doing as a family and with…
God’s bounty is beautiful. My winter garden is finally producing some nice lettuces and broccoli. The cauliflower are partially ready and I have four cabbages coming along (although caterpillars have helped themselves a bit). I just love that purple color. Rather unbelievable for a vegetable. I have another cauliflower, cheddar cheese-colored, and…
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…
The final fruits of the winter garden are ready. Carrots, green onions and beets are now on the menu…
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…
The eggs have hatched. We have 4 naked little babies in the nest…
I Gave Up My Car …sort of. Early this year when my son Tristan got his Driver’s License I gave him my car to use for school. In many ways this was a great relief for me, no longer needing to drive him to his magnet school every morning; not needing to…
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”…
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an episode of “Wild Kingdom”. We’re blessed (it’s a mixed blessing, to be sure) to live on the banks of a creek, which provides a natural wildlife corridor and habitat…