Sustainability, Justice, Family, Learning …
I’ve been absent from this blog for a long time now, because I’ve been poring my writing energy into a different project, which is now done! I’m thrilled to have completed a program and website:
Growing Together: Practical and Spiritual Resiliency
Check it out!
This week I’m learning more about another plant in my garden, these lovely nasturtiums. It seems these plants were brought to Spain from the Americas, and got their name because they reminded Linnaeus of Roman shields and bloody helmets. That seems a bit fanciful to me, but it’s a cool story.
I’ve tried to grow nasturtiums in hanging pots on the north side of my house, without much luck. Just a few sad blooms. Then last year I planted them in this patio container on the south side of my house and they love it there. They dropped a bunch of seed, and so reseeded themselves this year. It seems they like it just as much this year as last.
The flowers are edible, and make for nice visual contrast in a salad. It’s a fun plant to grow!
I’m going to write a post a week in honor of one of the plants in my garden, as a way to get to know them better. This week: Artichokes!
Aren’t they beautiful? They are essentially these giant, prehistoric-looking, edible flowers. I’ve planted them in my front garden, where I have flowers and decorative perennials. Because they are all three of those things!
The first year I planted artichokes, they didn’t survive the winter. Artichokes prefer mild winters, and I didn’t mulch them enough to get through the harsher winter we had. These artichokes were planted last year, from 4 plant starts I bought. All are globe artichokes. This last winter I mulched them heavily with leaves, and we had a milder winter.
Each artichoke plant will have multiple buds, which are what we eat. If you leave the bud alone on the plant, it will flower and be like a giant purple thistle. It’s quite pretty, actually. According to this website, it is related to thistles, which makes sense from the way it looks.
But if you want to eat it, you should clip it off at the bud stage. And they are delicious, especially when fresh, so please do eat them! My mother-in-law likes to grill them after a steam, but I just boil them in water until soft (checked by stabbing a fork up from the stem into the flower and if it’s soft and yielding, it’s done).
Then you peel off leaf by leaf and scrape the lower soft parts off with your teeth. Dipping sauce is good. When I was a kid my parents did melted butter with some lemon juice in it. Now I prefer just mayonnaise. It’s a bit of work to go leaf by leaf, but I find it to be worth it. Then you get all the way to the heart, with some thistle hairs that need to be scraped off because they aren’t edible. After the hairs are scraped off, the hearts are the best part!
Funny thing, when I was a kid my dad would take the heart for himself, and told me it wasn’t good. It wasn’t until I was dating my now-husband that I learned to eat them. We were having artichokes with his folks, and I got to the heart and set it aside. He asked me what I was doing and I said I never ate those … and he laughed and filled me in on the joke! Eat them! They are the best part.
That’s what I have to say about artichokes. They are a great thing to grow in your garden – both ornamental and edible. And delicious!
I’ve recently gained some weight, a side effect of a medication I am taking, and so I’m looking at ways to get back to a healthier weight. It’s an emotional and spiritual struggle, though, to do so in ways that still honor and affirm my spirit and don’t drag me down into self-abusive behavior.
So I decided to whip up this little “recipe” for myself and place it on my altar, to help me in this effort.
The ingredients:
A good amount of water
Enough food that feels good
Plenty of physical movement that is fun
Heaping portion of self-love and acceptance
A dash of self-discipline
light sprinkling of treats
Combine all in a solid container
Simmer for a good long while, being patient and not expecting results too quickly.
This is the final Friday in January, which was a “Buy Nothing” month for me. One of the most frugal things I did this month was to simply tell myself No with every desire I had to spend money (except for food and drink and seeds …. because you know, seed catalogs come out in January. I couldn’t be expected to Not order my seeds!)
I kept a list of everything I wanted this month, and just for fun let’s see how much it would have cost for me to say Yes to my every whim:
It would have come to $642 if I had bought it all!
What will I buy in February? I think I will prioritize supporting my physical well-being and exercise, so I’m going to get the tap fit and possibly the hiking poles. The rest I will live without.
Crafting and sewing can be expensive. Fabric, yarn, and other supplies are actually pretty pricey and that isn’t even counting the time spent …. so the next time someone gives you a homemade gift don’t automatically think it was cheap. Far from it! But here are five crafts I’ve done this week that actually were pretty cheap.
2. Masks made from dog bandanas. Many years ago my kiddo did their Bronze Award project, involving making a whole bunch of dog bandanas. We still have a stack that were never used, and I realized I could cut masks out of them. I’ve embroidered a few of them just to make them prettier, but those old bandanas are doing well in this new form.
3. I never meant to become a quilter, but what else are you going to do with the small left overs from other sewing? Years of making flannel pajamas has become the stash for making baby quilts. The rick rack was also left over from another project.
4. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m trying out crocheting “plarn”, or yarn made out of plastic bags. It’s not very fun to work with, but it’s certainly a frugal and abundant resource.
5. Collage cards. I use the catalogs and magazines I have to make greeting cards. I do purchase blank cards, but they are still less expensive than printed cards and this way each card is very personal and unique.
A Poem I wrote:
“Mom!” he calls from
another room, expecting
me to always answer.
“Are we out of jam?”,
asks the one at the fridge
the one who is looking
asks of the other
who is far away from both
question and object.
The expectation is, though
that I will know
that I will always
be the one who knows
I was having some trouble thinking of frugal things I did this week, until this old saying reminded me:
Use it up, wear it out
make it do, or do without
Doing without is probably the foundation of a frugal practice, and I did say No to myself at least five times this week:
The pattern that emerges is of the immediate gratification that my desires can lead to. And it’s just too darn easy to have immediate gratification met in this age of online shopping and fast shipping. It means that we all need better practice at saying No to ourselves if we want to live a simpler, sustainable, and frugal lifestyle.
In the beginning of stay at home, we set up the end of our dining room as my work-from-home space. For the first few weeks I worked there, my husband worked just around the corner (no doors between us) and the kids shared one computer in another room.
It didn’t work all that well. So I cleaned out part of our bedroom and we moved my husband’s desk into the bedroom. It’s not ideal, but he does have a very short distance to work in the morning now. Good thing I’m not a napper, though, because he’s at work in there for 10 hours a day.
The next move was to get another computer so the kids weren’t sharing. When it’s the main tool for school and socializing, they each needed their own.
And now I’ve finally made the move to getting myself a room with a door that closes. I’ve got two desks, a zoom backdrop area, a reading chair, a sofa, and enough bookshelves. It’s heavenly.
Five Frugal Things was first started (as far as I know) by the Non-Consumer Advocate Blog, and this year I think I’ll take up the challenge. What five frugal things can I do each week? A penny saved, and all that.
This week I:
3. We stopped off at a seafood farm on our way home from a hike, but went with Mussels instead of live crab. At $3.99 a lb mussels were a frugal but also delicious treat.
4. For a day off of work we took a hike and packed a lunch. A 3 mile wet hike was lovely to finish up with a salami sandwich and a bottle of wine in the park. And it was far less money than other options for an outing.
5. I replaced a zipper in an old hoodie sweatshirt, giving it some more life in my husband’s wardrobe.
My Purple House 