Author: Liz Braithwaite

Optimisim

It’s been a while since I posted. The weather is cold, and my thoughts have turned away from gardening a bit. But on a related note, I’ve been thinking a lot about the seasons. It’s fall now. The leaves are all senescing and everything is going dormant for the cold of winter. Lots of people around me are complaining about it. I have found myself complaining in other years. But this year I’m  loving fall, and looking forward to winter.

It’s wonderful to have all the changes in weather. I love living in Utah, where we have four distinct seasons and lots of snow in the winter. This year, I’m excited to take my toddler out to play in the snow. He has no idea what snow is. One morning it was raining dip-in-dots (not quite snow–that’s the best I can describe it), and we went out in our pajamas. He was captivated by the strange, small white balls. Winter means sledding, snowshoeing, hot chocolate, Christmas, and more laid back days without so much to do. Sometimes its a little too cold and long, but I don’t need to worry about that until January. Maybe this year I can actually learn how to ski too. (I’ve lived in Utah my entire life and never skied. It is something I need to change.)

But its not quite winter yet. It’s fall. Oh glorious fall that has always been my favorite season. It’s beautiful. The air is so crisp, and I get outside more (or at least feel like I do) than any other season. The leaves are falling off trees, and there is snow in the mountains. I’ve gone outside and played in the leaves with my family. I love the sound of them when I walk through. I even like the cold air, and bundling up myself and toddler so we don’t freeze. Thanksgiving is next week, which means great food and family. Fall is just a wonderful time to be grateful for all I am blessed with.

I’m actually grateful for the break in gardening as well. I can catch up on other projects, like a box full of sewing, and get my business more grounded before the rush in spring. I’m currently working on a sortable list of perennials I like, and I’m re-remembering all the ones I’ve forgotten. I am happy right now with the weather and everything else in my life.

*I feel stupid. The title of this post was misspelled. I rely on spell checker too much.

Outside

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The great find of the week, hiking wise, was Summit Post. And it seems to have brought some more visitors as well, since I put this website up. If you are intersted in hiking, go check it out. It has tons of information on hiking areas across the world. Locally, it had trail information for all the destination hikes–summit of mountains, lakes, etc. I can also sign trail logs and keep track of where I’ve been, and even add about anything I would want to.

It’s getting colder now. We took a short hike on Saturday and found snow on the trail. I’m actually surprising myself by being quite happy about the change of seasons. Winter is just more laid back. And I’ve always thought fall was the prettiest time of year. I really enjoy going outside in the fall, even when it is cold. (I think its easier when its cold instead of too hot. You just bundle up, and don’t have to stay out that long.) Last night, I took Peter out before dinner. He kept going to the door, poor kid hadn’t been anywhere all day. We played on the playground out back–he loves to swing and go down slides. There’s so much to explore too. I love watching him enjoy life and figure out new things. He kept pointing to the trees or sky, and I was trying to figure out what he wanted explained to him. He has this “oo-daa” he says, which is his “what’s that?” It’s so cute.

Then later on, I went to put something on the window sill and was surprised by a cat at my window. Pete and I went out and played with her a little. I wish I could have a cat, but in the meantime it was fun playing with the one we found. It was fun to see them interact. Peter would crawl after her, and she wasn’t timid and let him pet her.

Hiking

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I went to Curly Springs on Friday with the fam. And it is way warm for November. We were both sweating. For our hike, we started at the Dry Canyon trail head in Lindon, than hiked clear over to Battle Creek. It was about 5 miles, with 1000 ft elevation change.  The hike wasn’t gorgeous by any means. Great views out to the valley but devoid of much vegetation at first, and than it was more woodsy and nice over by Battle Creek. I just wasn’t much into it though. I think I was working a little too hard, took me forever to feel recovered.

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Battle Creek is nice, because it usually involves a trip to the Grandparents. They even had pizza waiting! I love my grandparents.

Headboard

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I sewed this a while back. It is not a professional quality headboard. But hey, it only cost me $6. Good enough, and better than nothing. It’s fabric on top of cardboard, mounted on Styrofoam. I think Just one background fabric would have worked out better. But I like it well enough.

Finally–Bulbs!

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The end fingers of my hand are tingling. I must have hit a nerve or something as I was digging. I do have a nice blister in the middle of my palm, and I am wondering why I can’t hold a trowel properly. I got a blister from a trowel. I have now learned that I really should go out and buy or permanently borrow a good shovel. A trowel was not meant to be used to plant so many bulbs. It would have been much easier just to dig up the bed. Oh well. It’s done and I hope my fingers will stop tingling soon.

But the good news is I just planted over 100 bulbs in front of my apartment. (100 seems like a lot until you start planting. Could have used three times as much.) I ordered them forever ago, and they finally got here later than I would have liked. Luckily it is extremely warm right now. (It’s November and I was outside sweating!) The deplorable landscape should turn into a mass of spring color. I hope for that, at least. But anything has to be better than the deadness that currently grows there.

Little son actually helped too! He would put the bulbs in the hole and cover it with dirt. He’s turning into quite the little gardener. Although he also tried to eat the dirt, the rocks, and a bulb. What can you expect from a one-year old?

Grandmother’s Garden

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This was by far on of my most favorite gardening projects this fall. My grandparents love to garden. But they are old, and its not so easy anymore. Their garden in recent years has turned into a weed patch with a few veggies. Now that I’m in Utah County, I was able to help them out. One big project was getting rid of the quackgrass. I also helped maintain the rest of the garden and helped them put in their veggie garden.

Last week, we pulled out the tomatoes that had far outgrown the small tomato cages. We held them up–over six feet tall! (I had the thought that one key to getting tall tomatoes is to have large tomato cages.) They raved the weeks they harvest dozens of large cantaloupes. There was a constant supply of zucchini, cucumbers, beans and grapes. They struggled to harvest all the peaches.  It was a successful year: better than they’ve had for a while.

I didn’t do a lot. Just enough to get them started, and lots of tricks to keep it going with minimal maintenance. I was there every couple of weeks or so, and thoroughly enjoyed my time. Not just out in the garden, but getting to know them more. It’s easy for me to get out of touch with my family members, but in my grandmother’s case, the garden brought us together.

Next year, no vine-type tomatoes in the grow boxes, and no peppers planted too close to the tomatoes. The raspberries and strawberries we killed off with the weeds will be replaced. I’m excited to spend another summer gardening with my grandparents.

Diamond Fork

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We decided to go up Diamond Fork canyon to go hiking this week. The trails are a bit confusing and not clearly marked at the beginning, but I think we ended up going up Brimhall canyon road several miles up the canyon on the right. There seems to be a lot of private land intermixed with the national forest which was why I was confused. We didn’t have a whole lot of time anyway and just went about a mile or so up the trail. It was quite a nice autumn hike. It would have been terribly hot in the summer, but was a nice hike now with more range type vegetation and hills not mountains.

So do you always stick to established hiking trails? How about one marked on maps with with little signage or upkeep? Or ones used for purposes other than hiking, like ranching and hunting? I’m still generally don’t bushwhack, except in the winter snowshoeing. There seems to be more possible hiking trails than there are established ones, and I like to hike new places. Sometimes finding the new places is the hard part. Up in Cache Valley, they have a wonderful guidebook you can buy that has all the trails around, with lots of great information. I have not found anything remotely similar down here. I usually get trails off of USGS maps which is not as good as a good trail guide. I’m also writing about all of them, so I can make a guide of sorts for future reference. Any resources I haven’t found yet?

Chocolate Chip Cookies

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  • Cream:
  • 1 lbs butter softened
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups brown sugar
  • Mix in:
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tablespoon vanilla
  • 2 cups oatmeal
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon soda
  • 6-8 cups flour (stop when it gets stiff and crumbly. I use 100% whole wheat flour too, and don’t even notice the difference)
  • 1 package chocolate chips

 

Bake 375F for no longer than 10 minutes. (if you do it longer shame on you and enjoy your not so great cookies)

Best cookie recipe ever, that I grew up with. I took dinner to a neighbor’s house and she asked for the recipe. (Which, by the way, never experiment when you have to take dinner to someone. Didn’t turn out great, but I took it anyway. I really just don’t have the patience to do everything right, so I approximate measurements and take shortcuts. Doesn’t always turn out good.) I thought that everyone should have it. So here it is.

Fall

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It is cold. But it didn’t freeze last night. I was still ready for it. The tomatoes are gone. I brought in the last few green ones yesterday. My small child proceeded to use them as balls and bite them. Now I’m not sure what to do with the teeth-marked green tomatoes. There’s got to be something better than throwing them away or letting them go moldy.

Can you believe it is the end of October and it hasn’t froze yet? I’m thoroughly impressed with this nice warm, long fall. Although waking up to snow on the mountains was just lovely yesterday. It’s rained a bunch, knocking all the leaves off the trees. It’s all very pretty. Fall is just so wonderful–even the snow and cold. Tonight it should get down to 28F–so here comes the freeze with a bang. I kinda like the sudden hard freeze. No trying to dance around protecting everything with blankets. It’ll be too cold for that to matter.

The only bad thing is my bulbs have not arrived yet. Whose bright idea was it to deliver them so late? I might be digging through snow to get them in. I finally checked with the company, and they should come this week. Should have checked sooner so I could have gotten them earlier. But the soil will be nice and moist. Okay, the soil will be soggy wet. Gotta be better than bone dry, which was how it was a week ago.

Lots of rambling. But I love fall so very much.

*A note on the bigtooth maple. The reminded me of searching for bigtooth maples for a job. I was on Google earth trying to find trees like this from the satellite image. I walked all around it, and was very disappointed all I had was my phone to take a picture. It’s gorgeous.

Example Moms

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Why is it that so many moms are able to pull off amazing feats? My one child is all I can handle right now. A large part of me aspires to be on of those moms with too many kids to fit in a normal car, that have impecable houses, homeschools, do all these amazing projects, cooks amazing food for nearly nothing, and even finds a way to run a good home buisness.

But do they really exist? No one can do everything, and especially not all at the same time. But I do not think its a bad thing to look up to other mothers. So here are some I look up to.

  • My own mother. She made a career out of being the mother of seven kids all squished together. It certainly wasn’t easy for her: but we are all smart, successful kids .
  • A neighbor who has two kids under two, works from home, whose husband is way busy. And she does some of the coolest sewing projects ever.
  • The blog-mommies. I’ve come across several moms on the web that are raising unique families, with some really cool ideas they share. (Owl-haven, crock-pot lady, are some of my favorite)

Even though I admire these other women, I always need to remember that my life will be different. We are all made differently, and so our lives will be different. The worst I can do is try to be better than others I see (and yes, I have a problem with taking pride in doing just that) or try to live up to someone else’s standard of living that I see from the outside. I need to be content and non-prideful with who I am, what I can do, and what the Lord expects from me.