My best advice to giving up depression, distraction or stress it would be to go outside more. I’ve never regretted being outside and noticing rainbows, animals, plants, and the beautiful sky. It gets me out of many a bad mood and enlivens me.
Photos from Ogden Nature Center
Our house never had a master suite. Our bedroom started off in the basement living room. I didn’t like have our bedroom in a living room. We moved upstairs to the attic. It was hot and the bathroom was far away. We moved downstairs again to a bedroom. Finally, we just decided to remodel.
The current master bedroom looked liked this a year ago:
The space has been used at some point as a kitchen to a secondary apartment years ago. We used it as a family room, and school/craft room. Now with an added wall it is our master bedroom.
While we were working on the remodel, we got to a point that everything was livable. Now, we are focusing on one room at a time. My bedroom was the space I wanted to do first. I wanted a space to retreat to and enjoy, and not have to look at construction holes when I went to bed every night.
We worked hard, and got it down. I love it. The bedroom isn’t large, because I like small cozy bedrooms. (It does have a giant closet.) It is the retreat I wanted. Now I can go to bed looking at wallpaper and birds and things I like.
It was nice to actually finish something. When you remodel with jobs and gardens and kids and a tiny budget, it doesn’t go very fast. We’ve been working our our basement since March. We still have a while to go, but by finishing this, it made the rest of the remodel seem achievable.
I came across this quote in a book I read, and it really made me stop and think.
I will finish by leaving you with a word that I would like to see totally expunged from the English language. Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest you let fun out of your lives? For it is, brothers and sisters, a mongrel word, an ersatz word, a fast-food bucket of a word! What does it mean? Consider the shameful usage: “I was doing it for a bit of fun,” or “I thought it would be fun,” or “I was only having fun” and, worst of all, the little bit of white on the top of this chicken dropping, “Are we having fun yet?”
Why have fun when you could have enjoyment, amusement, entertainment, diversion, relaxation, sport, a bit of a lark, and satisfaction and probably contentment.
Fun pretends to be about enjoyment, but is merely about the attempt. In search of fun, people pull themselves towards places that advertise fun, but they are probably to be avoided, since, in my recollection, fun means trudging around a soaking wet seaside town wearing plastic raincoats that, no matter what you do, always smell of fish. All right, maybe I’m only having fun with you? –Terry Prattchet, A Slip of the Keyboard
Lately, I’ve been trying to stop asking myself and others if we are having “fun” and instead asking if I am enjoying myself, if I am happy, content, or relaxed. So, randomly doing things in front of a screen might be “fun” but I’m not really enjoying myself. Trying to have a “fun” bike ride isn’t relaxing when oldest son hates riding bikes. Looking for fun gets me nowhere. But looking for happiness and joy can. Sometimes it comes at random times…watching my children wander around the garden and bring me strawberries. Getting the biggest hugs picking up my son from school. Finishing a big project, eating pumpkin chocolate chip bread with my family, making a surprise birthday present. None of these things are really “fun” but they brought me more joy.
(I know one of my categories is fun, and it’s on the tagline of this blog. But I’ve got a nice alliteration going, so it’s staying.)
Switching gears, we had that big deal about the moon a while ago. It was disappointingly cloudy, and these pictures were as good as it got for us. I still enjoyed trying to see it with the boys, and there was a slim time when you could see a tiny bit so I was happy we did.
After a bit of a late start, the tomatoes caught up. I’ve done more than 10 quarts of salsa, 12 quarts of tomato juice, crushed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and I still have counters full of tomatoes! I didn’t cage or trellis my tomatoes this year, so they are just lying on the ground. The slugs love that. I’m not too sad about it though, because they’ve let plenty for me.
Here’s the swales:
Really, I’ve been happy about how they turned out. Last year I planted some squash out here and it all died by mid-summer for various reasons. This year everything has done just great. And the irrigation system is amazing. Flood irrigation is often difficult to work with, but the swales are a perfect match. I just have to turn the gate twice a week, and it fills ups nicely. I never have to adjust it, worry about low or high water volume, and nothing has dried out.
The fennel in the herb spiral has flowered, and the seeds are almost ready to pick. I might have enough fennel seed to last the next 20 years, it’s not a herb I use frequently. Well, actually, I don’t really use any herb that frequently. Something to work on.
I was in the parade with the Community Garden float. Which, by the way, won an award. My niece was up to visit and got to to ride the float.
Exhausted afterwards, I stayed home with napping baby while Joe took the kids to the carnival rides and car show. I was okay with that. There is only so much crowded events I can take. But the kids adored it of course.
I’ve been moving furniture about. I’ve actually taken pictures meaning to post them, and have re-arranged the furniture before I got to it. I think I’m done, at least for a while. Sometimes I wonder if there really is a point, but the room has improved in both functionality and looks.
This was the old living room, and here is the old dining room. (Their are hyperlinks attached in that sentence.) We swapped the dining area with the computer/family area, and it works much better. Otherwise, it’s been fiddling around, swapping couches, chairs, rugs and decoration until I got it how I liked it.
As you notice, I don’t clean up much for my pictures. My house is rarely completly clean with three kids running around. I’m okay with that, so you get my house how it is.
This is an old picture. Looking at this picture makes me miss the green sofa in here. But I also love the green sofa where it is. Maybe I just need two green sofas.
Also old
This picture was taken today. The painting came from my Grandma’s as she was cleaning out her storage room. I love it, it’s an awesome find.
Looking back toward the computer area. And the blue table is randomly in a different spot because this was not taken today. We re-surfaced our dining room table (I still need to do a bit of touch-up paint). Might write more about that later.
I love this line for hanging pictures and children’s art.
Final picture of the computer are. My preschooler is constantly moving pillows around to be comfortable. We also recently printed family pictures. I took them with my point and shoot camera and couldn’t be happier.
I’m tired and grumpy today. But I still want to be semi-productive, so here’s a photo dump of Instagram pictures.
Where does science belong in the home garden? Horticulture is a branch of science, and it is filled with information. With pinterest and Facebook, it’s pretty easy to come across gardening recomendations. The information can come from actual research, anecdotal trials or observations, or people just plain making up things.
Turning to professionals can also be a gamble. In the field, there is a huge range of expertise out there: from the mow and blow guys who probably don’t even understand what type of lawn you have, to professors who spend careers researching just what exactly is the best mulch to put down. I’ve been thinking about good horticulturists who are trying to give the best information out there: What advice should they give?
Some home remedies and recommendations are plain untrue; others are extremely misunderstood. Here’s a false one I see all the time: male and female peppers. A good one that is usually misunderstood is vinegar as a weed killer, often portrayed as a safer round-up (an oversimplification and not very accurate). You could go into organic gardening and GMO’s, that have so much misinformation and emotion attached that it’s often hard to get a rational discussion going. There are also recommendations that have loads of research behind them, and are just plain good ideas, like mulching. Getting the right information on things like this is important.
But how about techniques that are not necessarily against science, but just lack research? A lot of permaculture techniques fall into this category, like hugelkultur, and legume support species. Ideally, everything could have extensive, multiple research studies, but it’s not going to happen. Without good concrete information should something that is based on anecdotal trials or observation be recommended? And if something is recommended based on purely anecdotal evidence, is it wrong?
For Extension agents, Master Gardeners, and anyone portraying themselves as a horticulturist they should stick to the science. But I don’t think they have to disregard anecdotal recommendations (unless they are just wrong), just portray them as anecdotal: something to try, not a sure-fire solution.
If you are trying something out to see if it’s working, why not make a mini-research project out of it? Compare it against a control. I love to experiment in my garden and try out new things, and home gardens are the perfect place for this. Our gardens are small and we aren’t trying (usually) to get a profit out of it. What I do often neglect, is to not only experiment, but include controls and ways to measure so I can actually know if something I’m trying is working or not.
I love getting the right information, but I also don’t like it when I see anecdotal or pseudoscience put down, not because it’s wrong, but because there isn’t any research. We don’t stay away from the unknown in science. We embrace it and experiment on it until we know if it’s right or not.
Science belongs in the home garden. And it’s not by following tried and true, already proven recommendations. It’s by trying new, radical, and unknown options in a controlled way so we can gain more information.
I believe that right now that there is a huge rift in the information we can get. On one side we have the scientist telling us to do what has been proven to be scientifically correct. On the other hand are people who disregard science and simply tell us what sounds good. What we need is people to inform us what is proven, what is wrong, and what is experimental. And then not only provide us that information, but provide the means necessary to test out experimental information, if desired, in a controlled way so we know if it actually works or not.
We had cousins in town who loved trains, and our weekend with them was spent with trains.
First we went out to Golden Spike National Historic Site. It’s been a couple of years since we went out there. The kids liked it a lot. I was a bit bored, still remembered it all from last time. This time we did also stop by the ATK rocket display. It was a just a smallish display of rocket pieces, but worth stopping by if you are going that far west.
(Here’s a comparison picture.)
On Labor Day we went on the Heber Valley Railroad. There were some violinists on the train, and Peter followed them around the train listening. He loves music.
Fall is busy. I once again failed to plant fall crops. Well, actually I did plant some, but let them dry out and they are dead now. It’s hard to want to plant more vegetables when I have shelves full of produce to process.
The tomatoes this year were a bit slow. Usually I’ll start getting small, early varieties in July. I don’t think I got a tomato until mid August. But they are making up for it now. The heirloom tomatoes in the huglekultur/swale beds are going crazy. I’ve made batch after batch of salsa (I’ve got an hefty supply of tomatillos too), ratatouille, and frozen crushed tomatoes.
The kids and I made a tomato stand and sold a few tomatoes. They were mainly Cherokee Purple tomato, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. They do not can well because they are too juicy. I figured it out with a happy accident.
My grandmother gave me a juicer on a recent visit. It was sitting on the counter and needed to be cleaned up before I put it away. While we were cleaning it up, I decided to juice a few tomatoes to see how it worked.
And I ended up with six quarts of tomato juice, canned and ready for storage. The pulp was put in the freezer for soup and such. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get the motivation to can anything: I enjoyed just kind of slipping into it after my first idea to juice a few tomatoes grew big rather quick. It’s really good tomato juice too.
Liz Braithwaite 