We’ve been hit with some early hot weather the past few days, so today I dusted off the Sport Solar Oven and loaded up one pot with some turkey kielbasa and the other with some sliced potatoes, carrots, sweet potato, broccoli stem, and leeks tossed with garlic and herbs for a nice veggie roast that I’ll garnish with some shredded parmesan at dinnertime.  That and a nice, cool green salad and we’ll have a yummy dinner that used no electricity to make and won’t heat up the house.

I think my solar oven was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.  It allows me to cook healthy, warm meals all summer.  I just load it up before I go to work and dinner is done when we get home.  And I’ve never burned anything in it.  I’m planning to use it to cook and can jams and syrups this summer and I have plans for turning it into a dehydrator with an inset screen and a solar-powered fan.  But I do need to acquire some small toaster oven baking trays and small, dark-colored pots for making fruit leathers, sauces, and all of the other things that I’m contemplating trying in the solar oven.

The garden is doing well.  The sage is blooming, the poppies are about to.  The blueberry plants, peppers,, strawberries, and tomatoes are all drinking in the sun.  My daughter’s mini-meadow is full of clover, grasses, yarrow, and candytuft - though the johnny-jump-ups took a beating from the sun even with the watering they got both morning and evening.

I wish that I liked hot weather more but us fair-skinned girls don’t do so well in the heat.  At least once we’re on the farm, I’ll be able to get up early to do my chores or work late in the evening.

Mother’s Day was really nice this year.  I got a dinner of homemade lasagne Saturday night, then got a homemade breakfast this morning as well, along with a few hours of alone time, two blueberry bushes, soil, compost, fertilizer, and two half-barrel planters from my long-time partners.  My daughter spoiled me with several types of favorite candies (rootbeer barrels - yum!), a silk rose, a plush poinsettia with a bendy stem, a rose teacup knickknack, and vanilla lipgloss.  The best part of all was her hugging my leg and telling me how much she loved me and loved that I was her mama.  It doesn’t get better than that.

I spoiled myself with a little yarn and art paper from the dollar store.  I’ve got a few papercrafts I’ve been wanting to try and now have some paper with which to try them.

All in all, the best Mother’s Day to date and I go to bed tonight a very happy and well-loved mama.

to all of the mothers, stepmothers, adopted mothers, foster mothers, chosen mothers, and every other woman who is digging deep to give of herself for the sake of a child.

Today I participated in my first online yarn swap on www.ravelry.com (codename: galeogirl) and it was a great experience. It was a karmic swap, so you accept someone’s offering if you want it, then offer up a swap of your own to send on to someone else. I also joined the Random Acts of Kindness swap group where you can play secret santa and fulfill someone else’s wishes from their monthly wishlist…or maybe get a wish of your own fulfilled.

Swapping, gifting, and bartering were a definite feature of my country childhood. We took salmon or crab to our neighbors when we had some to spare, they would share a little meat from the slaughter or the hunt, or let us come pick apples in their orchard. It was meaningful, you gave from the heart, you wove community together by meeting one another’s needs. You didn’t expect anything, you gave because you had it to spare, but it always seemed to loop back and sometimes several months down the road you’d find a basket with a fresh-baked pie and some jam on your doorstep or look out the window to see a smiling neighbor walking up the driveway with a colander full of blueberries for you.

It’s one of the things that I miss by living in the city. There aren’t many chances to build that sort of community easily. I try to be randomly nice when I have something to share (transit tickets, a spare soda, etc.) but people are leery here, even of kindness. Sad state of affairs that is.

I’m going to work on this, it’s not easy because I’m terribly shy in person, but I’m going to make more efforts to put myself out there to my neighbors, my fellow commuters, and other people I encounter. I might never run into the people I help again, but maybe getting a little help will spur them to turn around and do the same for someone else. And spreading a bit of cheer certainly does no one any harm.

Now that the CFLs are in all over the house, I find that I really like them.  The light from my bedroom lamp is now much better for crocheting in the evenings when I’m trying to relax enough to get to sleep.

Today I’ve been researching low-flow shower heads online, trying to find ones that I like.  Currently mine are 2.5 gpm, which isn’t bad but now they have fixtures that are as low as 1.59 gpm and that’s a significant reduction in water usage.  I think I’d probably like an aerator model since I like a very brisk-feeling shower.  Seems that a trip to the hardware stores are in order soon.  I need to replace my old and rather inefficient water heater as well.

My other thought on water saving has been the idea of purchasing a solar shower to heat outside while I’m at work, then bring in in the evening for a pre-measured hot shower with zero use of power.  That would probably work well unless I wanted to wash my hair, which is rather long and thick and takes some time to wash thoroughly.  Once we’re on the farm I’ll probably just get a solar shower to hang from a tree for washing in the great outdoors after my chores are done.  I’ve always enjoyed showering with a view during camping trips.

I’m trying to bake potatoes in the solar oven using the reflectors since it’s a cloudy day.  I should go turn the oven and check the potatoes soon.

Doing work from home today and I’m close to giving up for the day since I’ve been at it since about 8:00 a.m.  I love working from home but it can also be a drag on days when you have a lot of work to do and still plenty to do around the house.

An unlikely combination, but they do make good companion plants, so that’s why I was out on the deck today after work seeding the strawberry barrels with sweet Spanish onions. Small steps to try to keep the food crisis from our door. I need to plant some beans tomorrow as well, probably dragon’s tongue beans, maybe some limas. Also need to get some greens started this weekend.

Aside from that, I have a lot of cleaning and a growing horde of crochet projects, which has now been upped by a friend’s news of a baby on the way. Time to use up those odds and ends of soft yarns for blankies and soakers and little hats.

I love giving gifts. I know, I know, it’s not exactly in keeping with this reduce, reuse, recycle lifestyle that I cultivate, but I really enjoy giving someone something they could really use or that they’ll like. The past few years I’ve tried to make more and more of my gifts by hand, but that requires planning, which is why I’m contemplating the xmas holidays on this rainy April day.

I’ve decided that I’d like to make mini-backpacks for the kids, then fill them with art supplies, crocheted hats, a little candy, and maybe a small amigurumi toy for each of them. By doing this I eliminate the need for wrapping since the backpack itself hides the remaining gifts.

I think I’m going to make soap for my sister, grandma, and mom by melting down the bars of castile I already have on hand and dressing them up with essential oils and herbs to make fancy soap balls or molded bars, then crocheting some cotton washcloths, soapsavers, and baskets to put them in. For my uncle, who is in a wheelchair, a lap afghan. Maybe an afghan for my dad as well. I might make ornaments, too, to use up scrap.
The other project I’d like to tackle is crocheting and sewing gift bags and boxes from the xmas-y yarn I have on hand. I’d really like to get away from using purchased gift wrap, it’s so wasteful.

For the first time in a long while, I’m actually looking forward to xmas. I need to sit down with my patterns and figure out how much and what kinds of yarns I need to complete my projects. This is going to be so fun!

Actually, I saw a coupon for compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and I was making a trip to the store anyway to pick up a cooler for my CSA deliveries so that I can start adding milk and eggs to my biweekly order, so I decided to replace a bunch of my regular bulbs with CFLs rather than waiting for the current incandescent bulbs to burn out.  The removed bulbs are going to get painted as snowmen, elves, and santas to get hung up next xmas.

I was able to replace all of the normal-sized bulbs in my house for under $40 with CFLs to spare, but I’m still recovering from the near-coronary over the cost of candelabra-style bulbs (two ceiling fixtures use that type of bulb in the house).  I’m thinking it would be cheaper to replace the ceiling fixtures than to pay $9-18 per bulb for a lamp that takes five bulbs and isn’t too aesthetically pleasing anyway.

Thankfully, the recycling depot out here will reclaim CFLs and other hazardous waste, but you have to take them to the site.  I need to take some paint cans and a coffee can full of batteries out that way soon so that I can make more pantry space in my shed and move the worm bin to a better location.

The garden is coming up well.  My grape tomato plant has grown several inches in the past few weeks despite the hail and cold weather.  All but two of my strawberry plants have flourished, though I still need to get that bird netting.  We’ve been cutting bunching onions and garlic greens for stir fries and soups, so much so that I need to sow some new bunching onions to keep up with my daughter’s growing appetite for them.

Strawberry season starts in early June and the family is scouting for places to go do some U-pick since my little strawberry plants are probably not going to keep up with the demand for preserves, muffins, and strawberry cloud pie.  I’m hoping we’ll get out for U-pick blueberries, blackberries, and other goodies as well.

Farmer’s markets are starting up, too, and I’m looking forward to looking for fresh cheeses, artisan breads, and bushels of just-picked goodies.  I can’t wait until we have our farm and can hopefully have a little booth selling our own excess produce and goods.

I’ve been prioritizing tools and items to add to the home arsenal, but it’s been a tough job.  I’d like to have a grain mill as much as I’d like to have some solar panels, which don’t lessen the desire for a good hatchet, a treadle sewing machine, a rug loom, or more half barrel planters.  I guess it’s a buy what you can afford at the moment sort of situation.

I literally just finished crocheting a beautiful two-tone circular rug to send to my older sister as a birthday present and, hot on the heels of inner decor/gift success, I decided to try to make a dent in my yarn stash by using some leftover cotton yarn to make a bath mitt using a new pattern that I downloaded from the internet and so far the bath mitt is refusing to be given glorious life.  I’ve torn it out twice because my stitch count is off and it looks a little lumpy at the joining point of the first chain.  I’ll make one more attempt tonight, maybe with a hook one size up so that I can see the anatomy of the stitches better.

I’ve made the sassy comment that I love to crochet because I only have to be smarter than a stick and some string, occasionally that comment haunts me.

For years I’ve tried to be very conscious of water usage but only recently have I started taking steps such as saving my cooled cooking water to cook with or water my plants and then, today, I decided to start saving the water from my shower’s heating-up period.  I finally ran out of dish soap in a bulk bucket, so I collected this morning’s cold shower water in it (it filled it halfway - that’s a LOT of water!) and, because the bucket hasn’t been completely cleaned of its former contents, I decided to use the water to wash the shower, sinks, and tub.  Once the dish soap remnants are out of there, I’ll probably use it as my water reserve for the garden.

Amazing how much we waste thoughtlessly.  I felt ashamed when I saw how much water I’ve been spilling down the drain to take my showers all these years.  Now if I could just install a greywater system in my condo.  I have the feeling that the HOA wouldn’t like that very much.