good 'n planty

I didn't post this yesterday, but that is when it happened:

Yesterday was our first day back at the garden- following several weekly trips to the greenhouse.

There were six of us to start that morning: Pam, Maggie, Scott, Christa, Ginger and myself.

We planted lettuce, turnip greens, and squash, turned garden beds to wake them from their comfy cover-crop slumber, strung twine onto the trellis for peas to climb, and traded questions for answers, gardener-to-gardener.

 I included a shot of my "gardening shoes" because, seriously, they are perfect to wear in the garden- I tried fancy gardening clogs last year and they kept slipping off my feet with aggravating frequency. These are cheap (Target) slip-ons (similar to Vans)- with soles hard enough to stomp on a shovel and easy-to-clean canvas. If anyone else has the same clog frustations I do, I'd recommend giving this style a try.

Here are my deer with some freshly planted "trees" I stole from my terrarium.
Find your own kitsch planter at a thrift store or search for them on etsy. Here are a couple I found while looking:

My sisters recently helped out in with a Rain Barrel Festival in their hometown of Berea, Kentucky.

The organization that set up the festival, Sustainable Berea, gave away sixty-five rain barrels to local artists to paint and then auctioned them off on the day of the festival.
Here's my sisters' barrel:

What a cool springtime event, more communities should follow Berea's lead this season.

Six weeks ago, I decided that I was going to be more mindful of how I eat.  All I really wanted to do was limit the amount of unnatural chemicals I was ingesting.  At the time, it seemed like an insurmountable goal - but in the span of six weeks, I've become much more ambitious.  It's easy to quickly gain experience with something that interests you.  Luckily, this was the case for me.  As I read blogs and books, and experienced a more organic lifestyle, terms like "nutrition" and "healthy eating" soon became completely relative.  Just because something is healthy for you doesn't mean it hasn't had negative effects for the environment or even other people on its journey to you.
A new goal formed in my mind - I wanted to align my diet and lifestyle so it promoted good health in every sense.  I began to eat most of my meals from locally raised food products - milk and cheese from small area dairies, apples from local orchards, vegetables from the farmers who grew them, etc.  I even became interested in producing some of my own food!  After planting my first ever batch of heirloom seeds several weeks ago, I'm nearly ready to transplant them into a rooftop container garden.  All of these things are great - I'm reducing my carbon footprint, maintaining a healthy diet, and increasing the viability of organic farming, but that isn't all.  Everyday that passes, I become more conscious of the interconnectedness of life - definitely not a lesson I planned to learn from changing my diet.  

More recently, I've been researching various methods of fasting as a way to detox my body from some of the long-term effects already crystallized in me.  I'm thinking a juice fast will be the best bet for me for two reasons - first, juice fasting doesn't require you to drastically change your lifestyle (ie, become sedentary), and second, I live a block away from the Italian Market.  Usually the fruit is just on the verge of going bad, but for juicing purposes, I think that will be ideal.  

In other news, a lot of books about herbs and various medicinal uses have crossed my path lately and I have to say it's pretty interesting stuff.  I'd like to learn more about the whole subject of herbology and maybe start an herb garden.  If anyone has a recommendation about books, web sites, etc, I'd love to hear them!  

Last but not least, check out my tomatoes!  


One variety (Silver Fir) has a splintered leaf structure, while the other (Bloody Butcher) looks more like a regular leaf.  Does that indicate anything?  I'm ecstatic about how much they've grown in the past week alone...and I'm really looking forward to eating tomatoes that I've grown myself.  

This is part #5 of a weekly series, so please bookmark this site if you want to follow me and my zany adventures. I'm also very interested in your feedback - questions, comments, advice, name-calling, etc. Thanks for reading!

I love this clever reusable coffee sleeve/bracelet. Perfect idea- once you use the sleeve you don't have to store in your purse, you can just wear it!

$68 is steep but I'm sure there are plenty of stylish caffeine addicts out there who can handle it. 

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