gardening!

I spent some time yesterday digging in the garden. It was very satisfying. I also started digging up some more grass to expand our garden. Well, I actually think that I am going to end up with little gardens all around the yard. I have a bunch of squash/pumpkins/melons that I want to plant, and I want to find a place that they can stretch out without attacking anything else I am planting...not sure where yet...I'll probably just keep digging up the yard until there is no grass left :-) Which actually works out since we don't use our yard because of one extremely nosy neighbor. He came out yesterday while I was digging in the garden.

"Are you planting a garden again this year" in my head I am thinking you have got to be kidding me...haven't I planted a garden for the past 3 years we have been here??? "yup, sure am, i love it" him: "huh, well ok i guess" Did I misunderstand when we closed on our house that we actually owned the land too? This is the guy that is totally obsessed with mowing the lawn, starting in May...and I think the last time he mowed last year...November...yeah...the grass stops growing in Maine way before November. I figure if I plant enough garden space he won't be able to mow our lawn. Most people would think it would be nice. I prefer to have green grass though, not patches of dirt and brown grass from mowing too short several times a week. Not to mention it is just awkward to have him driving by our windows at 7am with on a lawn mower...definitely want to get a fence. And here I am supposed to be building community.

Sorry for the little rant there! But, I am very excited about gardening this year, and I just hope that we get a little less rain this year. Of course we will probably end up with NO rain this year...We'll see how it goes I guess!!

could it possibly be spring?

It has been absolutely gorgeous out the past few days! I am afraid to write about it frankly, Maine is not known to be kind in the weather department :-) Yesterday it was 65 out. We were able to get a good portion of the front flower gardens cleaned out, and I was able to rake a bunch of crap out of my garden from last year. It was just wonderful. Although, I think we would have gotten more accomplished if one of us didn't have to keep dropping what we were doing to run after the wee one...man is she quick. My mom lives just down the street, and she just starts running yelling "NANA NANNY!!!!!" Which would be fine...except it is a road, and there is a big drop off into a gully right next to our road.

I started about as many seeds as I could possibly think to start on Monday...just to read yesterday that half the stuff shouldn't be started inside - such as green beans. Well, we'll see how they do. I still need to start my tomatoes, which I am not all that confident about since the lady at the greenhouse spent 30 minutes trying to talk me OUT of starting tomatoes at home...hmmmm. Well, the seeds and dirt were not that expensive, and if they suck, well I will just buy seedlings from the nursery anyways.

We are going to attempt to add 4 4x4 raised beds, plus a little pumpkin patch this year. The raised beds were Matt's idea, so I am just going with it :-) I'm hoping that will help considering I will be in my 3rd trimester most of the summer - hence not wanting to bend over and weed a lot. I am really really concerned about animals this year though. We have lived here for 4 years and never had any animal issues (they all stay at my mom's mostly), but in the past 2 weeks something has gotten into our garbage twice, and then the neighbors told us there were 10 deer in our yard/next to our cars the other night...hmmmm...I was thinking racoons, but maybe the deer knocked our garbage over? But what can deter deer from eating my vegetables! We live in town, so no shooting allowed...although I have to say if I wake up to no plants one day, I might be sitting on my porch with a gun overnight. I'm hoping my garden fence will be enough. Any ideas?

In completely unrelated news, we found out we are expecting a BOY! Yay! We are really excited to have a boy and a girl. Although, to be honest, I am freaking out a little bit as to what to do with a little boy. Matt of course is ecstatic. This will be the first grandson on both sides, so it is pretty exciting for us! Not much longer now! I unfortunately will have to schedule a c-section due to some issues related to a car accident when I was younger, but at least I can safely carry the baby! Yay!

Sorry it has been so quiet around here these past few weeks. I have been in a crazy spring cleaning/reorganizing/throw away as much as possible phase :-) I hope to start updating more frequently, but let's be honest...I'm not very good at that! At least I still have my faithful readership (thanks barefoot by the sea!)

books books and more books!

I have been doing a lot of reading as of late. I have always loved reading, unfortunately I got out of the habit when I was in college. I think the economics books and accounting books sucked the energy out of me, so I couldn't even pick up an easy book to read anymore! Plus, I would always run into the issue of feeling guilty if I was reading for enjoyment instead of studying something else. Luckily I took a few women's lit classes in college which allowed me some time with good fiction :-)

Emma loves reading, so we spend at least an hour every day reading as many books as she can get her hands on. Dr. Seuss is one of her favorites I would say. Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish Two Fish, Oh the Places You'll Go. All are read several times a day. She also requests the Hunchback of Notre Dame nightly, asking for modo, goat, and phoebus...where she got a love for this book I have no idea...in fact I'm not entirely sure it is age appropriate! But, she loves it, so I am not going to discourage her. I am definitely enjoying reading longer books to her though, the color book was not cutting it for me anymore :-) And she has the attention span to listen for a long period of time, always a good thing in my book!

I have been reading a lot of books on homeschooling, organization, and family life. I want to definitely suggest the book Spring Cleaning for Normal People. It is a quick read, and is really really good. Everyone knows how to spring clean, and probably most people don't have issues getting it done. For me, it helps to have everything listed out for me, and this book definitely does that. It is an e-book, so you have to purchase it, but for $7 I thought it was a good buy. I also just finished up Steady Mom, which talks about craeting steady days for our families. There are some good tidbits of information in this book as well. You can also follow the author of Steady Days on her blog Steady Mom Definitely worth a look!

So my days have been pretty full as of late. It's been nice to spend the time cleaning the house out too. Although, I have to say that it is already a mess again. I think the little one is anti clean :-) No matter how many times I clean up the cheerios on the floor, I always manage to step on one and it becomes dust...Has anyone else been reading as much as me? I also want to let everyone now I am not completely neglecting my family! I am blessed with the gift of reading fast, something my brother and I share...although I think he is even faster then me. Most of my books are read during Emma's one nap in the morning that she still takes :-)

As an aside, isn't it strange that she takes a morning nap instead of an afternoon nap? Not that I am complaining, I like the break up in the morning routine, but I always hear of rest time after lunch...not in my house! Tips welcome!

strange winter

This has been the strangest winter that I can possibly remember. Here it is almost March, and we have had only 2 big snow storms this winter...of course now that I actually put that in writing I'm sure it will snow every day in March! I'm definitely not complaining about the mild winter, having temps in the high 40's and sometimes 50 degrees for several weeks in a row has been wonderful for me. The fact that the big snow storms were in the mid-atlantic states instead of up here was totally fine with me. And here we are, having another "big" storm where they are getting feet of snow in NY and even the mountains of Maine, but where I live...5 inches of rain, possibly more. I can't even remember the last time we had a prediction for that much rain from one storm.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about global warming, man made, just nature taking its course, whatever, but the weather around here has been weird for what is going on a year now. After the summer of rain...now we have a winter of rain? Are we turning into Washington state? Snow in Florida, warm temps up here, are we turning into Florida? All the damage to the earth aside, I don't know if I would completely mind having a mild winter going forward :-) Is anyone else having a strange winter?

House Temps

We keep our house at a balmy 60 degrees in the winter. This is actually quite a bit warmer than we have had it the past two winters. We used to keep it at 55. We have a very large house and only one zone to use. What does this mean for Matt and I? Well, it means that we dress in many layers. I am wearing 3 shirts and a sweatshirt, Matt wears more layers than me including long underwear. We live in Maine and are used to cold. My mom's house was always cold and drafty growing up, so I adjusted.

What does this mean for my crazy 21 month old? Well, it means in the morning I dress her in layers, turtleneck onesies, stretch pants and then another pair of pants over the stretch pants, sweatshirts, thick socks and she has some little ugg like boots for running around inside. I have really good intentions, but now it is 9am, the sweatshirt is off, and we are down to one pair of pants. By the time Matt gets out of work, the boots and socks will be off too, and most likely the arms will have come out of her onesie while she runs around half naked. All that running around she does must really keep her warm! Or she is crazy :-)

changes

We are thinking about selling our house. Well thinking is not really the correct term. We have a realtor coming on Wednesday to see how much we can get for it right now. We were thinking that with the first time home buyer tax credit ending in a couple months, maybe just putting the house out there would be a good idea. I like my house, it is nice and big and roomy for a large family. It is two houses up from my mom, which makes morning coffee visits very easy. However, we need the equity that is in our house to pay down some of the other debt we have. We are probably one of the few households that still have equity in their homes after the disaster that is the Great Recession.

We also have some land that we have equity in...of course land is definitely not selling right now. The fact that we have both is great...the fact that we can't afford both...really really bad :-) So, we have come to the conclusion to try and sell them both and see which way God leads. Part of me really wants to sell the house, move into an apartment, and build a smaller house on our land. It would give us some much needed debt relief, and it would also help me in my ever constant quest to simplify.

Maybe I just can't stay in one place for too long, hence the constant moving of furniture and rooms in my current house. Will it be difficult to move to a smaller house, well I am assuming yes, but I think it would be rewarding too. Obviously this is the worst time to be putting my house on the market, and maybe if I waited 5 years, we would have more equity, the house would be completely finished and more attractive to a buyer. But maybe if we wait the economy will be worse and we won't be able to sell the house...or the land...and we will continue to be stuck.

I am kind of excited though, to see what happens next. Will we move into my mom's again? Highly unlikely, but you never know what kind of sacrifices you will make for financial security :-) All that being said, if someone has a great desire to buy our lovely home in central Maine (someone like my brother and sister-in-law perhaps), let me know :-) Or if a couple of acres of land sounds right up your alley, again, let me know! Otherwise, we are going to be cleaning, organizing, and trying to hide all the toys Emma has accumulated in the past 21 months! Wish us luck!

food rut

I have been in a food rut as of late. I have seen so many movies, and read so many articles on the state of our agricultural system, that I am pretty much doomed if I eat anything. This winter we don't have a CSA, so I am destined for the grocery store. We do have a farmers' market twice a month, but getting there is just not happening. Either Emma is sleeping, or it is snowing, or there is something else happening. I guess I can't keep making excuses though. It's not good for me or my family.

But what can I buy in February in Maine? Well, I think potatoes and winter squash are about the only options. And even those may not be available at this point. This year was not a good year in Maine for potatoes because of the blight issue that ran rampant through the state...

I used to be able to buy canned tomatoes and canned beans and make a lot of meals with that, but now with BPA being front and center in every canned food, I can't even do that. Can I just say that I miss chilli? I do buy dry beans for beans and rice. Black beans, pinto beans and navy beans...I probably have 15 pounds of them in my dry goods drawer. Now if I can just figure out how to make refried beans I would be all set. The tomatoes...well I am hopefully going to remedy the tomato issue by planting 20 tomato plants this summer, and crossing my fingers to get enough to can all of our tomato needs for the next year.

I do buy organic at the grocery store, it isn't an option anymore to buy conventionally farmed veggies or fruit, especially with Emma eating it. The problems that I have? It is super expensive, and most of it comes from other countries. So I try and buy only in the US, which limits what I can buy each week. There are a lot of local root veggies/winter squash sold at the grocery store, but it isn't organic, I guess I need to research those farms and see if they spray.

Everyday I am consumed by this. Does anyone else have this problem? How do you justify eating non-organic foods and meats? Sometimes I wish that I was blind to the issues of our food system, of course I know better than that. Do people in other countries have the same problems as we do? I'm not entirely sure. I think that in other countries it is typical to buy mainly local ingredients, cook from scratch everyday, pay more for their food.

It's frustrating to try and find foods that my whole family will eat. I think I could be happy as a vegetarian, in fact I pretty much am one. The wee one still doesn't have enough teeth to chew up a lot of the veggies that we buy, and she doesn't like potatoes (how that is possible I have no idea). So she eats squash, peas, corn, and carrots...hmmm...not entirely balanced. The hubs, well he would be in heaven just eating processed crap all day every day. He agrees that we need to eat organic, but if he has to prepare something it doesn't get eaten and "we have no food to eat." The helplessness of men...

So, needless to say, I am back to green smoothies. It is something that Emma will drink, and they help me feel a lot better too. Spinach isn't necessarily in season in February, but we have organic baby spinach from Mass, so that is justified I guess. I think I am just ready for summer, for fresh summer produce, and hopefully to be able to have enough stored up for us next winter, so I am not worried as much as I have been these past few months about what the heck we can eat.