Mint Harvest

I have a lot of mint growing in my yard. This plant likes to take over the yard so I will just need to find a few uses for it. I am drying it around the house by hanging it upside down using strings leftover from my sewing spools. Next weekend I will be soaking the leaves in Vodka to make mint essence. This will be especially useful in candies and ice cream. I've even boiled some of it and I am freezing it as ice cubes in bags to use as a scented spray for the car.

The Garlic is Almost Ready for Harvest

A friend at work who is also growing garlic gave me the tip that my garlic bulbs may be near their harvest time. This weekend I decided to poke around and see what is happening under the dirt to decide if I wanted to harvest now or wait. I used my daughters toy hand spade and carefully uncovered a beautiful looking garlic bulb. I do think I will give them a week or two longer though. I planted the sprouting garlic cloves last January, and now I have full grown bulbs by July to August! Yummy!

Blueberry Bushes

I have two blueberry plants but only one (this one) is producing berries. It is full of nice, sweet, ripe fruit though.

How to Cook Your Life

I want to stop a mention a documentary recommendation. I recently watched "How to Cook Your Life" by Edward Espe Brown and have taken some kind of internalized, Zen inspiration from it that is allowing me to move more freely through my self-sufficiency journey. I recommend this one to anyone.

Salad and Strawberries

Food taken straight from the backyard doesn't get anymore environmentally friendly or sustainable than this! No oil was used to ship it, no pesticides used to "protect" it, no fertilizers used to boost it. Instead it is just simple dirt and seeds growing into plants a few steps away from the kitchen it was served from. I am nearing the end of this strawberry plant's season but I will be transplanting several of them to the front yard to hopefully increase the fruit potential for next summer. I have heard it through word of mouth that strawberry plants need to be moved occasionally so that they will continue producing fruit the following years to come. I will be putting this to a test and will report next year.

Dead Ant, Dead Ant

I am now putting together a bed that I will used to sprinkle various seeds until something sprouts. The picture on the right is the reason that I

decided to do this. I had around 10 Beans starts that I had growing in my window in the earliest of Spring. Everyone of them went through transplant shock and they all died. The remaining plants that I now have are all seeds that I sowed directly outdoors after the fear of frost vanished. I am now believer of starting most seeds in the place they will continue life to the end.

The blocks in the center that almost a circle is the platform that I intend on placing a water collecting barrel to catch the downspout water on the side of the house. This may be either a late July or mid-August project to look forward to.

I have to mention my experience with the ants b/c it is the human side of me that is on a Journey and having not reached my destination that made me cave into letting my husband use the ant spray. While I was digging and leveling the ground where these planting blocks were to be placed; I ran into an ant colony and my mind quickly reverted back to being a kid and being covered and repetitively stung by these ants. Without thought of how it would impact the soil, the ants, or my dogs or children if they encountered this dirt (or if it had drained and gotten into the water supply which would be drunk by any random individual); I quickly asked my husband to spray the ants so that I could continue building my planter. It didn't even cross my mind once b/c I was sucked into a deep connection with the ant attack I was under at age 4 or 5. The next morning I was hit by the dread of what I had actually gone through with (and without any thought about it that previous evening). When I was able to begin my work with the ground again I was relieved to see that very few ants had actually died and that it was still swarming with some very busy tiny creatures. I quickly shoveled the affect soil out and into a different location so that it could be transported into a safer place. I haven't yet thought of where that might actually be, but I think I'll be more aware of my fears next time so that I don't make the same mistake twice. Yikes! That would be one reason why this blog is about the journey. It did hit me today as I was working that having a raised bed is good cause for leaving the living things alone while I work on the upper surface.