Handmade Beauty Box and a garden update

Yes, I used to make soaps: sushi soaps (+ pickled ginger and wasabi soaps) circa 2008

A number of years ago, I used to make novelty soaps, so I was reading the Soap Queen blog religiously. But, then, I had to make time to focus on writing, and stopped soaping, though I made some good friends in that community.

One of those wonderful friends is Michelle (Within the Hive) whose post about Soap Queen/Bramble Berry's newest venture, Handmade Beauty Box: DIY Delivered, I saw on Facebook.

Handmade Beauty Box: DIY Delivered is a brilliant idea that I've been waiting for. I love trying out craft projects with kits and wished there were kits for making my own skincare and beauty products. They must have read my mind. :)

Anyway, Soap Queen held a giveaway contest asking for suggestions on what people would like to see in these kits, as well as to vote for a new logo, and I was one of two lucky ducks to win a three month subscription!

The first kit will be shipped in December and I can't wait! I'll post about the packages and also my results (hopefully, I won't embarrass myself too much), so be sure to check in and you can laugh (with me, not at me, right?) at my attempts. In the meantime, go check out Handmade Beauty Box at Facebook, Twitter, Intagram, and Pinterest to see if it might be something you would like to do!

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It's the end of July (ACK!!) and time to start preparing for the fall garden. Here are a few fall crops that hubby planted.

from front to back: gai lan, rutabaga, and kohlrabi

Chinese cabbage

malabar spinach - a first for us

There is plenty to harvest now though.

4 different kinds of basil: sweet, Genovese, Thai, and lime

about 80 heads of garlic

ginormous onions

harvested yellow onions; red and storage onions to come

 And look what else is growing in our garden...

3 little Song Sparrow eggs

How's your summer harvest? Do you plant fall crops?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Fall harvests

This post is dedicated to my mom who passed away on Oct. 23 of 2010. She loved gardening and was always hugely enthusiastic about hubby's gardening endeavors. I think I have a photo of her, when she visited us one year, helping to pick hickory nuts meat out of the hickory trees that grow on our property. It's very cute. If I find it, I'll post it next time.

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So it's officially autumn and we've had two frosts. But, thanks to floating row covers, we still have a good bit of veggies to harvest.

Yesterday, hubby picked the following goodies: from back to front - choi sum, green onions, celery, and dill.

We froze the choi sum for later, but hubby put the other three things into salmon cakes (it was what's for dinner!).

He also harvested salad makings: spinach, leaf lettuce, and bib lettuce. Here they are all shredded up in the spinner.

I love still being to eat from our own garden this time of year!

Are you harvesting anything tasty from your garden? If you are, tell me what you're growing. If not, I encourage you to grow a fall garden next year.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Water, water, everywhere...and same with vermins

I saw the best quote the other day from Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar:
"We all make mistakes in life. The thing that separates successful people from others is how we handle those mistakes."  It's the one lesson I hope the kids come away with if they remember nothing else I teach them.

Speaking of lessons for my kids, one of the ones I keep reminding ds#1 of is to not waste water:

Source: eLocal.com

Clean water is something that we should never take for granted.

~~~~~
We've enjoyed several meals of yummy sweet corn...

until the evil raccoons somehow got into our fenced garden (something they'd never done before) and destroyed the rest of that one bed. Luckily, we still have another bed, or two. One of those is surrounded by an electric fence, so they should fare better.

Raccoons, or some other pest, also swooped in on our Asian pears. One day our 2 trees were loaded with fruits, nearly ready for picking, and the next day, not a single fruit was left on either tree. Nada. If we catch the culprit, it is stew meat! Grrrr. The tree branch in this photo was so loaded with fruit that it had snapped off.

Luckily, there are other things we are able to harvest and process - more basil, for instance:

And here's hubby making the pesto, after I washed all the basil and the jars and lids, and the kids stripped the leaves.

A good friend, Tia, brought over two pullets that they didn't want anymore after her girls were done with their 4-H project. Meet Vader (guess what that was named after?) and Tawny (as in Sigourney Weaver's character from Galaxy Quest). Ds#1 gets the credit for these names. Do they look like they're doing a Rockettes' dance or what?

Our old hens had pretty much stopped laying due to the heat and their being broody, so we look forward to finally having some homegrown eggs again. Thanks, Tia!

In other exciting news, we'll be getting a new tractor soon - a lovely red Kubota! Hubby had looked at John Deere, but the dealer in town was surprisingly unresponsive, with the manager acting like he didn't really want to make the sale. The Kubota dealer in the town south of us, on the other hand, was so helpful and eager that hubby decided to go for it. Plus, the size and features that he wanted were cheaper with the Kubota. Can't wait!

Do you have any exciting gardening purchases?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

An old post I forgot to publish...

I'd written it back in early July before our trip to Vancouver; so, this will be your Monday treat...hahaha!

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I've never liked snow peas (I know, what kind of Chinese person AM I??), but have always loved other kinds of peas, our favorite being the edible pod types because of less waste. Until such time we get a hog to raise, I don't think we'll ever grow shell peas. It pains us to throw the entire husk away. Look at these lovely little edible pod peas!

This was our first big basil harvest; we made 9.5 pints of pesto.  Good eats ahead!

Not all is hunky-dory in the garden though.  There's something wrong with our onions. They have mottling on the green parts, making them look like aloe plants, and aren't growing very well.

Anyone else have problems with their garden this year that they can't attribute to insect pests?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Gardening - flowers and food

Some of you may have noticed that we don't spend a lot of time on ornamental gardening. We used to grow showy annuals, but with less time to spend on gardening and more mouths to feed, we've focused our efforts on food over aesthetics. If we grow plants that don't feed us, we try to focus on ones that are perennial and/or feed birds.

Hummingbirds are rather fond of hosta flowers (the deer love the leaves too, but we're certainly not encouraging that). My MIL used to grow many varieties of hostas; she had a shady yard that only shade-loving plants could do well in. The ones we have now had been dug up from her garden. It's a nice way to remember her.

My MIL knew all the varieties names, but I can barely remember my own kids' names.

I haven't talked much about the herbs that we grow by the house, so here are photos of a couple of them.  This is oregano:

The lemon balm also does well.

Garlic chives have taken over much of the space around our water garden, although I don't think you can see it well in this photo.  This space has become a bit wild in the past few years.  We used to have water lilies in the pond, but now it's mostly algae.  The frogs still love it and I guess that's all that counts for now.

Hubby, with the kids' help, fixed our old chicken tractor!  Now I have to find time to stain it.

More on the never-ending rabbit saga - see the cuke plants they've turned into stubs? 

This one is for Michelle (Blog of the Soap Pixie) because we were talking about darned deer and the damage the cause (hey, that make a good rock band name: Darned Deer and Devastation...ok, maybe not).

Yes, the peas are ready! Putting the kids to work:

I may whine about weeding and hubby may complain about having to having to foil deer and rabbits every year, but I'm very grateful to be able to grow about 40% of our own foods on our land.  There is a food shortage in many parts of the world, causing high prices and food riots.  Incidentally, some may think that food costs are high in North America, but it's nothing compared to what percentage of income it comprises for some people in other parts of the world.  A couple of good articles to read about food shortage are:
A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself
and
Where is the 21st century approach to feeding the world?
Of course, one can't really talk about changing climate and hunger without also talking about two other related topics:
Fastest sea-level rise in 2,100 years linked to climate change
and
Overpopulation: A key factor in species extinction

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you (welcome to the despair that resides in my heart), I hope you'll have a lovely weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

What's up (and growing), doc?

It's pretty obvious that I don't take garden photos as beautifully as Amber, or Cake, or Allison, so I should stop apologizing for the quality of my photos. But, I do want to mention that these in this post are extra bad because I was using my iPhone and some of the pics were taken near sunset on a partly cloudy day (they came out rather purple).

Looking into the greenhouse, here are the adorable tomato plants that a dear friend, TO, gave us:Some bok choi and choi sum, with cilantro and mache trying to compete:
The cilantro and kale going nuts and going to seed among a few leeks:
From back to front: gai lan, chinese cabbage, and frisee.
The onions, grown from seed, finally planted after some very wet weather:
Dill among the carrots; can you even tell which is which?
Garlic: looking good, baby!
This bed of strawberries is doing well:
Look at the size of the berries:
Spinach...ah, how we love spinach (lamb's quarters, the weed, is edible too):
Radishes down the middle of the broccoli:
A close-up of a floret forming in the broccoli:
The dog...next to the onion beds and the comfrey and horseradish:
More comfrey...and dog butt anyone? Where are the chickens?
The blueberries are blooming:
Another view of the blueberries, with strawberries as ground cover:
Third view of blueberries, on a different (and sunnier) day:
ARGH! Bamboo invasion!
Choi sum seedlings, in a bed with more lettuce and spinach.
See chicken...
See chicken stay away from dog...
Our pride-and-joy asparagus bed - the one that actually produces well:
This is the volunteer cilantro that decided to keep the asparagus company:
The yellow raspberry plants that another dear friend, C, gave us:
Tools of my trade: the dandelion tool, the wire weeder, and the circle hoe. Don't leave the garden shed without them.
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams