alien growths

They say kids these days don't know where their food comes from.  They've never seen a farm or a garden, only commercials.
"It comes from the store!"

I thought I was pretty versed in the basics.  I knew that chicken, the meat, came from chicken, the animal, and probably from a farm.  Yesterday, I was out wandering the food forest (the backyard garden) when I saw for the first time...

Brussel sprouts growing!  I had no idea they looked like that.  Last time we planted brussel sprout seeds, cabbages came up.  I think there was a mix-up at Seedy Saturday.  

It's one of those vegetables that you either love or hate, but I enjoy them and I'm looking forward to trying them out.

lovely cabbage

She came from the cabbage patch.  I feel like this is a good environment to bring her up in.

Somehow I ended up dragging her in a lap around the mall a couple weeks ago.  I was looking for boots (for myself).  I never found what I wanted, I'm so particular.  I felt bad, that I didn't want her to spend too much of her childhood getting trained to consume, so I got her back to the garden as soon as I could.

It always seems easier to shop than say, make saurkraut, but I swear it's worth it.  Tonight, I finally pummelled that cabbage into a jar with some salt and caraway seeds.  Now it's covered in water.  Wish me luck on the ferment.

Dreaming of Griswold

The last of the Christmas lights came down today.  In the end, for safety reasons, we ripped them down.

blogger's remorse

I asked the writer if she had any advice for writing.

"You need to have something to say.  Writers are very opinionated.  If you don't have anything to say there isn't much point in writing it down... Oh, and keep a journal!"

one thing at a time

Sometimes I think I'll check the last item off my to-do list and then expire.  I've always enjoyed a good list and I like to travel with a notepad for jotting down inspired thoughts and to-do lists.  Now I'm experimenting with the zen art of doing one thing at a time.

I went to the library, took home a pile of books on simplicity, and then sifted through them.  I ended up settling on one of the quieter ones, 'The Power of Less" by Leo Babauta.  The book describes how to simplify everything, including one's goals or tasks.  This will improve productivity.

The idea is to take that to do list and pick the most important thing on it.  Do that thing, only that thing.  Maybe start a new list with that item only.  I tried it.

-prepare eulogy

I have a long standing joke that I wanted to create a eulogy for myself, some kind of interactive celebration of life complete with pyrotechnics and maybe even a surprise ("I'm not really dead!").  That is a job that comes with plenty of time to get around to, but we had a death in the family and I was tasked with writing a eulogy for someone else.

I still had to work, and look after my kid, and keep house, but when I found myself wondering what to do I just went back to my main task.  I became immersed in it.  I didn't do anything else and it went pretty good in the end.

I felt less stressed, even though there was grief around me.  Now I can find something else to focus on, having taken a short break.  I'll choose a new item from the list.

What is one thing you can focus on, and put everything else aside?

death

Life is so short.

After the purge: better stuff.

Sometimes minimalism just feels like another form of consumerism.