Windowsill Greenhouse

Tomatoes and cucumbers and a few other garden plants have been purchased as seedlings when I'm ready to plant them unprotected outside for the most part.  I think once or twice I've tried starting them indoors in egg shell halves and got a sprout that I promptly killed because I couldn't seem to control the moisture.  I live in a very dry climate... and that tiny bit of soil doesn't hold much water.  But, I've rigged up a new plan this year and decided to give it another try!

The materials I pulled together were a rectangular clear plastic tub that salad greens come in from the grocery store, tubes from toilet paper rolls and some dirt (half soft garden dirt and half leftover potting soil from my last shot at houseplants).

I cut the TP tubes in half and placed them in the plastic tub, filled them with the soil mixture and poured a little warmish tap water over all.  Then I snapped the lid on and waited for it to get absorbed evenly.  The amount of steam it created, and so far kept, surprised me a little, but I figured it's a 'greenhouse' and so a little humidity was normal.

The next day, I planted my seeds...  After I searched through my stash that didn't get used last year (okay... some of them were older than last year) only to find I didn't have tomato or pumpkin seeds like I was planning on planting and made a quick run to Walmart's nursery.

I put 3 seeds in each half tube and will thin depending on what sprouts.  If I'm successful, there will be 3 hills of pumpkins and about a dozen tomato plants.  It's my first time growing pumpkins and I'm hopeful for a couple nice jack-o-lanterns and some frozen puree for pumpkin muffins.

Impatiently waiting to see those first sprouts.  And hoping they survive my "tender ministrations" and good intentions to make it into the garden!  And I can't help checking every time I walk by and thinking...

Now GROW, dammit!!

I've linked this post to the blog hop at My Simple Country Living.

What's in a Name?

Today at Church a new baby was blessed and presented to the congregation.  In the LDS faith, the blessing ordinance follows a loose pattern and often very similar wording at the beginning.  Part of that formal verbiage is "to give a name and a blessing."  It allows the baby's father to express the wishes and comforts the child will need to grow successfully as it helps all of us know how to support and identify this new little person.

Names, like all words, have meaning.  For example, my given name is Kathryn.  Most of my life I've thought it was an old English name meaning pure.  But thinkbabynames.com says it's a variant of the Greek name Katherine and means pure.  Either way, I guess, pure is good.  My Mom used to tell me that she wanted to name me Kathryn Louise but my Dad said no.  His opinion was that "girls just go off and get married and a middle name just makes it too long."  For a long time I was kind of grateful... the thought of having Louise as a middle name when I was 12 or so was kind of horrifying!  I mean, that's like a grandma name.  Funny.  It doesn't sound quite so terrible these days.

As Church services progressed and we moved into our Sunday School class, the topic today dealt with names and blessings.  The lesson material was drawn from 2 Nephi, chapters 3-5.  Here, I'm only going to touch on a few verses.  At this point, an elderly Lehi takes each of his children aside to give them a final father's blessing.  Chapter 3 is the blessing of his youngest son, Joseph, and while he elaborates on many points throughout the rest of the chapter, I want to focus on verses 3-5 where he explains just who Joseph is, their family lineage and blessings to come to his posterity.  Specifically, he points out:

• Joseph is his last born... the youngest child in the family, born in the wilderness after their family left Jerusalem.
• Joseph's seed, or posterity, will not be utterly destroyed but will survive to continue their family line.  Not all of his sons received this promise... they were told that their future generations would dwindle in disbelief and die.
• Lehi reconfirms that Joseph is his child, the "fruit of my loins."  I think at some point every child needs this reassurance of belonging in their family.  In effect, what their name is.
• Their genealogy can be traced back directly to Joseph who was carried away to Egypt.  And he likely is the namesake for this Joseph.
• They are the "broken branch" and still entitled to all the blessings promised to the house of Israel in the latter days.

For a young man whose entire life had been that of a poor nomad, this must have been wondrous information and an intensely spiritual bonding experience with his dying father.  I can only imagine that it would make quite the impression on me anyway.  How would you feel walking in his shoes?

Granny's Square

On my mom's side, I come from a long line of lace makers.  The women in my history used that fine little crochet thread to make miles and miles of lace that decorated the edges of tablecloths, napkins, hankies, pillow cases  and I'm sure many other household items.  One of my Uncle Jim's favorite stories is of his Grandma Chris (short for Christensen) getting together with the other ladies in the neighborhood to crochet and gossip.  He remembers these get togethers from his childhood and says that it was hard to tell whether their crochet hooks or mouths were moving faster and that sometimes Grandma would get so caught up in what was going on that she'd lapse back into her native Danish.  The startled looks from the other ladies would get her to giggling saying "Oops, I forget me English."  For no lack of my mom's trying, I never mastered the art of using such fine thread and tiny hooks, but I can crochet some simple items.  I guess I'll take my family heritage where I can find it...

One of my favorite things to crochet is the granny square.  They are simple and the repetitiveness is soothing and almost meditative for me.  If you want to learn to make them, Crochet Cabana has what looks to be a really great Granny Square Tutorial.  I admit, I googled that just this morning because I knew that surely someone had already put the work into it.  Why reinvent the wheel?

Granny squares are most often combined into afghans, sweaters or winter scarves.  To get the gratification of finishing a project much quicker, I also like to make them into potholders.  Here are 3, well used and many times washed, from my kitchen drawer.

Actually the one farthest to the right looks pretty new... it must have been hiding in the bottom of the drawer instead of getting used and thrown in the washer every week or two.

You can see, however, that while these are the same shades of blue and white that there is a variety of ways to put granny squares together.  I thought today, I'd talk just a little about two of those methods and then show you how I finish them off into a potholder.

First, is using multiple colors of yarn.  In this picture, you can see that I changed my yarn for each row.  It's relatively simple to do and provides pattern and contrast. which is very pretty.  The downside is that you have all those tails to tuck and hide in your work.  This is for a potholder, so there are 7 rounds for a total of 14 tails - one to begin and another to end each round.  Tail tucking is my most hated part of any crochet project!  I look for ways to avoid it.

You can also use contrasting colors divided on the diagonal by carrying the yarn you aren't crocheting on the back.  I didn't have enough left of either of these yarns to finish a potholder... but you get the idea.  Admittedly, it's a little awkward to carry that extra strand of yarn until you've done it for a few rounds but I really like this method because it is so very different and you don't have all those darned tails.

Obviously, by itself a granny square is too light and open to provide any protection to your hands from a hot dish so the potholder needs a backing layer.

 To do this, I chain 32, then use half double crochets (usually abbreviated hdc in commercial patterns) to make a solid square.  I like the hdc because it provides bulk and substantialness while working up faster and softer than single crochets (sc).  At the end, I don't cut my thread - saves me a tail to tuck!  I just begin sc around the edge to affix the solid backing and granny square together.  Then I finish the potholder off with a loop so it could be hung on the wall or a magnetic hook on the side of the stove.

To make the loop, I chain 10 in the corner where my last sc meets my first sc from putting the two pieces together and slip stitch to connect it.  Then ch 1 and sc around the loop to fill it in.  I just counted a couple of them and it's 18 sc in the loop.

Simple.  Pretty.  Useful.  And it makes me happy to feel this little connection to my family history.  You see my maternal ancestors didn't pass on a lot of great stories... or traditions.  Some of them didn't want to be found or known and went to some effort to hide their identities.  Most of my memories and sense of connectedness to them is in the things they left behind.  I love having Grandpa's gold rimmed shot glasses and Grandma's Blue Willow dishes and the pillowcases (great) Grandma Chris made out of old cloth flour sacks around me.

Pay It Forward

It was a kind of spur of the moment decision, but I've decided to participate in a Pay It Forward Challenge this year.  I'm reasoning that it supports my goal to be more kind in action and thought and also to step a little outside my comfort zone and reach out to others.

So... how did this happen?  Reading another blog, of course!  Tribalmama made such a good point when she said "Homesteading has a tendency to manifest into selfishness."  It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities and plain hard work of learning to live a more sustainable lifestyle.  We save more things and look to use old things in different ways.  Spending goes down.  Things like that... which generally are very good until it makes us kind of stingy and isolated from the people around us.

On to the rules...  It's really pretty simple.  There's only 2:

1. I promise to make something and send it (before the end of 2012) to the first five people who comment on this post.  Yes, you can help me get my craft on again!!

2.  If you are one of the first five, you then re-post the rules on your blog or Facebook and send something to the first five people who comment on your post.

(Again, the item must be hand made by you and the recipient must receive the gift before the end of 2012. The item may be as simple or as complicated as you would like. You just have to promise to follow through.)

Gardening... by God's Word

 And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.  Moses 6:63

But ye are commanded in all things to ask of God, who giveth liberally; and that which the Spirit testifies unto you even so I would that ye should do in all holiness of heart, walking uprightly before me, considering the end of your salvation, doing all things with prayer and thanksgiving, that ye may not be seduced by evil spirits, or doctrines of devils, or the commandments of men; for some are of men, and others of devils.   D&C 46:7

ALL things bear record of me and in ALL things ask of God...  What is there that ALL doesn't include?  What awesome evidence that we have a Creator who takes individual interest in each of us, even in the minutiae of our every day.

But I never thought to ask Him for gardening advice.

For a long time I've been fascinated by the scriptural references to gardening and that Adam, the first man, was placed in a garden and left to tend it.  Also interesting is that neither weeds nor the declaration that sustenance would be gained "by the sweat of your brow" come until God has banished Adam and Eve from the garden as a consequence of their transgression.  I've been awed at how much like our own the veins in tree leaves are and that they have the same purpose of carrying water, nutrients and other enzymes from the core to the extremities.  I've made correlations in the natural patterns of growth, decline, death and renewal between nature and our Lord and even our own mortality.  I've sung hymns in Church denoting "All the Earth's a garden sweet."

And still it never occurred to me to ask Him how to best grow my garden.

Happily not everyone is as dense about that as I am!  Thankfully my paths crossed someone else who'd seen the video Back to Eden and I was intrigued enough to follow their link and watch the presentation.  I jotted down 19 more scriptural references to support this method of gardening during the 3 times I've watched it in the past couple of days.  Paul Gautschi's method makes sense logically, scientifically and scripturally.  And it seems to me that it would be a whole lot less physical labor to care for a garden this way.  It's seriously made me rethink how I'm going to do things in the future... not the layout so much as the methodology of it.  This just makes sense!

I urge you to grab a notepad and watch, too!!  From the Back of Eden website you can either watch the movie or buy a DVD.  Watch it more than once, really ponder what he says and then let's talk about it.  I'd love to get a dialogue going here with thoughts and experiences so we can all experiment and learn together!