Eat your View

Last night I enjoyed beans from my own garden! Granted, it was only 2...but they were delicious. It was the first food from my own garden that I had grown from sead. You would have thought that I birthed these beans as excited and proud as I was. My garden is going crazy! I have zinnias in vases all over my house and basil out the...well, you know.

I need these things. I need to grow things and create life and beauty.

Now, if only I could get those damn chickens!!!

garden photos to come soon. Also coming soon: thoughts on sugar and ADD and society. they are brewing in me...

Going au naturale

Hand sanitizer that is. I just don't like that alchohol stuff they sell. It tries out my hands and who knows what all's in it. For a girl trying to go herbal/green with her home and body care products that's not really inviting. So, for months I have watched my mother-in-law going around with this myrrh based hand sanitizer, and today I finally made some of my own! I was trying to make me up some jasmine body spray (since perfume is another thing I don't really do) and discovered anothre spray bottle I must have bought and then promptly forgotten. I didn't really use a recipe for either one. I just sort of scouted the internet and saw that most recipes consist of water, essential oil, and grain/rubbing alchohol. I believe you can use witch hazel in place of the alchohol if desired. I just used some smirnoff that hasn't been seeing much action since...well since we bought it actually. I did add a few drops of massage oil to my blends though just to try and counteract alchohol's drying effect. For the body spray I just added a couple of drops of massage oil, one drop of pure Jasmine essential oils, probably just under an ounce of vodka, and a generous ounce of water. Then I just shook it up really well. Hope I didn't make it too strong. That jasmine oil is very strong. Well just see if anyone besides Allen will sit by me at church tonight :D For the myrrh blend I did about the same thing, but I added more oil and used less vodka. The recipes I saw indicated that for non-perfume type stuff you don't need as much alchohol. Oh yeah, I also put some colloidal silver in with it for even more germ kicking awesomeness. So yeah, 6-8 drops myrrh essential oil and about 1/4 oz silver along with a tsp oil for moisturizing. Vodka for stabilizer. Water to the top. In my purse and ready for the next all natural germ kicking opportunity. I feel like such a granola girl now. It rocks.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

To one of our very own! ANNA!

I am glad that you were born today. And that we are gardening buddies!

Hope it is just lovely!

Buying green is occasionally dirt cheap

Inspired by the recent arrival of my diamond in the rough bentwood rocker I thought I would throw in a good word for green spending. I know the whole resuse, recycle, "for heaven's sake keep it out of the landfill" is pretty trendy right now, but more than being a fad, it makes really good sense. Or cents. Depending on how you look at it. Freecycle means free stuff (clever what?). That means the bentwood rocker costs me exactly gas+time. Yeah, so it needs a little work. It's still way cheaper than buying new (or even at a thrift store). Speaking of which, I adore Salvation Army Thrift stores. I currently have 4 pieces of thrift store furniture in my apartment plus another dozen or so decorative items. It's great. The furniture is all mostly higher quality than the stuff you get in the stores nowadays (yes my dad once took be aside and explained dovetail joints to me), and a lot of it (being older) isn't as bulky as the furniture they try selling you today. Plus, Salvation Army is the awesomest Christian charity ever. Forget giving money to Red Cross. If you want to give distaster relief/help somebody out money. Give it to the Salvation Army. If you do the research and listen to the stories they really do get in there and stay in there and help out the people in a way that Red Cross just doesn't. That's one reason why I tend to donate a lot of my clutter there. But you could also put it on Freecycle if that's your thing. Either way, free/cheap + helping people out (and getting stuff you really want) rocks.

Oh yeah, that's not my rocker above. It's similar except that mine it very badly upholstered in some sort of dark green stuff that decided if it couldn't be tassled it would darn well well have tonal pictures of tassles scattered all over it. Hideous. I'm pretty sure I can fix it with some fabric in my stash though.

Commitment to Loveliness

I came across this challenge today (Thanks Trina!). The basic premise is that you choose five ways you can add loveliness to your life. I'm not sure if it's a week or a month challenge broken up into weeks, but it looked worth doing. Of course I know some of us are all busy with Script Frenzy this month trying to churn out plots, and this might not be the best time to start making even more commitments. I, however, am going to give it a shot. So here's my list.

1. Shave my legs more often. I am a lazy blue-jeans girl by habit, but smooth legs means I can have spontaneous sundress moments without hunting up a razor. And sundresses are just plain prettier than blue-jeans.

2. Take the time to actually take care of my nails. (Are you seeing a trend here? I'd much rather be reading than doing my nails.)

3. Start clearing the clutter out of my bedroom so I can have a peaceful space in there.

4. Guilt-free cleaning: just one small thing at a time when I have the opportunity -the toothpaste, my apple core (yummy), my car keys etc.

5. Get up and move. I'll feel better.

I hope I always, always feel this way

I went to look at my little garden space today and, after looking close, I found them...LITTLE GREEN SPROUTS! My poppies are starting to come in. I was worried because after all the rain, my soil was beginning to again resemble clay. I was sure that the little friends would not be able to push their way through. I misjudged them. Like me, they are stronger than they look. A little difficulty was not stopping them from basking in the sunlight of spring. I almost cried.

My seeds came in today. Some of the veggies say to sow outdoors in early spring, so I guess that is now?! The tomatoes and tomatillos need some indoor lovin' first, so they are going to be set up on trays in my bedroom (the best light in the house). I am hoping to get dirty this weekend.

Amy, my Amaryllis is just about to bloom. She is in the phase where she has 3 distinct leaves, pink and green and vein-y just waiting go burst. Her stalk is so green and solid. I love it. Maybe tomorrow.

I love Spring. This year seems especially special...life after death. Green after so much brown. I keep mentioning this, in my personal blog, to everyone I see...it is on my mind a lot. I feel like I am maybe opening up again as well.

**Stay tuned to hear about CJ and my first week as members of a CSA. What veggies will we be enjoying this week???

When it's good, it doesn't seem so bad

I didn’t have to get far into Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, a book by Thomas McNamee, before I began planning my own pilgrimage to the Berkeley restaurant. Now, only days after completing it, Elisa and I have have subscribed to a community-supported agriculture farm and are looking forward to cooking with locally-grown, seasonal vegetables ourselves.

OK, I can’t give Alice Waters all the credit. Elisa and I started talking about this weeks ago. And honestly, I may never have done it if she hadn’t done the research, the phone calling, the math. But I am very excited that she and I will be splitting this local produce without increasing our grocery bills!

We’re joining Grow Alabama, and our plan (which we’ve been told is just enough for two single people) works out to just $11 per week. I spend about $100 on groceries monthly, and half of that is produce, so I feel good about this new venture.

Cooking seasonally has also been on my mind lately. I’ve slowly started to attempt figuring it out, just by paying attention to cost. (Did you notice that Publix’s asparagus recently dropped from $3.99 a pound to $1.99?) And The Cook and The Gardener, a cookbook by one of my favorite food writers, Amanda Hesser, focuses on seasonal recipes divided by months.

Bring on the leeks, the cabbage and the snap beans. I’m ready.

Welcome!

Hi All,
As i was messing around in my garden (or spots of dirt outside of my apartment!), I started thinking about You Grow Girl, a gardening blog that I love. This let to my thinking about Apartment Therapy, a home blog that I love(see also The Kitchen). I was wishing that we had something like for Birmingham...a place to share our triumphs, trials, experiments in all things "Nesty", like gardening, cooking, decorating, baking, entertaining, etc.

So...here we are! I am hoping that this will be an online community of women who are trying to figure out life and beauty and what they mean to us and to The Kingdom and our relationships to each other, our families and our communities.

Blog as little or as much as you like. I chose the title "Like as a Garden" because all that we do for our homes, our gardens, our families and friends are sowing seeds and hoping that they grow.

If you would like to be a part of this blog, let me know and I will get you added. My vision is women of all ages and walks of like sharing and learning and encouraging.

So, welcome!