roamingtree

[roamingtree]

Hot take, but if you can't tell the difference between a puffball and a truffle, you should not be foraging. You should especially not be foraging mushrooms, because next you're gonna confuse a death angel and an oyster mushroom.

[roamingtree]

Re: 5, am I the only one who has comfort reads? Who reads a new author, and then reads the rest of their books hoping for comfortable familiarity? (Not exactly the same, but similar.) Who has been disappointed when it turns out the first book of an author is not at all similar to their other works?

'Monster of the week' series and the thousand of coffee shop AUs tell me I'm not wrong.

I think some stories are like potatoes. Potatoes are comfortable and familiar, and there's a thousand ways to eat potatoes. I just want more of the same thing, with slight variations.

That or maybe my life is just more stressful than this person, so I want my books to be a calming oasis in the sea of real life uncertainty.

Writing agent Jonny Geller gives advice to young writers. 

[roamingtree]

I've got a break from work, so I'm finally tackling done yard work, which feels great. Let me preface this by saying that I'm fighting multiple invasive species here, and that I've tried several things, and none of them have been successful.

I've tried cardboard and a foot of wood chips, I've tried cardboard and a very thick layer of fall leaves, I've tried just keeping up with weeding (hah), I've even tried herbicide at one point. Nothing has been a reliable success, nothing has even made it part way through the growing season. Additionally, this chunk will be lost to widening the road at some point, so I wasn't very motivated to wrest it back from the roots and vines of invasive bindweed & blackberries.

So I finally have up on a no dig/no till approach, and dug everything but a few saplings out down to about a foot below the surface:

This was, mind you, a pain in the ass. And back. And arms. But I've down this elsewhere, and while it doesn't eradicate the bindweed and Himalayan blackberries, it does knock them back far enough that I can keep on top of them for a growing season, then do the same thing in the fall, and each year the sections I keep on top of get a little closer to being reasonable.

The next step for this spot is to rake it smooth. Then I'll sow a mix of crimson clover, and under sow that with Fava beans. The crimson clover will winter kill (supposedly, I've had it not but that won't really be a problem) and then the Fava beans will grow over the winter.

Those two cover crops will provide some competition for the weeds, while also fixing nitrogen. Importantly, I'll also not feel bad about accidently riping a few out as I continue to pull any bindweed that comes up.

Then around mid-May next spring I'll plant out some summer squash, bush beans, and tomatoes in this area.

[roamingtree]

Welp

So that explains the smoke. I poured 3 buckets of water on it. It was unattended, and burning pretty good. It's weird because it wasn't smokey earlier this morning, so it wasn't for warmth or cooking. It was a hazard because it was under a conifer and right next to a wooden fence.

I get fire to keep warm and cook food and all that, but to leave a fire unattended during a fire ban during an exceptionally hot summer? Ugh. I wish my country treated homeless people as people rather than a nuisance.

I also feel strongly about smoke because I've got asthma and it's a trigger.

Gonna let the smoke clear and then go back to working outside.

Live blogging my day to see if I can use my phone as a tool for my adhd, rather than, you know, getting stuck.

First thing this morning: a blueberry buckwheat pancake from left over batter, some earl Grey tea, and then off to walk the dogs:

Wow, that looks unappetizing. Looks better irl, I swear.

[roamingtree]

Pollinated one of my oil seed pumpkins, made savory sourdough scallion pancakes for breakfast (with tempeh sausage), and started working on the front yard.

But then it got really smoky so I headed indoors. All the air quality stations in the county are still green, so someone nearby started a fire for some godforsaken reason. I mean, we're in city limits, there's a burn ban, and it's going to be mid-80's today and it's only 10 am. I'm going to give it a little while and hope that it gets better

Live blogging my day to see if I can use my phone as a tool for my adhd, rather than, you know, getting stuck.

First thing this morning: a blueberry buckwheat pancake from left over batter, some earl Grey tea, and then off to walk the dogs:

Wow, that looks unappetizing. Looks better irl, I swear.

[roamingtree]

The walk was good- went by a house I haven't been by in a while, and they had loads of milkweed, fireweed, pearly everlasting, nodding onions, and other native flowers. I didn't take a picture, but it was really cool to see.

The dogs enjoyed the walk, a bit longer than usual for them.

There's a nice layer of low clouds that will burn off later today, so I'm going to drink some tea and work on the front yard some, and then go to the farmer's market later for some lavender.

Live blogging my day to see if I can use my phone as a tool for my adhd, rather than, you know, getting stuck.

First thing this morning: a blueberry buckwheat pancake from left over batter, some earl Grey tea, and then off to walk the dogs:

Wow, that looks unappetizing. Looks better irl, I swear.

[roamingtree]

Live blogging my day to see if I can use my phone as a tool for my adhd, rather than, you know, getting stuck.

First thing this morning: a blueberry buckwheat pancake from left over batter, some earl Grey tea, and then off to walk the dogs:

Wow, that looks unappetizing. Looks better irl, I swear.

[roamingtree]

Looking for Blogs to Follow

Please reblog if you post about

indoor gardening

Starting from seeds

Houseplants

Basically any tracking of plant growth progress

Planted tanks!!

Terrariums

[roamingtree]

Harvested some of my walking onions today, and I just think they're so pretty before they dry down:

Also some of my crocosmia had fallen over the path, and since I needed to thin the clump anyway, I pulled some out, and they're so tall I wanted to show off:

My hardy kiwis are loaded, and I can't wait for the harvest:

I harvested kale seeds, and have plenty to share:

And I used the kale seed pods to mulch around my amaranth greens (started from seed June 30th):

So, even though I felt discouraged by a cold spring and various mishaps, there are things that are going well in the garden.

[roamingtree]

In more cheerful news, other garden beds are doing way better. I tried a milpa/chaos gardening thing elsewhere, and actually got things besides kale! Lettuce, white clover, California poppies, and yes kale are all doing quite well. The arugula still bolted. I probably should just give up on growing arugula and spinach as a spring crop- the switch from freezing to long days with random heat waves above 75 is just too much for them. I also planted some green beans, which are coming along, and some pumpkins, summer squash, tomatoes, and tomatillos which are also all doing quite well.

I am finally learning from my mistakes and starting some fall/overwintering crops in seedling trays. See, there are some benefits to doing this- one of which is if they're in a tray on my back porch, they're much easier to water and thus they have a much better chance of developing a healthy root system. Our summers are just too dry (especially since I can't garden every day) so anything started after the first couple weeks of June just doesn't have a chance to establish before the top inch or so of soil dries out.

Also, it lets me give the seedlings a head start over weed seedlings, and I can plant them out and immediately mulch them to retain soil moisture.

Also, note to future self: making giant compost hillocks to plant cucurbits in is a good idea- except you need to make a crater in the middle, or when you water it will all just run off. Duh. I totally should have seen this coming.

[roamingtree]

ok, so in the spirit of transparency, here's an update:

Shortly after I made this bed, the feral cats decided that it was a great place to use as a litter box. Not great. Like, yes, I know that in nature animals are pooping everywhere, but cats are too close to us and share too many disease organisms with cats. Also cats like to scratch at the dirt, and you can imagine what that does to tiny baby seedlings. On the other hand, I've got a great stand of kale going. If you've been reading carefully, you may have noticed that kale was not one of the plants that I listed off. It turns out that kale have gone to seed often enough in my garden that they're now a pretty reliable self-sower/weed. There are some lettuce still growing, but the spinach and arugula bolted and the rest unfortunately did not survive the feral cats. Alas.

So, not exactly the results I was hoping for, but hey, I'll always have the kale. And when food prices go nuts and vegetables don't seem to fit in the budget, I'll be glad to have it.

Seed starting, mid-April edition

I really like the concept of no-till gardening. I really do. The invasive bindweed in my garden makes it an impossibility, unfortunately.

So this morning, I went and pulled out all the bindweed I could out of a nine square foot area (about a square meter), put a small pile of wood chips to serve as a stepping spot in the middle, added about 2 gallons of homemade compost, sowed a mix of seeds, watered it in, and topped it off with a very fine mulch.

The mix is an eclectic combination of lettuce, spinach, arugula, amaranth, Nigella, cosmos, cilantro, green onions, marigolds, sweet allysum, mustard greens, melons, and cucumbers. If you've heard of a milpa or chaos gardening, that's kinda the idea. The weather is going to be unpredictable this year, and given that I know bind weed will be coming back, I don't feel like trying for careful spacing of particular crops. Instead, I'm sure something of that mix will be happy with what ever mix of water and sun it gets. And it's dense enough that it should do a good job of out competing the weed seedlings that would like to come up.

[roamingtree]

These are some gooseberry cuttings that I started last year:

I had to prune a couple bushes because I was moving them, so I stuck several of the twigs in the ground, figuring that there would be some that took. Four did, even without rooting hormone, or honestly, much care. I moved the babies into a more protected from deer location and watered them in.

I love gooseberries, so I'm happy to have more :D

[roamingtree]

These are some gooseberry cuttings that I started last year:

I had to prune a couple bushes because I was moving them, so I stuck several of the twigs in the ground, figuring that there would be some that took. Four did, even without rooting hormone, or honestly, much care. I moved the babies into a more protected from deer location and watered them in.

I love gooseberries, so I'm happy to have more :D

[roamingtree]

Reblog and put in the tags if you know how to cook or not (at least basic foods), and if cooking was an encouraged skill or not where you grew up.

[roamingtree]

Seed starting, mid-April edition

I really like the concept of no-till gardening. I really do. The invasive bindweed in my garden makes it an impossibility, unfortunately.

So this morning, I went and pulled out all the bindweed I could out of a nine square foot area (about a square meter), put a small pile of wood chips to serve as a stepping spot in the middle, added about 2 gallons of homemade compost, sowed a mix of seeds, watered it in, and topped it off with a very fine mulch.

The mix is an eclectic combination of lettuce, spinach, arugula, amaranth, Nigella, cosmos, cilantro, green onions, marigolds, sweet allysum, mustard greens, melons, and cucumbers. If you've heard of a milpa or chaos gardening, that's kinda the idea. The weather is going to be unpredictable this year, and given that I know bind weed will be coming back, I don't feel like trying for careful spacing of particular crops. Instead, I'm sure something of that mix will be happy with what ever mix of water and sun it gets. And it's dense enough that it should do a good job of out competing the weed seedlings that would like to come up.

[roamingtree]

Prepping for the work week as a person who feels like she's got her ADHD finally under control, and who has multiple dietary constraints, some of which are voluntary, who grew up in a household where my mom stayed home to homeschool us kids, grow food, and cook from scratch*. For a household of two adults who both work 40 hours a week in a physically demanding job.

Frugality, digestibility, and vegan are my main constraints, and I'm also trying to increase the number of vegetables and fruits we eat. I don't count calories, because that is a whole lot of effort I've never felt the need to apply.

Weekend prep usually consists of:

Making sourdough bread

Making tempeh

Soaking beans

Double checking the meal plan on the refrigerator

Going shopping based on the meal plan on the refrigerator

I've actually gone through a lot of trouble to find recipes that I can make quickly and easily before and after work, without repeating so much that we get sick of them. I know some people prepare by making all their lunches for the week the same and cooking it all on the weekend, but if I tried that, I wouldn't be able to make myself eat lunch by the third day.

So. Variety.

I've got these recipes arranged by day, so to go shopping, all I have to do is flip through them and write down what we're low on and things that are perishable.

In an ideal world, I would feed the starter for the bread and soak the soy beans for the tempeh Friday night, cook and inoculate the tempeh Saturday morning, make dough and do the first several folds for the sourdough Saturday night then fridge it, and bake the bread and get the beans soaking Sunday morning. I also like to go foraging at least once on the weekend, and so a bit of gardening, which really helps in the whole trying to eat more vegetables while not spending gobs of money thing.

*BTW, her most repeated bit of advice to her three girls was to never put yourself in a position where you were financially dependant on a man. She didn't feel the need to tell my brothers this for some reason.

[roamingtree]

My other blog got too big for me to be comfortable just blogging about my life there anymore, so here's a side blog!

About me:

- intensely passionate about plants, food, foraging, gardening, and the intersections thereof

- Over 30

- ADHDer

- Pro-bodily autonomy for everyone

- I kinda suspect that if we as a species want to continue existing, those of us in so-called developed nations will have to become a whole lot less consumeristic, and that the shift towards a lifestyle that doesn't rely on sweatshops and child labor will actually be good for us, too.