Obviously it’s early in the year and though my little sweet pea plants are very small still (due to the fact that it snowed a few days ago, and probably the variety too since I went with bush this time rather than vine) I do have greens. Greens from last year, greens fresh from this year!

I have harvestable kale and collards right now but I picked spinach and lettuce for a dinner salad and it was gorgeous!

Albeit, a little dirty…all this rain has been splashing that dirt all over the place.

I also picked up some cilantro for salsa. I have so much, I need to have it in salads too probably. haha. I got about 5oz of greens.

The boys played while I gardened and I didn’t have to pay too much attention to where they were because they were glued to where the sump pump empties.

Diiiiiiirty. Water is definitely attractive, I know, but they seriously wouldn’t even look up when I asked them so I could get smiles for this pic. Nope, the water was cooler than mommy.

The other thing I harvested (pre-snow) was from the violets in our yard.

I’ve been reading up on my esteemed herbs lately and their medicinal values and something that kept coming up in my research was all parts of violets. Their root, their blooms and the leaves all have qualities that are found in common synthetic medicines and since I have about a quadramillion in my yard (which I used to try and fight) I thought it might be a good idea to put them to good use.

The leaves are mostly beneficial fresh but the flowers must be dried and since they are very short lived you have to pick them during their bloom.

The dried flowers can be made into a tea or a syrup and used for all sorts of ailments from constipation to wet coughs and even have been used to treat tumors, pain, and used to cleanse blood and treat open wounds ( source, source, source).

So I couldn’t really ignore the purple field that is my back yard and not use it at all because really, the only thing that would keep me from harvesting the flowers is pure laziness.

The boys enjoyed helping me (although they mostly wanted to dump the colander) and we all crawled around and picked violets for quite a while in the sunshine. I picked about a half pound and then spread them on a cookie sheet to dry. The day after I picked them it snowed so rather than taking maybe 24hrs, it took about three days for them to fully dry.

Now that I have quite a bit I’ll be using them as tea and also infusing honey. I’m excited just to have a natural option for mild headaches, baby coughs (and me too!) and digestion aide on hand.

Question: What do you pick over conventional medicine?

Well I’ve been absent, I know. But the weather has been all out of sorts and I think that has left us all out of sorts too.

It weirdly snowed the other day. In May, in Missouri. Pretty rare. It started with sleet that slowly turned to snow.

The amount of green going on made it rather surreal.

Once it got going I began to immediately notice how the fully leaved trees felt the weight. Weird how it takes quite a few inches of snow on bare trees to cause branch breakage but those leaves really do catch a lot more.

I put Avery down for bed and after a while he came running to the door saying the tree was broken…turns out, it was! Right outside his window, totally freaked him out.

It was a pretty hefty branch.

But later that night he came out again (around 1am so I was sound asleep) freaked out because the power was out! His light and fan had turned off and poor kid has become very scared of the dark the past few months so this was a big deal. I tried to calm him down and get him to go to sleep in his bed but he wasn’t having that at all. He came back to our room crying and saying ‘It’s dark! Avery so scared!’. So, for the first time EVER, we tried to get him to sleep in our bed. It took a solid two hours but he finally crashed. Of course Eli woke a couple times per the norm, so I pretty much didn’t sleep at all. Fortunately though, Avery did get some.

The next morning, another very large branch had fallen.

The power was out for over six hours and the house was 60 degrees when I went to get Eli. I was so relieved when it finally came back on around 7:30.  The second branch was really close to the house.

Isn’t it strange to see snow with so much green? I didn’t edit these photos at all.

The weirdest part was that it dropped over fifty degrees within twelve hours and I’m historically not great with extreme pressure changes and now I know that Avery isn’t either. We were a couple of grumpers. Not fun.

Today it warmed up a bit and tomorrow is going to back to the normal 80 sunny days we had last week thank goodness. So excited to garden again!

 

FINALLY, after many days of ‘funk’ I felt like this weekend really helped me recovery from the grief and adjustment of losing Mor mor.

It sort of started with a phone call on Friday night I got from my baby sister Michelle asking if I wanted to join her at the Farmer’s Market  for Saturday morning. My family has had a booth at the Overland Park Farmer’s Market for years and years and each spring one of us kiddos get commandeer the work and profit by buying each plant we sold at the wholesale price from my parents and pocketing the retail mark up. It’s a huge money maker for a mid teen and it’s Michelle’s turn to make that mo mo. Of course, the majority of the work and profit go to the one heading up the operation but they can’t do it alone and I was honored to be asked to join this weekend.

I’m a bit of a market junky and fully enjoy every moment spent selling, buying, working and playing.

The farmer in the booth next to us had a simply divine spread. Obviously the tomatoes were grown in a hot house but the onions were from their fall harvest and they had fresh radishes, greens and morel mushrooms that they FORAGED. Insane.

Anyway, obviously my parent’s plants are incredibly beautiful.

Although it was chilly AND pouring rain.

Just a little shameless plugging for the best, organic, brand for herbs in the country.

Anyway, we goofed off and sold rather more than we expected despite the weather. Somehow our booth was next to a local bread vendor (Farm to Market bread…the BEST in the city) and at the end of the day they literally gave us six or seven loaves of bread.

The girls were a little overly excited about the baguettes that they had been drooling over all day. In fact, they had gone over to buy one to split for lunch when they got home but that was when we found ourselves the recipients of two baguettes, a loaf of rye, one of sourdough and an olive loaf too…..not to mention two little cheesy loaves. Let’s just say, it was our lucky day. We tried to dump a ton of plants on them. No one can turn down organic, heirloom tomato plants. hehe

Shane hung out with the boys while I played at the market and despite the fun I MISSED THEM. Like seriously. I’m so blessed to be able to spend my days with my kids.

Anyway, I got home in time to nurse and put Eli down for his afternoon nap and an hour or two later Shane and I were off for a pregame date. By game, of course, I mean the fantastically awesome Kansas City Royals….who are currently #1 in their division and we are drinking it up.

We’re big fans. We’re used to heartbreak….and this? This is like incredibly fun. It’s nice to not be in last place. GO Royals. Still rainy and chilly which would normally mean misery for me but they were selling massive cups of strong, hot, hot chocolate. It carried me through, along with all my team spirit. Shane may or may not have been slightly annoyed by my screaming cheers…I have no shame.

Then, yesterday after church we watched more Royals (double header, where they CRUSHED the first game and got killed the second..win some lose some, eh?) and after the first game we grilled some Boulevard Beer Brats. Gotta give the local brew some love! They were fantastic. I gardened some, Shane mowed the lawn for the first time this year, and then we put the boys down and since the second game of the double header wasn’t televised we kept up on our phones and had our traditional Sunday night movie. It was great.

Although around 10:30 Avery started making whimpering noises and I couldn’t tell if he was sick or just struggling with a recent eczema breakout on his right cheek. He kept getting up and crying until midnight. So not cool. Then Eli got up at 5am after screaming bloody murder on the hour, every hour. Not much sleep for this mama. All I have to say is, screw you, teething.

Fortunately it’s GORGEOUS weather today (like yesterday) and I’ll be outdoors getting my batteries charged by the warm sunshine and gardening.

Question: What cheers you up?

 

 

Who’s there? Spring!

Well, I hope so, at least. We had a super hard frost a couple nights ago that definitely took it’s toll.

But surprisingly, not everything that it could have devastated was affected.

One of my baby apple trees has a surprising amount of blooms and while I was out taking these pictures a very large bumble bee was buzzing from bloom to bloom. It just made my heart sing.

There seem to be so many buds and blooms for such a tiny little lady. My other apple tree just has leaves so far and they’re all baby except or one nice tuft.

My peach tree has little leaves and lots of little blooms just waiting for the sunshine to help them burst forth.

Now that the cold seems to maybe be done and this lovely day appeared (around 60 degrees!) I suddenly feel as if I’m terrifically behind.  I guess that’s how it is here in Missouri sometimes, you just have to wait til those pesky late frosts are really gone and then get into a planting frenzy.

The seeds I planted ages and ages ago sort of paused growth during our cold snap and now they’re starting to move again.

As you can see from the other photo I have larger lettuce, kale, spinach and collard plants and I also planted seeds for staggered harvests (unless they get fried). They are companion planted with carrots and such.

I have sugar snap peas in my pallet beds that are starting to grow a bit and I need to plant more of those as well now that the frosts are perhaps gone.

Naturally I’m mostly looking forward to peppers and tomatoes and my inner greenish (inexperienced) thumb is telling me to plant those plants asap. So I probably will.

This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t grown green beans. It might have been three very large, pretty late, snow storms but when the time came, I felt unprepared. I’m a little sad about that since they’re consistently my best crop.

The next week or so I imagine I will be doing a very hefty amount of gardening. I am ridiculously excited about this.

Question: Do you grow anything?

Update from The Ring Slinger!

Luxurious Gray Ring Sling with Stitching Detail

I went with Gray again and used a vine stitching detail to give it a pop.

I’m in LOVE with this gray color.

Just the most creamy, simple sheen. Gorgeous.

100% cotton as usual with aluminum rings…in bronze.

Hope you get a chance to check it out!