I love garbage!

Have I told you how much I love garbage?  Or maybe it is the lack of garbage?  This guy has his head in the right place.  For some reason, you cannot see that there is an embedded video here, but just click the title link and then you can watch the video.  It is about a guy who did a TED talk about setting up as close to zero waste restaurants as possible.  It is very interesting.

Growing

Wow!  This blogging site has a new look.  I am sure that I will get used to it, but for right now, it is a a little confusing. 

It is almost Mother's Day.  Besides being an awesome day to celebrate what I consider one of the best jobs in the whole world, it is the day that around here we need to get our gardens growing (going?). 

I am sorry that I have not been on here much lately.  My job (I would like to use different words about this...my money-making job, my day-time hang-out...) has been ramping up and I have been busy with just trying to keep my head above water.  And then, you know, my REAL job of taking care of my home/animals/garden has been busy with Spring springing as well.  We have worked on the yard and it is looking so much more loved.  I think getting a new weed eater and taking it to every nook and cranny in our yard has made a huge difference.  The type of yard care that I have been reading about talks about leaving some grass long and leaving different areas wild for the birds and wildlife to hide in.  I think that is a great idea, but I think it has to be PLANNED wildness.  Not just "oh, my grass and weeds got too long in that area" kind of wildness. 

I wish I could take a picture of the peacefulness of my back yard right now, here in the early morning hours.  But I know it would not do it justice.  The picture would not give the FEELING of peace the way that I feel it right now. 

Here is my word picture for you...two cats sitting on the windowsill looking out.  They trill every once in a while...quietly, as they watch birds flying by.  On the other side of the pane, my dog is stretching luxuriously as she gets up from her morning rest on the ramp outside the door.  She is wondering what is going on in the other part of the yard and around in the neighborhood.  She is going to take a look.  Further out in the yard is a Adirondack chair, waiting, beckoning.  It is sitting in the middle of a green lawn that is not perfect, but is natural and lovely.  And behind the chair, the neighbor's tree's green branches with delicate leaves cascade over the fence making a lovely frame for my picture.  (I found this picture on the web after I wrote this.)

Garden - My plant starts...some of them lived.  A lot of them died.  I learned a good lesson.  I took them out on a lovely Spring day and I left them out...too long.  I didn't work them into it by hardening them up.  I knew about that idea, but I guess I didn't know enough about it because I figured that as long as I brought them in before it got cool in the evening, then they would be fine.  Well, the peppers and the cucumbers seemed to fair ok, but the tomatoes didn't like that at all.  So...now we have a lot of pepper plants, but I think we are going to have to go buy tomato starts.  Boo.  Oh well, better luck and more knowledge for next year. 

Community - We have begun to build a bit more community in our neighborhood.  My son got the courage up to ask the girl and boy across the street if he could play with them.  Since then they have played on a pretty regular basis.  Not every day, but at least once or twice a week.  The children are younger than my son, which makes it a good challenge for him.  There was one day that I learned that we shouldn't ask them over when they and we are tired after a big day.  Of course we did that and it was more than a little bump in the road.  But thankfully, children are so beautifully resilient that it is almost water under the bridge now.  They are great kids and they and their parents add a beautiful dimension of home to our world. 

Learning - I went to this great workshop last Saturday.  It was based on the Strength Finders philosophy that has been created through the use of the Gallup organization.  They do polls on everything under the son.  As I am a vocational counselor, I have used and taken many different personality-type tests and have studied many philosophies on the subject.  This one seems to be right on for me.  It was a gentle test to take and the results were much more personal than I had expected.  It presents you with your five top Strength themes and then encourages you to strengthen them further.  What I love about this is that the idea is that we spend too much time/energy trying to fix what is broken instead of strengthening what is already really good about ourselves.  If you are interested, I researched the way that someone could start this research on their own.  It is with a book called Strengths Finder 2.0.  It is about $15 right now at Barnes and Noble and it comes with a passcode for you to go online and take the test too.  Very helpful and very intriguing information. 

Lots going on today.  I had better get to it.  Thank you for sharing my tea time with me.  Happy Mother's Day!!

The girls are in their element!

Ok, I already told you a number of times, but I love Saturdays!!  Today, I was so excited to get up and to see how the chickens did that I woke up at 5:30 AM and couldn't get back to sleep!  I checked on them.  They were eating and drinking and doing all the things chickens do.  The funnest part for me though was that they had ROOM.  They were not on top of each other and they had a little room to move around and check things out. 

I cleaned the kitchen, got a load of laundry going and picked up a bit while listening to Dave Ramsy recordings.  I listened to the Great Misunderstanding this morning.  It is inspirational.  It is about why giving is important.  And it got me revved up.

A few hours later I woke Tim up and he went out and mowed the little patch of lawn where we want to have our girls for their first stop.  We moved them over and opened their house.  It was fun to watch them peek their heads out.  They are only about two months old, and yesterday they hadn't been able to figure out how to use their ramp up into their home.  Today, their curiosity got the best of them and they all pushed each other down the ramp.  Now just to figure out how to get back up! 

It was fun to see them run!  They have been so cramped that they haven't been able to run.  Now they are running here and there.  I threw some feed around so that they they had something to search for and then I threw in some tiny pieces of carrot as well.  They are loving their freedom.

The dogs are a little too interested.  My nephew said something about an electric net.  I am going to get more info on that.  For now, I feel like Tim's chicken tractor is safe and secure. 

By the way, I am SO proud of my husband.  He designed this chicken tractor, he decided the pieces that he would need and he put the whole thing together.  It is beautiful!!  And I think he feels good about his work too.  I am sure that he has ideas for upgrades already.  :-)  That is just who he is. 

Love to you and yours on this Saturday morning.
P

P.S.  Pictures to follow.