Category Archives: Domestic Blitz

In which we don our aprons and putter about the house.

Gardening

A few dumb questions about gardening

OK, fine, maybe there’s no such thing as a stupid question. But not knowing the answers to these made me feel pretty dumb.

Q: Can I grow vegetables in the same bed as my irises?
A: I didn’t actually ask anyone this, but I wondered about it a lot. And then we went ahead and planted some stuff, and they seem to be doing fine.

Q: Is that a carrot or is it grass?
A: It was grass. Carrots come up cute and frilly. Grass is … grassy. Also, I need to get those pesky little clovers out of there.

Q: Does one potato plant produce one potato?
A: Nope. Google tells me to expect five or six per plant. I also consulted Almanac.com’s page on potatoes and learned that I need to cover the plants up with some soil pretty soon so they don’t get sunburn. And also you can grow potatoes in a trash can. What? You’re weird, potatoes. Weird & delicious.

Gardening, Reading

How Angela England’s “Backyard Farming” made me want a beard, sort of

I started thinking about gardening long before I actually had a place to put a garden. As we moved from rental to rental, I’d think about growing lettuce and harvesting pumpkins, and I’d plan for the day when we finally bought a house and I could start living off the land.

(Of course, I knew that it was possible to grow things in containers. But did I ever try it? No I did not. I’m a charming mixture of stubborn and lazy.)

And then we bought a house! With a yard! And a bunch of overgrown, weedy flower beds! So I ignored the flower beds and Rockford built a raised bed for vegetables and we grew one hundred million leaves of lettuce via what I like to call Beginner’s Luck. Because let me tell you what I know about gardening:

  • Fortunately there are people out there who know a lot about gardening, and one of them sent me a book all about it. It really isn’t just a gardening book, though. Angela England’s “Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less)” starts off with a brief overview of why it’s a good idea to work toward sustainable living, and it makes a good argument for it for health, environmental and economical reasons. It covers everything from purchasing an appropriate piece of land to the care and maintenance of goats to what to do once your carrot seeds have turned into carrots.

    It’s a comprehensive guide to small-scale farming, is what I’m saying.

    I doubt that we’ll ever be entirely self-sufficient, and I’m probably never going to raise chickens or goats, either. I have to say, though, that the chapter on beekeeping was so fascinating that it made me want to go out and buy one of awesome veiled beekeeper hats. And maybe some bees. But definitely the hat. And probably eventually a parade float, because I’d be the best dang beekeeper the world had ever seen, obviously, and the best dang beekeeper in the world gets invited to a lot of parades.

    (I think this book review may have just gotten away from me. What was I talking about?)

    Last weekend Rockford and one of our nephews set to work on one of the aforementioned overgrown flower beds, and after much toil they uncovered a nice bunch of irises in a row against the house. The irises are breathing freely now, and the rest of the bed will be home to our first-ever attempt at growing carrots and potatoes. The raised bed is ready for its inhabitants, too. We’re going to try for 100,000,001 leaves of lettuce this year along with a few tomatoes, some sugar snap peas, green beans and peppers.

    And do you know what I’ll have with me every step of the way? My luxurious bee-beard. My copy of “Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less),” because otherwise I would’ve asked the girl at Lowe’s where they kept the potato seeds.

    Nichole received a copy of “Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less)” for review purposes.

    Domestic Blitz

    In which I try to make our bedroom a lovely place

    4 Comments

    “Vintage Floral Quilt.” Land’s End.

    Our house is pretty standard ’50s ranch house, but a few decades ago the owners built an addition onto the master bedroom. And now it is ginormous. It was one of the things I loved about the house the first time I walked through it. I was envisioning a sitting area or a little office space and a luxurious bed stacked high with pillows and, you know, luxury.

    The reality has been somewhat different.

    The only thing sitting in the “sitting area” most of the time is laundry. Although sometimes the cats sit in there, too, when the sun is at the right angle. The luxurious bed is luxurious compared to, say, a cot, but the mattress has been getting increasingly sad and saggy and I usually can’t find any king-size pillowcases to go on the king-size pillows so — shocking confessions ahead! — they either go without or wear a standard-size case.

    Things are turning around, though. Last week we replaced our 10-year-old Sam’s Club mattress, and I’m working on turning the bed into more Westin than Super 8. It’s been a slow process, because have you seen how much pillow shams cost? Roughly a billion dollars a piece. So I’ve been waiting for things to go on sale. Things like the Vintage Floral Quilt I paid $30 for at Land’s End (clearance + friends & family sale + Shop Your Way points FTW!) or the Restoration Hardware pillow shams that were on clearance for $5 a piece.

    Now that the foundation of fanciness is coming together, I’m on the lookout for decorative pillows to put in front of the utilitarian pillows. Here are a few I like. (But probably won’t buy, because $95 for a pillow is crazypants.)

    “The Allman Brothers, Blue Sky- Double sided lyric pillow” from Three Little Finches. $43.
    “Orange Circles on Ivory” by Mi Casa Bella.” $34.
    “Stag Grainsack pillow slip” by AtelierBe. $95. (Which means, sadly, that it will never, ever belong to me. But I still love it.)
    “Suzani Yellow and Orange Indoor Outdoor Pillow” by Mi Casa Bella. $34.

    I still want to put together a sitting area of some sort, but my budget is still standing in the way of my dreams. Chairs are expensive, you guys. Everything is expensive.

    Anyway, do you like any of those pillows? Do you have a secret cheap-beautiful-pillow store you could share with me? Are you Emily Henderson taking pity on me and wanting to come over and design my room?

    (Call me, Emily. You can use all the creepy porcelain phrenology heads and hot pink you’d like.)