Have a excellent St. Patrick’s Day!

I wish for everyone to think about that special someone in your life and to let them know that you are thinking about them!

As you stand there staring at the closet, room, garage or crawl space do you find yourself just closing the door and saying “I will get to it”. I know I do that, because it feels over whelming to sort through and figure out what to keep and what to toss and then get it to where it needs to go. Then you think I will ask my spouse to help me, that 1s a great idea! Your spouse looks at you like this is not as much fun as you are making it out to be, I don’t believe you. If you manage to convince them, then you have to start to sort, and you quickly find that you each have different opinions on what to keep and what to toss.

This is were you bring in someone from outside the family to give you some perspective on those items you want to keep. Some tips to keep in mind are, when was the last time you used it, when you do plan on using it will be out dated, can someone benefit from it now. If you are keeping it for  someone what is the best way to store it. If it is clothes or blankets will it get musty, maybe get a few vacuum bags to keep it sealed and your storage space might be at a premium.

Don’t go out a buy more baskets or other containers until you know exactly what you are keeping, you will just have more baskets. Make sure the items that need to leave the house do so as soon as possible, either take them down to a Salvation Army drop off centre or something similar, call a local charity for pick up. If you have larger items you can call Go Getters to pick up everything.

From our family to yours, we wish you a good and sweet year!

Every year my husband and I try our hand at planting a garden, good thing we don’t rely on this for any real sustainment. 🙂 This year we experimented with the “upside down” garden we have tomatoes and peppers. For the most part things moved along quite well, he was out every morning watering (plus he wanted to play with out new rain barrel), but at some point both the tomatoes that were upside down and in the garden decided to stop growing. We had so much rain this year, and hail at some point a couple of times, this might have been part of the problem. Our beans came in nicely along with some lettuce, I always plant to many radishes and they get over crowded , but got a few out to enjoy. Have a look at our pepper plant we lost one, but they are coming in nicely.

I leave the gardening to the experts and sign up for Community Shared Agriculture, there are a number of different local people to use but I use The Landless Farmer  it is such a great way to get local, organic vegetables. I sometimes order more during the season and do some canning.

What are some of your favourite recipes that you make during the summer? Is it salsa, sauces, zucchini cake/muffins, kale chips (this was not my families favourite). Be creative!