Went To Mom's For The Weekend

I decided that I really needed to talk to mom in the same room 'cause texting sucks and we had much to discuss so after making sure she didn't already have plans, I hopped a train last Friday and went to mom's house.

Mom and lil sis are currently in a tiny little place so I knew I'd be sleeping on the futon... I didn't realize how tired that would make me for the next few days.

Anyway, we got a lot of the room-mate stuff settled. We discussed what appliances we would like to buy for the household and looked over different models together. We discussed what we all consider to be healthy for our bodies and our minds (turns out we're all introverts!)

Our electricity rates on London vary by time of day, so we discussed using electricity wisely and leaving un-needed devices off during peak hours, as well as pre-cooking on the weekend to avoid too much cooking in the electric oven during peak times.

The food thing took up a lot of talking and we settled on these ideas:

• Eating only those foods which are good to us, meaning no gluten and no pork.
• Eating beans, quinoa, chickpeas, peanuts, lentils, and other plant sources of protein more often and meats less often.
• Eating a variety of vegetables daily, including "weird" ones.
• Buying dry goods(rice, beans, toilet paper, etc) in bulk and store them carefully.
• Going to the farmers markets every Saturday (or every other Saturday depending on needs) getting deals where they can be found and storing what won't be eaten that week in the freezer or as canned foods.
• Spending Sundays together pre-cooking and doing general prep work for the week ahead. This may involve making a large batch of pasta sauce of which only one jar gets used that week and the rest put away for later, or even just cutting the veggies for snack packs.
• Doing this prep work with a glad heart knowing it will help us eat healthy foods in reasonable amounts.(avoiding traps like popcorn-for-dinner-cause-I-don't-want-to-cook, or wow-I-haven't-eaten-all-day-and-that-whole-12"-cheesecake-looks-snack-sized).

We're also going to have a house warming party the first weekend so we can have everyone over at once and then not have to deal with social calls the next week or two while unpacking. :) No that's not really the reason, but it is a nice side effect. We've found these past few years that we all think fairly similarly and we not only enjoy each other's company, but also enjoy quiet time with the others around (reading, surfing, playing a video game) so I'm certain that living together is an excellent choice for us.

~ ~ ~

We will encourage each other to stretch and grow stronger physically

We will allow each other to grow spiritually in our own ways

We will clean our home enough to be healthy

We will relax in our home enough to be sane

We will honour our commitments

We will cherish each other

We will have fun

~ ~ ~

Can the Snow Just... Not?

So when we filled out the application for the apartment on Saturday there were a few bits and pieces we needed to include that we didn't have with us. Mom said she'd send the last month's rent by Priority Post on Monday and I said I'd get my "proof of employment" to them a.s.a.p. this week. The idea was that if they had all the bits by Tuesday, they'd have an answer for us by the end of week

I went after work today to drop off my pay stubs and the manager said the deposit hadn't arrived yet. I texted mom for the tracking number....

Okay, so it's been delayed a day or two due to the nasty weather. Delightful. 

I really am hating this winter.

Housing and Histamine

There's a lot of factors to balance when pondering the next 6 months which decide the next 3 years.

Eric's lease isn't up til July. Megan doesn't know what she's doing yet or even what province she'll be in come summer. Mom and my little sister are moving to town in April and not a month later. This means that if I'm going to live with Mom I need to decide that very soon, but I don't know what Megan's doing and Eric will not be free til later but I don't want to leave either of them hanging for a reasonably priced place to live and... well, you see the problem.

On top of that, there's the cats to consider. Meg has recently become mildly allergic, mom is mildly allergic, and Eric has a dog but I love my kitties and could never just drop them in a shelter. Mom has said she's willing to deal with the cats so that door isn't closed. The cats and dog might get along so that's still a possibility. And Megan loves the kitties so if she's close enough to visit she'll probably spend half the visit petting the cats anyway.

I think the term Meg uses for situations like this is "spoiled for choice". I can't seem to narrow down the options so soon I'm just going to have to decide what I WANT to do.

~Sent from my cell~

Solution is in the S.O.I.L.

 I was looking up land in BC because sometimes memory is faulty and things do change, so I wanted to make sure I could still get 5-25 acres (with or without shelter) for $50-100 thou. It turns out I can..... but it's nowhere NEAR where I want to live or have the ability to work in a city nearby to pay the mortgage.

 The land where I wanted to buy was listed at $300 thou for 5 acres! (incl cottage). For that price there was a remote mountain top valley that as over 100 acres... but that was in the middle of nowhere and even if I did have a car or snow mobile it would take more than 2 hours each way to drive to work. Ouch.

So after about an hour of stressing over the fact that my current plan just wont work... I bumped into an old bookmark for S.O.I.L. http://www.soilapprenticeships.com

Wow, I can't believe I'd completely forgotten about these guys! I found them years ago when I was still with the mooch and although I really wanted to go for even just 3 months, I decided I couldn't because he wasn't healthy enough to come with(bad back and feet from being overweight) and there was no way I could afford to pay for an apartment and food for him while I was gone. I should have just gone, but that was a dumb and stubborn period of my life where I was insisting on making that relationship work.

Now I'm not attached at the hip to another human being and although I love my SOs, they are grown adults who take care of themselves so I'm free to take care of myself. I now have the opportunity to work and learn and save up all at the same time IN BC so when cheap land or a good opportunity for a co-op comes along I can snatch it up.


So that's the new plan. Work here for 2-3 years saving up a nest-egg, then working on a S.O.I.L. farm. Now all I have to do is figure out where and with whom I am living these next few years.

Getting up to Date

So last you heard, it was March and I was setting up for a work from home job. It looked like my long stint of under-employment was finally coming to an end. Unfortunately it turned out that "work as many hours as you want" REALLY meant "grab whatever hours you can AFTER the top performers get first pick of their preferred shifts, then sit by the computer every minute of every day in case someone decides to drop and hour or two so you can grab it before the other new people". 

After a week of that I decided to continue the active job hunting. After a few weeks of doing neither very well I told them that I had to quit to focus on finding stable employment. Then there were months of unemployment, and it was summer before I found my current job through a friend of a friend. Happily, I've been content here ever since. :)

During these past few years I've been living with my long-term girlfriend Megan and our housemate John. This is the first house I've lived in for more than a year, in the past 10 years. I love the feeling of stability, but this house just isn't suited to what I want out of my life. I want a farm. I want land I can call my own. I want to stop paying other peoples mortgages in the form of rent. I want to live somewhere I can plant a peach tree and enjoy the fruits of that labour.(pun intended)

It's kind of hard to describe what I want and what I plan, so I'm going to do the next post as a Q&A to get it all sorted out.

The cats are happy and, other than Willow needing some dental work this past winter, both are in good health.

A New Year; A New Beginging

Soooo... It's been almost a year.

It's been so long in fact that I considered creating a new blog for this new chapter of my life. I've decided against that idea because I don't want the past efforts lost to time. I want to bring with me the memories and lessons of these past few years.

That being said, there is so much we have to catch up on before I can even start telling you about now, let alone the future. But there's time for that. I'm not leaving the city for at least two more years so we have all the time we need.

For now however, it's past 1 am and I should be asleep. Goodnight.

Fluffy

Well that didn't last long.

Stupid SMarch Snow 

Soggy

Rain has washed away almost all the snow and soaked the soil.

Fingers crossed for a better season this year.

Inspired and Hired

I found this five minute YouTube video. (Link to extended cut - 10 min version)

I was inspired.

So... I've started to learn yoga with the help of a good friend who's been teaching it for years. I have been practising at least once a week(not daily like I should but it's a start) and I'm honestly shocked how quickly my body is adapting and becoming more flexible/strong. I can touch my toes at the end of a session now.

I'm almost done training for the work-from-home call-center-type job and there is currently a man up my phone pole trying to hook up my new work line.

The final exam is a mock call scheduled for the 15th and my first shift is scheduled for the 17th. I'm a bit nervous but I'm also excited that I'll soon be earning an income again.

Winter Returned

So the snow came back after some very cold days and blanketed everything. I'm hoping this coating will stay because we could use some build up. The neighbours have their backyard ice rinks and the river's starting to freeze along the banks. Winter seems to have finally come to stay.

I moved the aloe back into the window because it was getting pale in the center.

Looks like it's doing fine now and the  other plants in the front window seem to be doing okay.

Aloe's looking darker.

Lavender's thriving.

Chamomile good, Oregano still small.

Calendula pale, Sage small.

Chives weak but still holding on.

Over all they seem to be doing okay. Do you keep indoor plants? How do you keep them strong and healthy through the cold dark winter months?

Banana Bread Bites, Sort Of

I decided I was going to make bite-sized banana bread today. 

I found a nice gluten-free recipe on Shape.com and tweaked it to what I wanted/had available. I didn't want to use the cherries or raisins, and I did want to use mini chocolate chips. I had two bananas in the freezer waiting to be banana bread and I was a fool thinking I could do without the third. I swapped out buckwheat flour for rice flour and used potato starch instead of corn starch.  

Made a dozen normal size.and two dozen of the adorably teeny size. (lip balm for scale)

I'm not posting the changes I made as a new recipe because it came out really dry... like, butter or drink of milk needed to swallow dry. They're tasty, but Oh So Dry!. Next time I'm going to make sure to use all 3 bananas, and I'm going to mix the chips into the batter instead of sprinkling them on top.

January thaw.

Last weekend we had a run of days over freezing and it melted all the snow. Warmer temperatures are good for the compost but it hardly looks like winter any more. The cats were trying to use Bed #7 as a litter box when there was snow on it so I put down an old folded dog crate we had laying around and the metal mesh has seemed to put a stop to that.

West side.

East side.

Look at What I Found!

I just have to say... This is so awesome. 

I'm going to post the weather reports every month! Squee!

From wunderground.com They are amazing.

They're Here!

Lokit Teh Pretyz!

As you can see, there's a hefty little block of the ground cover, and the carrots got swapped. Westcoastseeds.com has the option to let them send a similar packet of seeds instead of putting something on back order. I said sure and wound up with Ya-Ya carrots instead of the Scarlet Nantes. The description for Ya-Ya on the site says:

"Smooth skinned, uniform Nantes type carrots that perform all season long. Plant from spring to late summer for a continuous supply of delicious 17cm (7") carrots." 

It's in the same type I chose so I'm not picky. This means I now have all the seeds we need this year and the only thing left to buy is the herbs for the spiral. 

Compost Update

There's not much to be done in a garden like mine while it's covered in snow...

but the compost always needs taking out. 

Obligatory before shot. Please note the multiple inches of snow, and the slight excavation in the centre.

Some critter had decided to dig for buried treasure but it wasn't very disturbed. I scraped off as much snow as I could before putting the kitchen scraps and used pine based cat litter down and covering it all with shredded newspaper. The cats were using the great outdoors as their litter box but it seems the cats have decided it's now too cold and snowy to go outside so they're using their litter again.

Yay me.

I moved one of the stick bundles and a log to the in-use pile as cover. It probably won't keep the snow off but it will keep the newspaper from blowing around and discourage digging.

You can see a bit of the snow layer left around the edges. 

BROWNIES!

I made these yesterday afternoon for desert with dinner.

I must say, they were very well liked.

I got the recipe for these lovely temptations from Chocolate-covered Katie. They are not only awesomely delicious, but are gluten-free(good for me) and full of good stuff like protein. I've written the recipe how I did it. For the original, click the link to Katie's blog.

Seeds are on Order!

The Easy Care ground cover blend should keep us from having to mow grass around the front beds while still keeping a neat and pretty appearance. I may have ordered a tiny bit too much considering the area covered by the beds but I'd rather over seed than under seed, especially in pathways.

Instead of getting multiple packets of various seeds that I'd only want about 4 of each at a time, I chose a wild-flower blend for the front and back. The Partial Shade mix contains a bunch of the flowers I had selected for bed #9 and will also thrive as pollinator attractors in the front flowerbed by the rose and nasturtiums.

The Calibra onions look a lot like the small onions we buy in bags at the grocery store and say they're good for storage. The Walla Walla onions are the over wintering type and will be planted much later in the season for next year's harvest.

We have enough of the Amazing cauliflower seeds from last year for our first crop and I've ordered the Galleon cauliflower seeds to over winter at the end of this season and ripen for May 2014.

Last year I tried in vain to get carrots growing in soil that was too wet, too hard, and too nutritionally devoid. This used up all the seeds I had on hand so I'm buying some new ones to hopefully get a nice full crop this year. I chose the Scarlet Nantes carrots because they're good, basic, standard carrots.

The zucchini I chose is an unusual variety named Ambassador. Instead of creeping or climbing vines, this variety has a central stalk with leaves, flowers, and eventually fruit sprouting from it(Similar to brussel sprouts). This compact design is not only space efficient but it keeps all the produce in one easy to locate spot so they don't get overlooked and old.

I'm planning on buying the herbs, potatoes, raspberries and strawberries from local suppliers (Probably VanLuyk) so I don't have to start the whole spiral from seed and to ensure healthy sprouts. The herb garden won't be producing this year as it'll probably be barely planted in June but it'll have a few leaves to give and a good solid foundation for 2014.

SproutBot

I found an interesting website that tells you when to start your seeds but they only do American zipcodes.

To get around that issue I looked up an american map for hardiness zones and found a city nearby with the same zone. Ann Arbor Michigan has the same zone and is in a similar latitude as us so I put in Zip 48104 and got this.

Turns out for one thing, our broccoli was going out way too soon. This will be an interesting site to look over when I have some time.... and it's not almost midnight. Good night folks.  

2013 Plans

So everything's updated and you can find the 2013 plans by clicking here or on the "Plans for 2013" tab along the top of the blog.

Fluffy Blanket

It snowed a lot last night. 

There's at least a couple inches covering the garden and more drifted up against the compost.