Slow Down!

As a person who multitasks yet constantly feels like I'm being spit off the back of the treadmill of life, I found this article really interesting.  I try to simplify, yet I also find myself doing things that complicate.  Blogging, for example.  Web surfing.  Various garden projects.  Isn't it just easier to buy stuff at the store?  Faster.  Wait - that's the point.  A lot of my projects (which can be overwhelming in their number and scope, especially for my life phase, as I mother little ones) are simplification projects.  Growing food is a slow process, a labor of love, a developing oneness with the food.  And yet it is also watering, weeding, planting, composting -- translation -- time.  It is slow.  Yet it is also a time sink.  One in the same, I suppose.  There is this tension between wanting to get things done so you have time to move on to the things you want to do vs. just slowing everything down and enjoying the process.  Being mindful. 

Where do I waste time?  Web-surfing, email, reading news.  But is it such a waste?

We don't really watch TV, so the time isn't being sunk there. 

This article points to agreement about increased speed of life now.  We get places faster (cars, airplanes) and get information faster (internet, phones), so why aren't we overwhelmed with leisure time?  Doesn't that sound nice?  Being overwhelmed with leisure time.  Yet I don't know anyone who feels that way.  Why not?  Longer hours at work?  Greater expectations for ourselves and our families?  More scheduled activities for kids?  Multi-generational care across suburban (and global) sprawl?

Some of the ways we try to simplify in our home are:
- almost no TV
- minimal cell phone use (so we aren't getting calls everywhere we go)
- growing some of our food
- preserving some of our food (but again, is this just complicating things?  It would be faster to buy a jar of applesauce than make it.  But I guess that's the point - SLOW DOWN!)
- I don't like to run errands all the time, so I postpone trips like going to the grocery store (in the article he discusses the merits of skipping a bookstore trip that he doesn't really have time for anyway).  But this ends up with less frequent trips.  The ones I do make are time-consuming and feel like a marathon!
- intentional reduction in consumption.  Freecycle and Craig's List are not only cheaper, but also greener - by reusing stuff.  They are more of a process - than the quick accomplishment of just buying something new.  So does searching for a pressure canner for a year on Freecycle, Craig's List, garage & estate sales, and thrift shops count as "slowing down"?  Or is it just a complication and I should have just bought a new one and got it over with?

I'm afraid that I'm a long way off from having the answers.  I'm open to suggestions.  How do you simplify your life?

Sign the Petition for Corn Allergy Alert

Please consider signing the petition for getting the FDA to require disclosure of corn on the primary allergen list.  It hides under so many names: natural flavors, citric acid, ascorbic acid, tocopherols, maltodextrin, etc.

McNeil Children's Medications Recalled

I am so ticked about the cluelessness of my local pharmacy staff that I gotta rant.  Have you heard about the recent McNeil recall of children's medicaitons?  Well, my local pharmacist hasn't.  I went through my medicine cabinet and of my 6 products in varing degrees of used/new-ness, 5 of them were involved in the recall.  The 6th was a store brand of ibuprofen.  So I called that store just to make sure it wasn't included.  The tech and pharmacist assured me it wasn't and, by-the-way, there was no recall on either the Motrin or the Benadryl anyway.  WRONG!  After looking this information up on the pharmacy chain's website I called back the pharmacist to tell her she'd better read the internal communications to give accurate advice to other families.  She said, oops, she'd just checked the shelves and it did look like some of the Motrin and Benadryl was recalled.   She actually told me, and I'll paraphrase, that she didn't get the memo.  When asked, she still said, no the store brand wasn't affected.  I'm not sure I believe her.  Her actions don't inspire a lot of faith in her advice or in her knowledge of her own limits.

Teepees and sowing

As I said, this weekend was great for gardening.  After unloading the cow compost from the minivan, I made a teepee from bamboo harvested from a friend's yard.  I amended the soil with the great compost and planted it with green bean seeds that Alyssa saved from her garden last year and Red Noodle Yard Long pole beans.  Since I expect those to take about 90 days to mature, inside that I planted radishes and kohlrabi.  In another part of the front yard I built a less elaborate teepee and planted it with lima beans from the bulk bins at the local market.  Inside of that, I put beets.  This second teepee will probably need some horizontal twine around it to help support the limas.  I grew some last year and found they needed some horizontal support as well as vertical string.  The bean seeds I had soaked in warm water overnight, hoping this will hasten sprouting.

In the back yard, I had a grand time planting three types of lettuces, radish, beets, carrots, celeriac, kohlrabi and turnips.  In my large herb pots, I added some garlic chive and dill seeds.  Those dill seeds are about 9 years old, so I won't hold my breath on them.  I planted a Texas Taragon plant that I bought on a whim because its blooms were so pretty.  I'm sure it will taste great, too.  In a pot, to reduce invasiveness, I planted a lemon balm plant that I also purchased on a whim.  It smells lovely.  Upon researching the invasiveness of lemon balm last night on the computer, I also discovered that I should separate my spearmint and peppermint plants into different pots so that they don't eventually end up tasting alike.  Not that I could really tell you the difference now.  But while I was out there potting, I pulled some of each mint from their communal pot and started separate pots for each.

Regarding my cottage cheese container project, I believe I have lost one of the 16 tomato seedlings due to drying out or rough watering technique or something like that.  For me and my self-sprouted tomatoes, this is a pretty low mortality rate.  I'll continue to be vigilant.

Manure made my day

This weekend was such a great gardening weekend.  It started early on Friday with a preschool field trip to a local dairy farm.  It was a very kid-friendly, educational trip.  The kids' favorite part was probably getting to play in the cottonseed pile in the feed barn.

Knowing in advance that where they have cows, they have cow manure, I brought my shovel, gloves and trash can.  I expected to be offered to muck out some stalls.  Lo and behold, this dairy has developed a very successful side business of supplying organic compost to local organic farms.  DS, DD, and I stayed after the tour to get some black gold from the compost business.  We had a great time watching the compost guy load up an enormous open-topped big rig with about 42 cubic yards of compost.  We also came home with a trash can and several bags full in the back of the minivan.  Unfortunately, we were late home for lunch, nap, had a chaotic evening and before I knew it, it was Saturday morning and my van was still full of cow manure.  For the record, when I opened the car door, the olfactory stimuli were overwhelming.  But that was some good s**t.

Political Satire

What's wrong with this picture?  This flag was handed out for kids to enjoy waving at a musical we attended last week.  When I saw this flag up close, I was rather taken aback.  I'll give you a clue about the problem:

And that's not a sticker that peals off.  It is written on the plastic sleeve that is the edge of the flag and holds it on the stick.  I think some designer somewhere thought that was hilarious.

The Ugliest Nosegays

I always wanted to use that word in writing.  That, and posy, just don't come up much in my daily life.  Anyway, the point of the picture is to share with you my google-informed attempt at rooting sweet potatoes.  Anyone tried this?  They say to half submerge them in water and they'll root/sprout.  So far, I'm wondering if they'll just rot.