Archive for December, 2007

On Goals, Resolutions, and Other Pie-in-the-Sky Dreams

I’m a very goal-oriented person. I’ve been reading everyone’s New Year’s resolution (or lack of, or, in Carol’s case, P.L.A.N.T. goals) posts and feeling a bit embarrassed about my goal-setting obsession. I do New Year’s resolutions. I also set personal goals on my birthday. These get broken down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and (sometimes) daily goals. Geez, I sound anal-retentive. But, it works for me. When I set goals or make New Year’s resolutions, I feel more organized. Knowing exactly where I’m going gives some semblance of order to my daily life, which, if I let it, would degenerate into nothing but an endless stream of dishes to be washed, carpets to be vacuumed, and junk email to be sifted through. If I didn’t set my goals, I wouldn’t have any time to garden!

Last year, I resolved to lose weight, which is a goal I set almost every year. Except when I’m pregnant, so I don’t have to worry about that one this year. That’ll be a birthday goal. Last year, I also resolved to be a better gardener and gardenblogger. I set ten gardening resolutions:

1. I vowed not to let summer’s heat and humidity keep me out of the garden. Check. Although, to be honest, my two girls never would have let me stay inside all day, so it’s thanks to them that this goal was accomplished

2. I promised to keep the veggie garden going past the first flush of spring planting. Check. I was harvesting kale, carrots, tomatoes, and beets into November. In fact, I even had homegrown parsley in my Thanksgiving stuffing!

3. I decided not to let my neighbors get on my nerves so much. Check. A six-foot privacy screen between us worked wonders!

4. I wanted to have more container gardens. I had fewer than ever, but it didn’t matter so much. I was enjoying my time in the veggie garden too much!

5. I wanted to grow one type of veggie I’ve never grown before. Check. I grew kale and radicchio–two crops I’ve never grown before but will grow from now on.

6. I vowed to keep the garden shed in order. Erm….moving on…..

7. I promised to blog more consistently, and focus not only on my successes, but my failures as well. Check. I posted almost twice as often as I did last year, and I didn’t shy away from revealing my goofs. I even started the “Good, Bad, and Ugly” meme, getting other gardenbloggers involved in exposing their gardening shame. Don’t we all feel better after doing that?

8. I wanted to visit more public gardens. Didn’t do this one. Instead, I found myself warring my Suite101 editor over the fact that she wanted me to write about gardens I’d never visited. As a result, I left Suite101, and soon after found myself in a much more lucrative position as my freelance writing business started to take off.

9. I wanted to add more perennials and shrubs to attract beneficials to my yard. Check. The new butterfly garden along our picket fence drew monarchs all summer, and the addition of agastache kept the “buzzing bees” visiting until frost.

10. I decided to install a path from the side door to the garage. This one’s still on the to-do list. Maybe in 2008…

Oh, yeah….and 2007 saw the inaugural Mouse & Trowel Awards, something that was just a germ of an idea when I wrote these goals. The Mousies got a mention in several newspapers nationally, as well as in the Netherlands. We’ve even been mentioned in a book on podcasting that featured 2007 Best Podcast winner Wiggly Wigglers as a success story. I definitely didn’t see any of that coming!!

So, now we’ve taken stock of last year’s gardening successes and failures. Tomorrow, I’ll reveal my 2008 gardening and gardenblogging goals.

BTW—for anyone who was wondering, baby #3 is a healthy, beautiful girl! Ultrasound looked great…she’s measuring about a week bigger than expected, but all of my kids are big. My favorite quote from the sonographer: “She has really long legs, and she’s kicking your bladder. See?”

I hope you all have a happy, safe, New Year’s Eve!

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Belated Merry Christmas

Sarah and Emily admire each other’s dresses before the big family Christmas party.

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas! I intended to come on on Christmas Eve and do a holiday post, but I never got around to it. The last few days have been a flurry of activity. It started last Thursday with my annual cookie baking blitz. I baked for three days straight while trying to finish up some of my editing work before the long holiday weekend. It was a record-setting (for me) cookie year: 23 dozen cookies, plus three batches of chocolate bark. Everyone in the family got at least one tin of goodies for Christmas. I’m also hearing that everyone ate them already—we are big eaters in this family

Besides the cookies, we’ve all gained at least ten pounds—my OB is so not going to be happy with me next time I see her! Polish Christmas dinners absolutely rock: tons of ham, two types of kielbasa, several varieties of pierogis……heaven.

Santa spoiled the girls rotten this year. I’m still trying to find places to store everything. The husband and I are both totally overwhelmed with the amount of “stuff” that comes into our house at this time of year. Christmas is over, but the girls’ birthdays are next week, with the associated party and influx of birthday gifts. And next year, there will be another Vanderlinden kid!

In baby news, I officially can’t see my feet anymore. The little darling is extremely active, doing acrobatics at all times of day and night. We have our ultrasound tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll be able to see whether we’re having a boy or a girl. Neither of my girls cooperated with the sonographer, and a second visit was required to find out what gender they were. Hopefully #3 will be a little more cooperative

Christmas morning. The girls try to find a way to play with every new toy at once, and almost succeed. It was a massive Strawberry Shortcake, Mickey mouse, Rescue Pack, Little Mermaid adventure

What did y’all get for Christmas? I got the one gardening gadget I’ve been longing for—a soil block maker!!! I’ve been obsessed with them ever since I saw Eliot Coleman using one on his show years ago. But it’s something I’d never buy for myself because plastic cell packs are so cheap (up front, at least….I don’t even want to try to figure out how much I’ve spent on them over the years!) and I’d always go for those instead. So, the husband and the girls bought me my soil block maker from Johnny’s, and it’s still sitting here on my desk where I can admire it. I know my hubby’s wondering when it will leave the living room and go down into the basement with my other gardening stuff, but it’s just too cool to put downstairs. It’ll stay a while longer. Maybe I’ll move it before the girls’ birthday party. Yeah…other women get excited about jewelry or perfume. I am blissfully happy about a gadget that makes blocks out of dirt

So, now the holidays are over, the cookies are gone, and we’re eating leftover ham as quickly as we can. Time for winter sowing, and indoor seed starting, and trying to figure out where I’m going to plant all the stuff I plan on starting from seed. I’m still going through the seed box, deciding what to wintersow and what to do under lights. I think I’m going to need more milk jugs…

That’s the fun thing about being a gardener and a garden blogger…there’s always something to do. Life is rarely boring

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I Kill Poinsettias

I don’t even know why I buy poinsettias anymore. Well, actually I do—they look so Christmas-y when they hit the nurseries (and every other type of store) right after Thanksgiving that I can’t resist. Somehow, every year I manage to forget the fact that I’m a poinsettia killer.

I’ve admitted before that I stink when it comes to houseplants. It’s something I want to improve. But with poinsettias, I don’t expect a houseplant I’m going to keep forever. I’m totally fine with throwing it in the compost pile once it looks like crap. I just wish my poinsettias would actually make it to Christmas before throwing in the towel.

Below is my current, pathetic victim. I’ve taken it out of the decorative pot it usually sits in so you can see how truly miserable it is. Sigh.

My husband and I were watching P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home show on PBS this evening. It was about houseplants, and, since I’m determined to improve my methods, we watched. One of the first segments was on poinsettia care! Great—now I’ll figure out what I’m doing wrong. So, we watch, and P. Allen says that poinsettias should have direct light, preferably from a south-facing window. “Ah ha!” I say–I’ve always had mine in the dining room, where it sits on a bookcase across the room from a north-facing window. “I won’t do that next year.” Then, P. Allen says “Don’t let them dry out. Letting a poinsettia dry out even once will result in leaf drop, like this.” At which time P. Allen shows us how easily leaves drop off of a dry poinsettia, and it looks so much like what my poinsettia does when we walk past it that we both have to laugh. P. Allen also helpfully reminds us not to overwater, but to keep the poinsettia evenly moist, and it will stay looking great. Gotcha. I’ll try that next year. Maybe.

At least these poinsettias stay looking great. And I like this ornament even better now that I know that Carol has a matching one.

I’m sure some of you (all of you???) are better with poinsettias than I am. Any tips for next year? Or should I spare any future poinsettias the pain of coming home with me in the first place?

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Today at Mouse & Trowel: Using StumbleUpon to Increase Traffic

Now that I’ve finally focused in on making the Mouse & Trowel site useful year-round, as opposed to just for the Mouse & Trowel Awards, I’m going to start adding posts over there about topics such as increasing traffic, monetizing your blog, and just general blogging tips. The first of these went up this morning, and it’s for those of you who are interested in attracting new readers and increasing traffic. I hope it’s helpful!

Enjoy
Using StumbleUpon to Increase Traffic

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Fun Winter Reads: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog

We got our first snowstorm of the year on Saturday night. In my neck of the woods, we got around 8 inches. Some of the suburbs got a foot. Schools were closed throughout the metro Detroit area on Monday, which meant that my husband got a free day off of work. After all of the shoveling, salting, and playing in the snow with the kids, I was more than happy to settle in with a nice cup of tea and a good read. I was planning to spend some time with Beth and Christo, but the mail carrier brought an irresistible read that I devoured instead: the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog.

I’ll get to the catalog in a minute, but I have to say that I’m inlove with Baker Creek (and its owners, Jere and Emilee Gettle) because of what they represent: an environmentally sustainable and socially responsible business built around the philosophy that so many of us hold dear, which is that gardening matters. We can fight against GMOs, the homogenization of our seed stocks, and environmentally-irresponsible businesses through the power of our wallets and our backs. We can decide not to let corporate giants convince us that tasteless produce is the norm. We can refuse to buy it. And many of us do. Gardening is one of the best ways I’ve found to help combat the feelings of helplessness I’ve had for the last seven years. It’s hard to feel helpless when you make responsible, sustainable lifestyle choices.

As far as the catalog goes, there’s plenty inside to keep any heirloom gardener engrossed. The descriptions are informative and enthusiastic, without being over-the-top (we’ve all read catalog descriptions that have made us cringe, right?) Take this one for ‘Red China’ eggplant:

“One of the most ornamental of all eggplants, the upright plants produce loads of small, flattened fruit that look similar to ‘Jack-Be-Little’ pumpkins. In color the fruit is a beautiful fiery-red when mature. They have a slightly bitter taste, which is milder when they are only slightly orange; great for Asian foods.The long-keeping fruit are perfect for fall displays. Was listed as ‘Scarlet Chinese’ in Vanderbilt’s 1879 seed list.”

Love it. The entire catalog is a fun read, from Jere and Emilee Gettle’s welcome letter at the front to the descriptions throughout and straight through to the information about the Heritage Day festival at the back. This catalog even fulfills my love of “quotiness” (as Stephen Colbert would say…is anyone else totally missing watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report?) with plenty of quotations sprinkled throughout the catalog, ranging from the political (“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”—James Madison) to quotes about gardening (“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson) to biblical quotes about plants and agriculture. The catalog also includes quotes from customers and the media about Baker Creek. All in all, it’s a unique catalog that is a welcome companion on a frosty winter evening

To get your own 2008 Baker Creek catalog, visit rareseeds.com.

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