LIFE: Small Things #12

With the clocks jumping an hour forward last Sunday here in the US, there's a extra sense of spring in the air. The days are getting warmer and longer, bulbs are popping up everywhere and more and more birds are chirping and fluttering in to garden for a nosy. Oncoming spring also means the arrival of annoying weather like three hour long thunderstorm early Wednesday morning, I always forgot how hideously loud the bangs and booms are in Michigan. 

The promise of spring has created a little bit of inner peace within myself. This week in particular I feel I might be getting somewhere with my stress and there's lots of plan making to be doing. 

So without further-ado, here's an assortment in no particular order (order being overrated) of random small, but happy things.

• Getting my Brit fix while popping to the store that has a decent British international section - this trip calling for Wetabix and salad cream. And no, sadly to everyone who thought I ate them together when I shared this on instagram, I don't. 
• Talking about British food, those scotch eggs from One Eyed Betty's.
• Finding Tubi TV on our Roku which has a sizable collection of British shows, even ones more recent then Netflix. Even better it's FREE!
• Said Tubi TV also has a couple of Transformer shows on which makes the OH happy.
• Speaking of TV, the second seasons of Happy Valley and Dinotrux popping up on Netflix - happy TV days indeed. 
• Reading - Midnight in Perking and The Other Daughter. 
• Starting out new tradition of (homemade) taco Tuesday, even making my own guacamole and taco sauce (playing with all the spices!!) for the first time. 
• Talking of spices, turning an old spice rack into a nail polish holder. Sometimes those Pinterest craft ideas actually work.
• Lots of spring bulbs popping up around my garden - tulips, daffodils and flowering crocuses. Especially excited for the bulbs showing in the two new flower beds I dug lining out front path last year. 
• Cuddles on the sofa with Joe and Eddy - purrs all round.
• Cats and paper bags, which are nearly as good as empty boxes. Also getting an empty box and now not being able to remove it from the living room because the cats love it.
• Onto god knows what week of using Daily Burns True Beginner workout (for everyone who has asked, I will be doing a review/round up once we finish this program) and getting a lot stronger. We started kickboxing which week and it's AWESOME!
• Also starting Pilates, which ached and killed me, but fun all the same. 
• Finishing my crochet wreath! 
• Ordering lots of seeds for the garden - herbs, flowers and even going to attempt to grow cacti!
• 1940's radio. I'm sick of constant Trump & US election talk on the radio, so I spend most mornings chilling out to the 1940's UK radio station, which suits me perfectly. 

And everything I came remember, and if you made it to the end of the list, well congrats to you!

What's been rocking your world?

Rachael

LIFE: Photo an Hour February 2016

Saturday marked an unseasonably warm winters day here in the depths of suburbia of Detroit. Somewhat welcome after long cold days, of being able to put aside the hat, the gloves, get outside in the garden, sadly these things never seem to last. The day also marked February's photo an hour link up - a somewhat routine Saturday for us after taking a break from the DIY in the bathroom fix up (mainly because we can't decide on what to do with the floor). So what else did we get up to inside of playing adults ...

With blue skies overheard, waking up to birdsong and temperature not in the minus numbers, 9am was looking rather pretty as we started up the car and headed forth for a morning of hitting some state sales. By 10am were we'd hit a couple of estate sales including one in which the second floor was just full of vintage clothing from the last century - dresses, purses, sweaters, shoes to linens, you name it. I had to resist buying all the scarves - a big weakness of mine.

But I did buy two of the scarves, so 12pm was seeing me giving them a bit of a wash. I often seem to miss an hour during the day, 11am was that, I think we were heading home with hungry tummies, too hungry to snap a picture of nothingness. After a quick lunch and cleaning the scarves, it was time to make the most of the unseasonable weather (1pm) and have a quick tidy up in the garden and spotting some life in the process.

With estate sales done, chores done and the gardening done, time to get stitching. I've been working on this seaside piece for a couple of months and it always reminds me of quaint seaside towns of the homeland. So sofa, cross stitching and going between Hulu and Netflix was the plans for the afternoon. Once 3pm came around, it was time for a brew - hot cinnamon spice tea. Delicious.  

4pm yeap, still stitching ... until 5pm rolled around and the hungry tummies returned. Too hungry to say no to Taco Bell. Another of those weaknesses.

Still sofa bound and trapped under a purring kitty and reading some more of The Unlikely Event that you might remember me mentioning in Thursday's small things post. Over half way through and it's turning into quite the page turner. I missed 7pm sweating away exercising away to Daily Burn which no one needs to see a picture of. Which lead to 8pm and digging my way through my kitted up cross stitch projects wondering which one to add into my rotation. It took me until Sunday to finally decide on a UK themed design. Seriously picking between cross stitch projects is far too hard. 

The rest of the night was pretty much cheap wine, anime and more reading.

It's great having a nice back catalog of photo an hour link ups so I can look back on what we were doing last year for the link up - a day of record store poking, bacon sarnies and of course Taco Bell.

How was your Saturday?

Rachael

LIFE: Photo An Hour - October 2015

Saturday rolled around marking the October link up for photo an hour organized by Jane and Louisa. The morning actually marked the first frost of the year (even snow in some places) and the first weekend getting around to estate sales for nearly a month. 

But enough of the introductory small talk and get to the juicy bits.

9 am // getting ready to go out - finally back to being scarf season, actually wishing I had some gloves to hand once we got outside because of the aforementioned frost. Chilly days.

10 am // admiring pretty autumnal colours

11 am // Joe was poking boxes with old Transformers toys, I was amusing myself admiring various old plates.

12 pm // blue skies ahead. Misleading Michigan blue skies I should add. They always suggest warm days that are now long gone.

1 pm // library trip - dropping some off, picking some up. Also admiring the huge comic book collection that my local library is home too.

2 pm // late lunch of a bacon sarnie smothered in brown sauce mmm

3 pm // on my bulb planting mission trying to plant over 200 of them. It's endless. Also annoying my squirrel friends by disturbing all their nut collections as I plant away. Take this additionally as my 4pm image.

5 pm // so I was a sucker for the lighthouse fabric, cleaning up an old footstool into yet another sewing box (can't have too many).

6 pm // became all about the n's - Netflix (NCIS), nail painting and reading the newspaper. Easily pleased. 

7 pm // tea time - Buffalo Wild Wing leftovers from Friday night - nom indeed.

The rest of the night was basically spent on the sofa watching Netflix and being lazy with two purring kitties.

How was your Saturday?

GREEN FINGERS: On the End of Summer and Fall Crops

With summer drawing to a warm close, I thought it was high time to work on a little post reflecting about our first summer attempt in our vegetable garden. As other crops start to fade, some still offering their treats and space being cleared for new additions, it's time to take note of what worked and what was a bit of a fail. 

The successes;

Basil - perfect for throwing into curries (our favorite being a green basil curry) and making home made burgers. Basil turned into a great little herb, it pretty much looks after itself and it gets limp enough to give you a heads up when it needs a water. For someone with a tendency to kill plants, it worked out great.

Cilantro - I would have loved to have picked more leaves for curry making from the cilantro but it sadly bolted while we were away. Fear not, letting the flowers turn to seed I have row upon row of bags of dried cilantro seeds which I'm looking forward to crushing and turning into coriander powder. 

Hot Peppers - I have more hot pepper then I know what to do with. Pretty easy to grow, keeps itself to itself and doesn't need that much water. Happy times.

Raspberries - we inherited these with the house, always a winner.

Rhubarb - granted you can't eat it in the first year, but one of the two bulbs grew and it's happily entertaining itself.

Carrots - mentioned previously, the carrots turned out pretty decently, certainly colourful.

Zucchini - Mmmm all the curries and breads. Love me some zucchini. It pleases itself, kinda taking over it's corner of the veg patch and something likes to try and eat it before I can get my hands on it to pick it. Certainly to growing it again next year.

Hit and Miss;

Salad Greens and Radishes - being British a summer salad is one often filled with salad greens and radishes, but Michigan heat in the height of summer is too warm that they turn to seed. Lesson learnt.

Cucumbers - we started off with 12 plants ended up with five living - cold snap and not enough water. Then we had more cucumbers then we could ever eat and cucumbers don't appear to be something you can hold out to grateful friends (until basil and peppers). Then they got all mildewy. I'm on the fence about trying them again.

Tomatoes - perhaps because they are a heirloom variety but our tomatoes have been a little picky and something likes to eat them. What I'm not sure. They also take forever to change to red. I think I'll try them again next year, but a smaller or cherry tomato for sure.

The Fails

Sweet Potato - not for the want of trying, the groundhog dug it up.

Strawberries - one of the three original plants were again dug by the groundhog, the replacements were perhaps brought too late for this season. Hopefully they'll make it through the winter with a bit of luck.

Bell Peppers - Michigan throw a late cold snap in March (or it might have been April, I forget) but it was just after the bell peppers were planted. The result was stunted growth, few flowers and zero peppers. We'll try again next year.



So more hits then misses and a couple of who knows. Pretty decent for a first go. I've learnt a lot of things along the way - that groundhogs are evil, wire fences are excellent things to constantly trip over and that bees really love veg patches. Eastern Market will be our go to place for buying crops next year and I'm a bit of a whiz at constructing trellises.

My head is buzzing with ideas for next year. Planting wise, I've learnt the need to spread seed planting out across a couple of weeks so everything isn't ready all at once. We're off to construct some kind of wooden fence (with a gate for no more tripping for Rayray), thinking of planting either some apple or cherry trees.

But before next year, there's fall and some cooler weather for getting some new crops started - broccoli and carrot seeds are already in the ground. I have some salad greens and radish seeds to finish off and I'm going to attempt at growing garlic.

 How did your garden grow this summer?

EXPAT LIFE: Garden Birds

One of the more everyday fun things that has come about since moving to the US, has been learning about all the wildlife. Now don't get me wrong, British garden birds are pretty, but there's something exciting about learning all the new bird varieties and just seeing how colorful they are. To me, there's something rather tropical about a bright yellow or red bird passing through and munching away on your bird feeder.

Spring comes with the arrival of the American Robin (above) which is actually Michigan's state bird. Thing is, here it's the same size of a Blackbird which, when you're use to them being on Christmas cards and being the same size of a sparrow back in England, it takes a bit to get your head around. 

Oh Woody the Woodpecker (and his Mrs) that you can hear head banging away more often than actually seeing him. Nevertheless Downy Woodpeckers are one of the common garden birds to be spotted in American gardens. Even here in the suburbs it's great to see what would have been a really wild and unseen bird in the UK just chilling out in my back garden.

Blue Jays with their blue colouring and white belly have a bit of a bad reputation. They are noisy, they are super territorial, scaring off other birds (even hawks, owls & humans) and have been known to eat other birds eggs. But with that blue plumage, they sure are pretty.

Northern Cardinals though, they have to be my favourite. Being bright red (although the female Cardinals are more of the reddy brown) they have a funky Mohawk feathering over their heads. We regularly have a Mr and Mrs Cardinal that pop through the front garden.

Red winged blackbirds aren't a sight you see all to often - in fact this photograph was taken on a Detroit Zoo visit. But there's something beautiful about that hint of red on their wing. It's the male Red-Winged Blackbirds that get all that colourful feathering mind you, the females are just a nondescript brown.

Now American Goldfinches don't appear that often either, but I guess the sunflower (one that was self seeded from apparently one of the sunflower seeds that we filled the feeder with once) was too hard to resist. Sunflowers are apparently one of their favorite foods after all. 

We've also had some hawks sitting in the magnolia tree, which often a little scary when you're caught unaware with a huge bird flying onto your porch as it eyes up the sparrows. It's always something similar to the bird photographed above when we were waiting in line for the drive through at our bank back in 2013. As you do.

And of course, wherever you are in the world, you'll always find ...

The pigeon ... it's like a clip from the Hitchcock film Birds when they line up eyeing up the bird food.  

Paying a little extra for the fancy wild bird food certainly pays off when you get pretty birds popping through the garden daily. Joe came across a set of old binoculars at an estate sale for a mere $10 the other week so I can be even more of a twitcher in my spare time. 

Have a favorite bird? Come share in the comments!

LIFE: The Small Things

Wow two of these in two weeks, I'm spoiling you. That and I'm impressed I've remembered to do another one. There's hope for me yet. Plus it's another excuse to dump a load of random photographs in a pretty display. It's all about the visuals.

So 14 days and some happy things;

• Doing the all American tradition of hiding from the crazy heat by going to the cinema and seeing both Ant Man and Amy Schumer's Trainwreck. Both are well worth watching. The latter just making my day and being so much better than I had hoped. Tears from all the laughing. Amy Schumer just gets it spot on. 
• Tennessee Whisky Cake at TGI Friday's - enough said (kinda made up for the slow service and just okay entree). 
• Scoring a new (to us) computer desk for $20 - one that doesn't rock, wobble, slide like the old one. Yey.
• Finding an old blog post about my first ever visit to an estate sale back in March 2012, oh the fun we've had since doing them weekly! 
• Marking six years of blogging - thanks for all the comments!
• Messing around with a new phone camera app - complete with mirrors and leaky light features. I'm easily amused. But amused enough to ditch VSCO for Lidow. 
• Vanilla cream drinks from Tim Hortons <3
• Picking seeds from the cilantro plants in hope of turning it into some coriander powder for curry making. Fingers crossed!
• Bulb catalogues for spring 2016 dropping in the mail box, not that I'm wishing time away but gimme all the flowers!
• Self seeded sunflowers from bird seed - free flowers!
• Studying this obsessively detailed map Emma found all about amazing places to visit on American roadtrips - any roadtrip that gives a mention to Michigan (which is most often missed off) is a winner in my book.  
• Falling in love and adding far too many more cross stitch projects after coming across The Sunflower Diaries (great xstitch freebies if that's your thing).

 What's been rocking your world lately?

GREEN FINGERS: All the Garden Goodies

Once July rolled around - all the goodies started being ready for picking down in the veg patch. Bowls of raspberries, freshly picked herbs, cucumber plants taking over and the first attempt at carrot growing is all complete and food is being made. And you know what, even my wild patch along the fence edge (above) isn't looking too bad either. 

Since sowing them in April, I'd been eagerly awaiting being able to dig up my carrot crop. We went for the Kaleidoscope Mix from Burpee - a range of seeds that result in a rainbow of carrot colours. From red to purple, white, orange and yellow. Purple, yellow and white being the traditional carrot shades btw. They took about 80 days before getting set to be pulled but even then you can see some of them actually really on the thick or large size. They've been a little hit I will be honest, possibly half my fault for not thinning them out quick enough, but even still it wasn't a very large harvest and they took an age to germinate. All but the purple carrots keep their color throughout, they aren't as sweet as your typical carrots but tasty enough. I'm going with the standard orange "normal" carrots for my fall crop, I might try these colorful ones again for next spring.

Also I'd highly recommend keeping and cooking with your carrot tops - they are a great addition to stir fries, salads, sautee them with some garlic and you're all set. Somewhat bitter but very delicious. 

There is nothing as tasty as a freshly picked radish with your lunch. Nor do I ever find store brought ones come half way as strong. These were a super cheap packet from Burgess, I tend to sow about 15 radishes every over week to spread them out. These have come out so fat and juicy - delicious!

My tomato plants are leaning over and heavy with their bounty. Every day I go out and hope for a hint of red to their green outsides - they are slowly, so very slowly turning red. These are the mortgage lifter - a heirloom variety which are the juicy sweet large (they tend to way 1 to 3 lbs) types so we still have a bit of a way to go. But I can't wait to get my mouth around one!

Considering only five of the original 12 (yes really we over brought) cucumber plants grew I'm starting to wonder if I'm soon to turn into one of those green vegetables. They are seriously taking over my veg patch. I'm just not up on really what to do with them all ...

Zucchini's are averaging about one or two a week which are getting lovely tossed into whatever curry I'm cooking that week. I have a huge list of recipes I want to try so I'll be honest, I could do with them getting into second gear! Sadly the cilantro bolted while we were away so it's all gone to flower, I'm hoping I can try and get some coriander seeds from it so at least there's that. As for the basil - I've been making so many fresh basil chicken green curry. Nom indeed. 

As for those raspberries, well those are my favorite! The harvest has died down in the last week or so, but we were averaging about 2 cups a day. So lots of raspberry pies like the one you might have spied in my small things post, and sauces are being baked and I can't wait! 

For the rest of the season, well there's all those remaining radishes and spring greens, I'm still waiting on my peppers (which have just started growing) and then it's time to get thinking about fall and winter veggies! Exciting times still lie ahead.

Have you been growing anything this year?!

GREEN FINGERS: Things Learnt From a Year of Gardening

The end of June marked a year of us being home owners. Work on the house is slow but for us there's no rush so works been focused on the garden. Working from home, our garden is my getting away from the computer time, I love going out a couple of times a week early in the morning working away with my fingers in the dirt and so far it's been going rather well. It's always great when your hobbies and interest teach you and make you appreciate things and life a little more, so I thought i'd share the big things that a year of gardening as taught me.

Gardening is teaching me the importance of being patient 

I always want everything to be flowering or growing or doing something right now. I'm not so good on the waiting two weeks for delicate little seeds to poke though and show me some sign of life. But i'm learning, if all be it slowly. I'm seeing the worth in being patient enough to give cucumber plants a little longer before tearing them up, i'm seeing the patience of watching a flower bloom into life. (although in reality you can spend loads of money and shove patience into a weedy corner by buying everything at full height and flowering, plants rather than seeds etc, but yeah, saving the pennies).  

Gardening and Pinterest fails go hand in hand

Pinterest is full of gardening ideas, whether you want a little container, something for the birds or how to create some funky art work. It's all there. Oddly enough most of my failures that so happens to occur more often that not when it comes to Pinterest happens in the garden. Like this attempt at a bird feeder made from an old baked bean can, piece of twine and a stick. Yeah that didn't last long ... 

It's awesome to know exactly how your veg is being grown

Part of our reasoning behind the vegetable patch is to be a little more healthier in our eating. While we were already eating a lot of organic veg it that was something I wanted to continue and expand, especially when you can save a lot of of money doing it yourself. We have the space and I have the time and enjoy I so why not?! I know exactly what is or isn't growing onto, around or in the soil around my patch, none of those crazy chemicals.

It grounds you

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing worse than the feeling of soil under your finger tips, but there is something magical about getting down and dirty in the soil. Seeing the insects crawling around, hearing the birds tweeting, even the pesky squirrels deadheading my flowers. My garden is as much their space as it is mine.

Not everything grows

Wild flowers haven't been the biggest success nor were growing onions from seed. Seeds need to be sown a little further apart and other times, things grow like there's no tomorrow. Our raspberries grow like weeds and our wild sweet peas seem un-killable. It's all about learning what works best and growing with the flow. But knowing that sometimes, not everything works out and that's okay.

It's super rewarding

Seeing flowers bloom that you planted on a cold winter day, cooking up a stir fry with everything you grew yourself. Filling your house with the smell of sweet peas you battled with training up a cane triangle that continues to fall over. Every little thing, all those long hours, all the watering, all the bug bites for a bowl of raspberries daily during picking season. It's been well worth it all.

Do you garden?