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Starting a Garden in the Desert ~ Part 3 ~ My Complete Start Up Costs
I recently overhauled my large side yard and installed all new raised beds for a total 112 square feet of gardening space. My complete start up expenses have been: $160 wood and hardware for beds $330 soil, delivery and spreading (this was a mistake…the soil I got was NOT good) $120 on starts and seeds…
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Starting a Garden in the Desert ~ Part 2 ~ Raised Beds
As I mentioned in Part 1, I started out trying to amend in-ground beds in my own backyard, and had issues with plants dying and/or not growing. The previous owner had used pavers to outline a veggie garden area, but when we bought the house, everything she’d planted was very small and very dead. We…
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Starting a Garden in the Desert ~ Part 1 ~ Where/how to Plant?
I love to garden. I’m not very good at it still, but I like the idea of being able to grow some of the fruits and veggies we eat. Especially our favorites. Organic is just too expensive typically, but I can grow organic in my backyard pretty easily and inexpensively. This series will chronical my…
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Pain and Panic: Dog Biscuits
There really isn’t a lot about my childhood that I can write chronologically. Snippets and details flood back randomly, and out of order. I’m hoping that after I’ve written a lot of this out, I can sort it into some semblance of order. Today’s story is an early one though. I know that I was three…
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Roasted Radishes
Roasted radishes…raw they were hot and bitter…roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper and they are actually kind of sweet! They taste similar to other roasted veggies. I’m trying to eat a greater variety of veggies and this was easy, and is very yummy. Turnips turn out similarly, but I much prefer the texture of radishes.
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Pain and Panic: Abuse and survival.
Part 1 Phobos and Deimos…terror/dread and fear/panic. Mars’ two moons. Cool names for things…like my pair of Instant Pots or a couple of pet rats. I was at the Arizona Science Center with the family, enjoying a planetarium show of our galaxy when the narrator mentioned Mars’ two moons and their names. It wasn’t the…
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Light Mountain Naturals + Red Food Coloring
About a year ago I decided I wanted to stop using chemical dyes on my hair. I had been bleaching highlights and coloring with Manic Panic or Ion Brights for many years, but I finally decided I wanted my whole head to be a deep, dark crimson. I tried a few drugstore boxed dyes. When those…
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Make your own candles; avoid common household toxins.
I have known for a long time that my beloved Glade, Gold Canyon, Bath and Body Works, Goose Creek and Yankee Candles would give me terrible headaches and exacerbate my asthma symptoms. And forgot burning them if any one of us in the house was sick, getting sick or had recently been sick. According to this article,…
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Kid-Friendly Instant Pot Macaroni & Cheese
I’ve decided to start a new series of Instant Pot recipes, particularly kid-friendly ones that you can teach your kids to make! Let’s kick it off with one of the easiest ones of all! Kraft recently took much of the junk out of their traditional blue box mac ‘n’ cheese, thanks largely to Food Babe,…
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An Upcycled Gift
Being the diverse people we are, we observe Chanukah, Yule/Solstice and Christmas. We still do most of our gifting on Christmas, because that’s how hubby and I both were raised…and in this case, that’s a good thing because I need as much time as possible to finish this project. Katie really wants a desk badly…