Gardening: A Week In Review

It has been a mostly warm and cloudy week of gardening here in southeast Texas. While I was in no mood to sip warm tea, cook warm soups, or bake hot casseroles, I did bake some incredibly delicious and crispy homemade kale chips! I also spent time (1) updating some of the gardening sections on the website and (2) working on the indoor container gardening.

The Website

The gardening page got a mini makeover earlier this week. The updates made the page more user-friendly and entertaining. Then, a brand-new container gardening for beginner’s page was added! You can have a look at both of them.

Indoor Container Gardening

The indoor container gardening is mostly fresh herbs that are used to cook with and garnish food with. So, I am happy with the culinary herbs I have growing thus far. But now, if possible, it’s time to harvest some vegetables! The bok choy that is growing from seed is looking promising. And one of the giant noble spinach leaf seedlings that is growing from seed has some potential.

Bok Choy (Day 24)

Boy Choy (Day 24)

Last night…

• The spinach was transplanted into clay pots to give them room to grow and room to breathe. The roots on spinach are very delicate! Therefore, this is not recommended. However, I had nothing to lose because they were not thriving very well all in the original container.
• Then, the second set of bok choy seedling were centered and topped off with more soil.
• And lastly, the rosemary seedling was also centered in its container and topped off with more soil.

This morning…updated photos were taken and added for:

• How to Grow Parsley From Seed
• How to Grow Cilantro From Seed
• How to Grow Bok Choy From Seed
• How to Grow Spinach From Seed
• How to Grow Rosemary from Seed

Conclusion

The DIY face scrub for dry skin and DIY face wash for mature skin were added this week as well. Then, another DIY oil pulling recipe with cinnamon was added as well. That is all for now! I hope you find something to do! Have a great weekend…

It’s Still Fall Ya’ll!

In Texas, we are having what I like to call – flip flop sweater weather. It gets cold enough to have the heater on, but then the heat warms you up rather quickly. So, I am still wearing flip flops, shorts, and capris with a sweater or a jacket to balance things out.

Last week was colder as we started some days with a low in the 40’s (degrees Fahrenheit). Between the cold sleep inducing air and the time change, my melatonin levels were whack. For the first few days, I had doubled my coffee intake and was still feeling as if it were bedtime as it was getting dark around 4 o’clock. Crazy!

This week, it was noticeably warmer. The heater has been off for the past two days and the fan is on just to stay cool. The weather and the time change have both made the indoor fall gardening and the start of the indoor winter gardening efforts quite interesting.

With the weather dipping into the 40’s, the warm weather basil had to be resuscitated in a warmer room. However, the oregano continued doing well even with the drop in temperature. Meanwhile, parsley from seed, spinach from seed, and bok choy from seed were successfully started. They all have seedlings emerging. The latest photos have been updated if you would like to see their current progress.

With the start of the cooler weather, it is always nice to have a fragrant wax melt burning to contribute to the warmth of the room. So, this year I made my own DIY wax melts. They are incredibly fragrant and easy to make…and even easier to color! : )

Once the cool air arrives, you get the dry chapped lips and dry skin arriving shortly thereafter. So, a new lip balm recipe without beeswax was created. It’s incredibly easy to make and has a unique flavor that I am loving thus far. Most of my lip balm recipes are with beeswax, so making one without beeswax turned out to be a pleasant surprise. This week, I started using the DIY face wash for dry skin. It is a really elegant professional smelling face wash!

A new fall bread recipe that I can share with you is a small loaf of keto cranberry orange bread. Like the lip balm, it too has a wonderfully unique fall taste and smell.

That is all for now. You can peruse the new DIY face care page for more face wash, face toners, face scrubs, and face serum recipes. Or, if you want to get your hands dirty in the garden this weekend, you can visit gardening or gardening for beginners for some more ideas.

Early Start

Awake an hour before my alarm. The coffee has been guzzled. But still waking up. It may help if I actually turn on the room lights. Still enjoying the warm heat from the heater. Endeavoring to get an early start, but do not want to move.

Saturday

The “things to do” list from this past Saturday was a win in my book! I worked so hard this weekend that by Sunday night it felt like I had been to the gym for a full body workout. Definitely no complaints – multitasking at its best!

• Laundry – I washed, dried, and put away three loads of laundry with a new semi-homemade laundry detergent that worked out really well. Loved the unique scent!
• Winter Clothes – The winter clothes were located, but not unpacked. That room had already been through a mini catastrophe. So, cleaning and organizing was needed before making a new mini catastrophe to deal with…more laundry and finding a place for bulky sweaters.
• Gardening – The research for nutrients required for plant growth was completed. Created a little macronutrient and micronutrient fertilizer to fertilize the tomato plants yesterday. And finally got the DIY tomato cage around the tomato plants this past weekend. The tomatoes were an experiment that went far better than expected. So, now I am having to figure out what to do with tomato plants in winter. Got the list of what to plant in fall garden ready to use. Planted the radish seeds and spinach seeds this weekend. Planted the broccoli seeds weeks ago, so they are well on their way. Should have at least a few broccoli soon.
• Skin & Hair – The latest DIY lotion bar added is a palm-sized vanilla lotion bar recipe shaped like a snowflake! Very cute. Tackled the hair successfully with the DIY rosemary soap. It is made for the skin, but it worked out very well as a shampoo bar for the hair too! Very pleased with the results. Never did get to the DIY facial.
• Homepage – Did a mini update on the homepage to add a gardening section, but still more work to be done.

I have work to get done today, so I better take advantage of the early start. What do you have planned for the day?

Things To Do

I woke up this morning to the cool crisp air of fall and a really strong cup of coffee. It was too strong for my taste. But, as I sat in the dark endeavoring to wake up with this overly strong cup of coffee, my mind began to fill with all the things that need to be done.

The floors need to be swept and the laundry needs to be done. Winter clothes need to be unpacked, cleaned, and organized. With rooms that need to be cleaned and freshened. Thus far, I have the first load of laundry in the dryer warming the house, but the floors still need to be swept and the rooms still need to be cleaned.

Then, there are some indoor tomato plants to cage and radishes to plant. And more plant nutrients required for plant growth to continue researching and writing. There is some very interesting behind the scenes research going on here.

There are several new plant photos that have been taken. So, there is a need to share and write about them for the new gardening page. Broccoli, tomatoes, onions, garlic, mushrooms, celery and more. The indoor oregano from cuttings and indoor basil from cuttings are still doing really well. And, growing green onions indoors in water is still working out quite well. But so far, I have not had much success with keeping the green onions growing indoors in soil very well.

With the sudden arrival of the pleasantly cold air, a facial of some sort is definitely needed and a hair moisturizing treatment required. The hair alone will take at least a few hours to complete. Then, there are more fall scented DIY soap bars to make and moisturizing DIY lotion bars to share.

Although likely not all happening today, there are a couple of new exciting DIY pages to add. It may take a while to get that done, so I will see how the day or week goes before saying anything specific. Well, now that I have my to do list, time to start getting things done.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Please take time to like, share, and subscribe. I hope you are having a great start to your weekend!