Dear Blog, I'm sorry

Dear Blog,

I am the worst. I have neglected you for so long. I wish I had a good excuse, but I don't. In the span of my absence I have moved into a new apartment, started a garden, and learned how to crochet and play the ukulele. I didn't blog about my awesome birthday or the awesome cake waffles I had for breakfast (you basically just cook cake in a waffle iron, it is in the best thing ever and I want to eat it every day). I didn't share my recent craft projects. I didn't even post pictures of my cousin's visit! I have fed you all these empty promises about being a better blogger, but this time I mean it. Please forgive me.

Yours forever,
Cait

The new apartment. Craft corner, living room, and dining area.

Pineapple plant, new bedroom, dress I finally finished sewing, first harvest from the garden, our favorite dinner as of late: lemon cream pasta with garlicy green beans, my sweet baby pineapple uke

Blue Heron herbary

This past weekend we went to Blue Heron herbary to pick out some lavender for the yard. We ended up with way more than just lavender. There's also some oregano, thyme, garlic and sage along with three different varieties of lavender. The herbary is adorable and has gardens where you can pick lavender, a little pond that when we were there someone was sitting at and painting, a bunch of chickens running around, and a BUNNY! It's located on Sauvie Island, a little bit north of Portland, where there are a bunch of small u-pick farms. The berry farms were hopping, but I was wearing a dress so I couldn't go picking. Maybe we'll do that next weekend.

Almost summer for me!

The ONLY picture I took last time in Portland.

I only have two more finals left and then I get to go to Portland! wee! Last time I was there we went to Multnomah Falls and got a giant apple fritter from Voodoo Donuts. This time we're planning on going to Bagby hot springs, get more donuts, and plant a garden!! I'm so excited to establish a nice garden instead of doing containers. I miss having dirt to dig around in! My container garden is doing pretty decent, but I'm still having trouble with my zinnias being all weird. It's not fully opened, but it just looks bizarre!

The tomatoes are doing pretty good, though. I'm going to go grocery shopping today so I can put that ripe tomato in the background to good use! Maybe a caprese salad? Or an avocado and tomato sandwich? Those are my favorite. Either way, summer is right around the corner and I can't wait! I still have the 15% off coupon code "summer11" running in my Etsy shop until the 17th!

4/19

Well, the zinnia has started to bloom, and I'm a little disappointed it only has one layer of petals! You can see the little bits of fuchsia on the yellow petals that gives it the candy stripe name. Maybe more will come up later, or the next flower will be full size. The petals haven't opened up all of the way yet, so there might still be enough time for it to develop more. Either way, I'm still pretty proud of myself for growing this from seed.
I also made a polka dot bow for myself in red and white. The polka dots are actually little hearts! It's pretty cute. This is the same fabric I use to line my sock money and hedgehog zippered pouches. I keep meaning to make more of those zippered pouches, but for some reason I can't make myself sit down and focus long enough and end up making little hair bows like this instead. But I really like my bows, especially in the red and white. It's a little retro and a little Minnie Mouse but all sorts of cute. What do you think?

Exciting things (to me, anyway)

Do you see that little guy up there? It's a bud! I planted candy stripe zinnia seeds a bit ago, and they've been growing and growing, and now one is about to flower! I' so excited about this. I thought it was exciting enough when the seeds germinated, but I honestly expected to kill all of them before they started to flower. I have five plants about 10" tall and it makes me so proud. My tomato plant has been pretty happy, too, and I have a bunch of tomatoes on it. Last year I had zero luck with tomatoes, so I'm hoping this year I will get a nice harvest off of my two plants. Thinking about all of the fresh produce makes me get excited for canning again. I won't have a big garden this summer so probably no more pickles, but hopefully I will get stuck with so many tomatoes that I can make pasta sauce to can, and I can take advantage of the cheap summer berry prices and make some more jams. Canning is a whole lot of fun. I love that there's always enough to go around so you can share with everybody.

Spring time!

I have to admit, living in Texas, it doesn't really seem like the warm weather ever really left for very long, but I'm excited about not having to worry about overnight frosts killing my plants anymore. I had bought a mini rose bush for $2.50 and transplanted it to a larger pot outside, fully expecting never to get any buds on it. I came home after spending a week in Houston to see this little surprise!  I managed to completely kill a full size rose bush in less than a month, so I thought this little guy was going to be toast. I guess I'm not doing so bad after all. I'm excited to see what else will flourish for me this year. Has anyone else started their gardens? What are you most excited about?

Look- I haven't killed them yet!

I have the bad reputation of killing houseplants, but I've had these for three weeks (the ivy even longer!) and so far I have watered them and kept them safe from the sharp pointy teeth of little kitty. I found the orchids on sale at Home Depot, and just happened to find a gift card to there in my wallet, so I bought a small African violet plant to see how much money was left on my card, and when the cashier told me I had a bunch of money left on there I immediately went back and picked up these orchids and some succulents. The woman at the register also gave me a discount on everything for being a "sweetheart" so I didn't have to pay anything out of my pocket!
I found the ivy on clearance for a buck at another store, and it always makes me a little sad when perfectly good plants are marked way down, so I brought it home. The good thing about ivy is it's pretty hard to kill, so even though I've put my African violets pretty close to their grave, I'm pretty sure this ivy can stick out whatever I throw at it. I've already moved it to the bathroom and forgotten about it for over a week (oops), but I just took it out today and it seems to be fine.
Unfortunately the freak hard freezes we had in Austin have killed all of my outside plants, but hopefully that's done with, because I have some sweet peas that I grew from seed that are doing really really well, and are just about ready to be transplanted to a window box. Most of my zinnia seedlings have been eaten by Artoo, but there are about 4 that I can transplant. I'm really really hoping these will continue to grow, zinnias are one of my favorite flowers because they get nice and bushy and make for such nice cut flowers.

Branching out

I made a Facebook page for my blog/Etsy! This isn't exactly new news, since a link has been available on the left side of my blog for a few weeks now, but I haven't announced it. I'm still trying to figure everything out with it, and I should get better about updating more often in the next few weeks once I have more to say.
I also made myself a tumblr, since I know a lot of people use that. For people who have no idea what a tumblr is (like my mom), it's basically just a bunch of pictures I like. I save a lot of pictures I come across to make inspiration posts on my blog, but most of the time I have to cut back on tons of them because I want this to be MY blog and not just a bunch of other people's pictures. So if you have a tumblr, please leave me a link to it in the comments so I can follow you!

In a more literal sense of branching out, I bought a few plants to start my garden up again. The zinnias I started from seed are still coming along nicely, and I rearranged my bedroom so I could set up another small greenhouse to grow sweet pea, balsam, and verbena. I also bought some house plants, although I don't have a bookshelf yet to keep them out of Artoo's reach. He has been ok about them so far, I just hope it stays that way.

I feel you, Art.

Watch his little paw rise up and stretch as he's yawning! Precious!

Wednesdays are terrible for me. So many classes, so much running around to get to them all. It's just exhausting! I'm ready to go take a little cat nap with Artoo, but I'm lucky that I have a lot of free time tomorrow to finish schoolwork and mail things out. They've finally started to sell seeds at the stores again, so I bought a little windowsill greenhouse and started a couple candy stripe zinnias to see how it goes.

So far so good!

It always makes me excited watching things grow, especially from seed. They're already starting to get a little too big for the greenhouse, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. It's still too cold to put them outside, and if I keep them inside without the cover I fear that little kitty will destroy them. I would like to get rid of my broken desk and eventually buy a simple bookshelf to keep plants on. My room gets such good light in the day, it's a shame not to take advantage of that with some houseplants. I haven't been sewing all that much, but I've been really happy with what I have been able to get done.

available here

It's definitely a little bit away from my normal super girlie with little critter type fabric, but I still really like it. It's Lizzy House fabric I found in a fat quarter bundle. I'm a huge fan of Lizzy House and I had seen this design ("pearl bracelet") on her blog, but I had never seen it available in stores or online, so I was very excited to scoop this up. Orange is my favorite color! The pearls are a very light grey, so I used a darker grey with a little bit of light blue and burnt orange on the inside, and a light grey zipper. I wish the zipper could have been a little lighter, but I think it serves as a nice middle tone between the light pearls and the darker lining and zipper end fabric.

Garden update

It has been a while since I updated about the condition of my container garden, mainly because not a whole lot has been going on in that department. All of my eggplant blossoms end up dropping, and I'm just waiting for things I planted as seeds to grow.

L to R: hibiscus, eggplant, window box with spinach, radishes, and carrots, Russian heirloom tomato, red and green bell peppers(cut off). Miserable basil plant in the pot on the ledge.

Back in Austin

I finally got back into my apartment on Friday. I still need to tidy it up before it's picture ready, but here's what the patio looks like so far.

I just planted some lettuce, radishes, and beans from seed and I dug up and potted the jalapenos, bell peppers, eggplant and Russian heirloom tomato. I'm going to sew a little cushion for the seat and put up bunting or lights or something outside to make it cute.

Hello, Pickle

Also... I made pickles!!

APPARENTLY, you're SUPPOSED to harvest cucumbers with the spines still on them. I didn't know this and I was waiting for all of them to fall off. They were starting to turn yellow so I googled it and it meant that they were over ripe! They taste fine and aren't soft, but the seeds in some of them had started to harden so I had to pick all of them out. I don't like cucumbers, and I absolutely hate pickles, so I don't know what I'm going with 3 half pint jars of them.

They may take our squash, but they can never take our cucumbers!!

Something has been eating the cucumber leaves. I've already lost my squash to pests, but I refuse to let my cucumbers succumb to critters! I am going to try diluted soap as a pesticide first. If that doesn't work, I guess I can sick Artoo on them.

He's a pro bug hunter. Last week he caught and ate a cockroach and puked it up all over the kitchen. Yum!



In the mean time I've been trying to see what happens with this avocado pit.

I've also been making kitty purses.

Cukes!

It's kind of funny that the ONLY thing growing right now is the one thing I don't like to eat.. cucumbers! Unfortunately the summer squash had to be pulled out because of what looked like damage from squash borers, which was really sad for me because it was growing so well and I was starting to get excited about eating some.
BUT! The cucumbers have finally started to grow, and it looks like they'll actually stick around. My plan with these was to pickle them and give them away to anyone who will take them, because as much as I don't like cucumbers, I hate pickles even more.

The Russian heirloom tomatoes are really coming back. When I first planted it, there was a small tomato already growing, but it eventually fell off and the whole plant looked like it was about to go belly up. Today there is a new baby tomato on the plant! It will most likely fall off as well, but I can always dream. They're supposed to be really dark red/purple tomatoes, so I'd love it if I could at least get ONE good tomato from it just to see the colors.

RIP

Oh, cruel world. A life extinguished so young! I went out to discover that the green bell pepper plant that I was excited about has lost it's first pepper before it matured.

It was a sad day.



In remembrance, a baby bell pepper timeline...












You will be missed.

Houston, we have squash

I can't believe it's only been a month since I planted the garden. I'm especially impressed with how quickly the summer squash has grown.


This was taken exactly one month ago..

and look what has already started to appear!

BABY SQUASH.

I am beyond excited about this. In the last two weeks the plant has exploded. The past couple days have been really rainy, so I haven't been out to check the garden, and last night I was totally surprised when I discovered squash. There are two babies on one of the plants but tons of blossoms on both. I've been looking through the Vegan Yum Yum blog and it's making me really excited about cooking these guys up.
I would have more pictures of the bigger squash that's growing, but my dog decided he wanted to poop RIGHT in front of the plant, so I had to maneuver around it, and all of the pictures of it came out crummy. Thanks a lot, Rocky.

Also, every time I go out to the garden the neighbor's dog constantly yaps at me through the fence. I got a good look at the little booger today.

This is why I'm a cat person.


But wait! There's more!

eggplant!




basil


zinnias


We also put up a trellis type thing for the cucumbers yesterday. They were starting to attack anything they could, so hopefully this extra piece of railing will be able to keep them in line. As I was putting it up, I noticed that one of the cucumber plants had a vine that had POKED THROUGH a leaf on the other cucumber plant, and had curled itself all around that leaf.

It's alive!!

I just wanted to give a real quick garden update, I have some very exciting news to share.
First of all, I have made my FIRST harvest from the garden. I have been waiting and waiting to pick the lone jalapeno that has been growing for the past few weeks but my dad insisted that I wait. Well, today I noticed that it was starting to turn red at the top so I went ahead and picked it. Now I just need to figure out what to do with it!

The cucumbers have also started to vine out, and one of them has started to attach itself to the marigolds!

I need to get the trellis set up asap.

I love this picture.


Basil explosion!

I also cut a couple flowers to put in the kitchen. It's not much, but it's nice to have something pretty to look at while baking. I don't have any other space to put in flowers besides my vegetable garden bed, so I only have a few zinnia plants and some French marigolds as a companion plant to the eggplant.


Right now I'm waiting for the strawberry jam I made to cool down so I can make homemade pop-tarts with the recipe my friend and name twin Caitlin provided over at her blog. I have never made jam before and this recipe didn't involve any pectin, so I am a little worried about how it will turn out.

That's all for now!