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In: Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Cooking, Dogs, Garden, Pets, Photography
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Some people do a “30 things to do before I turn 30” list, well, I’m a little late for that since I’ll be 30 in a month.  When I was 15, I did make a goal to visit all of the continents before I was 30.  I made it to 5 out of the 7 before my chronic illnesses prevented me from international travel.  While I still dream of visiting the final two (Antartica and Africa), it won’t be anytime soon.  Instead, I decided to make a list of 30 things to do while I’m 30. 1. Make a website about cavy genetics. ✓ 2. Hang portraits of my petsRead More →

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In: Garden
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My dad brought out some old boards from the deck they had on their house and set them up as gardening boxes for me. Now I just need to fill them, I’m going to use the lasagna gardening method, which alternates layers of green and brown materials on top of newspaper.  My first layer of newspaper went down, covered by a layer of the stuff out of my cavy cages – broken down wood pellets, poop/pee, and discarded hay. I’m going to continue this until I have a layer over the whole box, then go back and add some chopped leaves and other green material,Read More →

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Each year, I look forward to the start of fall, which is signaled by the county fair.  I love our fair, it is a favorite time of the year – better than Christmas!  I love to enter things in the fair and this year, I was excited to enter some things from my new house – things that were all mine. I have entered the flower show in the past, but most of the entries have been flowers grown by my mom and myself.  This year, I only had a few flowers, but they were flowers that belonged to me alone.  I entered a hostaRead More →

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In: Garden
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Yesterday, I noticed that my squash had some white, powdery looking spots on it’s leaves. The plant itself looked okay other than the spots. I noticed the other day that while some of the fruit were okay, a couple of the fruits just coming on appeared to have started to rot where the flower typically falls off.  So, obviously, I had to do something, the first thing I did was find out what I had.  My twitter friends told me I likely had Powdery Mildew.  The first thing I did was to cut off the healthy fruit.  Though I would normally leave it to growRead More →

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In: Garden
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I have many posts to write about the things I’ve been working on around the house, but something happened tonight that I just have to write about.  I was going to write a tweet to Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, and realized that what I wanted to say wouldn’t fit in a tweet. A little background story first, in my new house, there is a family that lives next door who has several children (four or five? I’m not sure).  Based on what I know, let’s just say, they don’t have a very stable home life.  They spend a fair amount of time in theirRead More →

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I finally got my vegetables all planted.  The tomatoes and squash have been out for a week or so, and I just planted the eggplants today.  The tomatoes grew very tall and fairly spindly from being inside so long while I was waiting for the closing on the house, but they seem to be recovering.  The summer squash lost all of it’s leaves but is growing new ones so I still have hope for it.  The eggplants had some leaf burn from a very hot day in front of the glass window with too direct sunlight (I think this is what caused it) but seemRead More →

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In: Garden
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This awesome book I have been reading, The 20-30 Something Garden Guide; A no-fuss, down and dirty Gardening 101 for anyone who wants to grow stuff has a brilliant suggestion to grow a “salad bowl” with lettuce in a container.  When I was at the feed store looking at seeds, I noticed a similar bowl in the clearance section and just had to get it and make my own salad bowl. Because I’m keeping my bowl inside so I can have early lettuce, I didn’t remove the plugs from the drain holes, but instead used packing peanuts to allow good drainage for the soil.  PackingRead More →

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In: Garden
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Last year at the end of the year, I bought a pepper plant that had some blooms on clearance.  My thought was that I could put it inside and have some peppers over the winter.  Well, I never did replant the pepper plant into a bigger pot, so all I ended up with is a spindly pepper plant.  The top looks good and there is new growth coming in at the bottom, but there is a good six inch space that has no leaves, it is just stem. I did some reading and found that spindly pepper plants was a result of overcrowding – whichRead More →

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In: Garden
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I added some kale seeds to the greenhouse today, I decided I can put them out under the window in the hot bed with the cabbage.  I’ve never actually eaten kale and I’ve never grown it before, but the cavies love it and even the rabbits will try a nibble.  I picked up a packet of Burpee’s Dwarf Blue Curled Vates (admittedly, mostly because it looked the prettiest) and decided to give it a go.  Who knows, I may even eat some of it myself! I also started a notebook.  I decided it was important for me to know what I planted this year soRead More →