Tag: gardening

Our Cozy Little Life

On By Erin @ Cracker Crumb LifeIn Uncategorized15 Comments

I woke up this morning, and I stepped outside like I do first thing almost every morning, and was struck by the chill in the air. It is still hot and sticky most of the time around here, but some mornings, and some evenings, I am reminded about how close the end of summer is.

The apples on our tree are not very big but they are turning red. This tree is nearing the end of its producing life sadly, but it still pushes out so much fruit. We used to eat from it for so many years, our neighbors did, people from all over our neighborhood would snag an apple. Kids played hide and seek under our tree, squirrels and birds have used it as a haven, and the cat next door sleeps in the violets, in the shade underneath on warm summer days. We even had baby possums under there one year. The tree is looking sad these days, and we need to decide what to do. I think we will just trim it back very hard in hopes of healing it some, and that will take a few years in itself, since you can’t do too much at once. At this point, I just want it to thrive but it doesn’t have to feed everyone anymore. It can take a break. It has done its job.

There are other signs too – the dandelions that are left are mostly gone to fluff, night comes a wee bit earlier. But there are still a few weeks left to hang on to that summer feeling. To eat fresh produce from the farmers market and gardens, to swim in pools and lakes and oceans, to take a summer vacation before school begins. To sip iced drinks outside with friends, listening to birds and counting caterpillars on the rue and the milkweed, and watch the swifts and hummingbirds dip in and out of the yard.

I am hoping to do a few things with Wyatt before we start school next month. Next month he also starts back to physical therapy, the first after his surgery, and he will go two days a week. Our newly renamed and reorganized group, from Scouts to the Blackbirds, begins next month, school, things will be busy. I don’t want to just skip these last few weeks, although we do need to keep things easy and light for now.

Today is my niece Mermaid Girl’s birthday. Like Wyatt, she is now 10! She is the sweetest kid, thoughtful, fiercely protective of her little sister and of Wyatt, wildly creative and imaginative, and a yellow belt in karate so watch out! We are going there tonight for cake and ice cream and it will be good to get out, all of us together, for something fun. Their garden is full of cucumbers and tomatoes right now, and my youngest niece loves to “help” her mother pick the vegetables, although she does not discern between ripe or not. I stopped over the other night to pick up some extra rue for my the black swallowtail caterpillars I saved from the birds in our yard, and little one was racing around helping garden. I left with more than rue – in fact the handful of gifts I left with courtesy of that little elf made me think of this limbo time, the transition between summer and fall. A few tiny green tomatoes, a few ripe, with an acorn or two thrown in for good measure.

And that is it from me today. Just some short ramblings. I hope that whatever you do today, you do something that makes you smile!

The Weekend Vibe

On By Erin @ Cracker Crumb LifeIn Uncategorized8 Comments

This weekend was all about time outside and with people we love. It was a very full, very fun weekend. I feel like, finally, spring is here and we are free to roam.

We started off with a hike at our favorite metropark, Oakwoods. We were in search of tadpoles and vernal pools, but no dice. I mentioned this in my Sunday post and I was slightly alarmed to hear that other people have been looking and haven’t spotted any either! What is up with that? Is it too soon? Too dry? I would love to hear from someone who has spotted tadpoles this year. We were rewarded though however, with a spotting of the Pileated Woodpeckers that live there, and also these Jack-in-the-Pulpits! And some moss, because I love moss.

We also tried a new taco takeout place that is nearby, that we had been wanting to stop at – Atwater Street Tacos. We ate them in the car, which is a feat, I think, but holy moly they were amazing!! They are my new favorite. Billy and I split the tacos and an order of tostadas, and they were fantastic. Wyatt also enjoyed the chips and the cheese quesadilla that he had too.

After our hike and car picnic, we headed home to be lazy until it was time to go to my brother’s for a bonfire. Everyone had a blast, but the kids most of all. They played ALL NIGHT outside, and were laughing and dirty and just having so much fun. I had gotten a rope ladder free from Designed2Climb, so we hung that up and let the kids play on it. My niece got brave and climbed up to the top, and it was a great motivator for Wyatt to work on reaching and going on tall knees and pulling himself up and standing. The adults all sort of took turns playing with and watching the kids, and chatted by the fire, enjoying our adult beverages. It was time to head home all too soon. I think next time we may take our tent and let the kids crash out inside when they get tired instead.

We went home and crashed out (after I washed the smoke scent from my hair), that kind of sleep you have when you have had a fun day outside. Heavenly. Which was good, because I had a date early Sunday morning!

On Sunday bright and early in the morning, I met my friend Kelly at the garden center, our first visit of the year! Doesn’t she look so pretty? I call us the odd couple, we are so different yet so similar too – we have been friends for 20 years, were in each other’s weddings, and have been through many ups and downs of life together. We are totally going to be Grace and Frankie when we are older. Guess which character I am?

I wasn’t quite ready to go bonkers yet, this is Michigan and we may still have a freeze, but I did get some snapdragons and this totally adorable snail begonia, due to my love of all things snail. It’s on my desk as I sit here and I love it. We had so much fun shopping for plants together and making our lists for our gardens.

This weekend just left my soul feeling so full and happy, and refreshed for our week of homeschooling and all the little odd myriad everyday things that need to get done.

Rolling With It

On By Erin @ Cracker Crumb LifeIn garden14 Comments

We had big plans for our garden this year. You wouldn’t think that we would have had those plans sidelined by COVID, but we did. With Wyatt home 24/7, Billy being an essential worker, the crazy weather (snow in April anyone?) and the rules we had in Michigan for a while regarding gardening supplies, it made it hard for us to get moving. I had started seeds back in March, but then they got too big and I couldn’t transplant them and they died. I had never tried that sort of production before and I obviously need to work on it.

But! Despite all of our setbacks, we are going to keep trying and rolling along. We finally had beautiful weather over the weekend, and we spent those days holed up in our backyard, organizing and planting seeds. I don’t know how this will work as we are getting a late start, but I am hopeful regardless!

I am super excited about getting Wyatt involved this year. One thing that we planted this year are peanuts! When I was a kid like first grade or second, my uncle planted them one year and I thought it was so cool! I remember taking them in to school for show and tell. I was kind of a nerd even then I guess! So this year, inspired by those memories, Wyatt got to plant peanuts. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they grow!

We had a beautiful plan for a potager garden, with every section planned. Now we are going with a different approach for this year – we planted root vegetables in cloth containers, and then we are planting the seedlings that I hope shoot up quickly into the beds we already have dug from last year, which were intended more for flowers than food production but hey, we are rolling with it! I now have seeds started for a variety of vegetables – carrots, beets, radishes (and some radishes that I actually got into the ground and are doing great!), peanuts; then we have basil, lemon basil, thyme, Ice Queen lettuce, cabbage, yellow squash, Tom Thumb peas, pumpkins, and watermelon seeds all started. Tomorrow and the rest of this week I am going to try and get our flower seeds started, then hopefully over the upcoming weekend we get the areas ready for the beans, cucumbers, and snap peas I want to plant. And I found another use for the masks I bought! The pollen count was off the charts practically here this weekend and I wore my mask to filter how much I was exposed to as I worked outside. So bonus?

So although we are looking at a whole different idea, a more scaled down approach to our garden this year, it is a start and it is something. Maybe as things (hopefully) loosen up and become easier later this summer we will be able to work on getting the yard where we want it and ready for next year. We are already guessing vacations are out for us this year, so Billy’s vacation time will be spent at home – we are talking about knocking out some projects that we are usually to go-go-go to actually get to. We are learning to roll with it and regroup, and are moving along as best we can.

***And as I finish this up this morning (I started this post yesterday afternoon) the weather is reporting record low temps again this week! Looks like I will be moving my little starter babies inside again for a bit!

Planning a garden

On By Erin @ Cracker Crumb LifeIn day in the life13 Comments

We woke up this morning to snow, which was beautiful until I got onto the road to take the kiddo to school. Apparently Michigan has become too complacent this year, with our mild winter, and has forgotten it needs to salt its roads! The drive was one of those steering wheel clutching drives, nervous and slow down the winding road to his school. My brakes locked up, I saw another car hit a stop sign – the driver was ok though thank goodness. These are the parts of winter I don’t like. I love the walks in a gentle snow, I love being inside, huddled against the cold with a book and my family, but I don’t like the idea of driving in it, or any of my loved ones driving in it either. It made what I did on Monday seem even better. I planned my garden.

Well, a rough plan at least. My sister-in-law Chrissy and I got together Monday morning with coffee, and strudel and seed catalogs with our little helper, my niece . And her Care Bear. And we got to talking and planning and the room just seemed warmer and more full of life just discussing what we hope to grow. I had Chrissy’s houseplants behind me, adding to to the ambiance.

We discovered we have both been watching or following The Elliot Homestead on YouTube and Instagram. And while we are planning nothing like they have, although dreams there, we have both been inspired by their gardens. I love the idea of a potager garden! I love the look of an informal garden, with vegetables and herbs and flowers all packed in together, spilling out and spilling over with color and goodness. So when I picked my seeds, I divided my garden into three different distinct areas – our front garden, Wyatt’s little garden, a potager garden, and then special features like a strawberry garden and an arch covered in squash and beans. We decided to order the seeds that we felt essential first, the ones that neither of us could live without, and combine forces growing. We ordered carrots (Tonda di piragi), Cherokee Purple Tomatoes, and Easter Egg radishes that grow in all the pretty shades of spring; we ordered Ice Queen lettuce, arugula, and all sort of peas and peppers and squash. We threw in a few flowers for good measure, dahlias and strawflower and sunflowers. I can see them all growing and reaching for the sun, when it finally returns stronger in the spring and summer, not this weak little half light we have been getting. We have another order ready to go, and that one is more flowers than vegetables – a flower called strawberry fields, some apricot lemon cosmos that my niece picked out, nasturtium and phlox, hummingbird mint and pumpkins and marshmallow flower. I am super excited about something called a Mexican Sour Gherkin, that is going in Wyatt’s garden – they look like teeny tiny watermelons but taste like a lemony cucumber. I can’t wait to get started! Then in a month we have one final order, one that will have strawberries, a lemon tree for Chrissy, a cherry tree for us.

This feels really ambitious for us right now. We haven’t had a real garden in more than 6 years probably, and our backyard has turned feral, so before we do anything we need to get it under control. But what better motivation than a garden, in my opinion, to get us out there again? Last year we loved our front garden, where we grew flowers and salad greens and lettuce and basil, and a tiny pumpkin grew all on its like magic. The amount of insect diversity grew last year in our front yard – funnel spiders and caterpillars and praying mantis and snails; flying insects like bees of all sorts, and butterflies. We had a magical summer out there, and hope that this one will be even bigger and better.

One thing Billy and I love is our front yard apple tree. It builds such a sense of community for us. The neighbor kids love to pick the apples and eat them as they play outside, and while they are not the prettiest all the time since we don’t spray them and they get attacked by squirrels and birds (the apples , not the kids) they taste amazing. My family comes over and picks them to take home, to enjoy in pies or just on their own. We eat them, and we feed the less attractive ones to our snail. We used to feed those to the local deer but then learned that we are not supposed to do that, so I might find another place to donate them too, perhaps a farm animal sanctuary I heard about nearby. This is something else we want to encourage – we are planting our strawberries next to our house, not in our backyard, and we hope that the neighbor kids and Wyatt can just go out there and grab a handful and eat them. I love the idea of growing enough so that we can share, although growing enough for us is also important. It’s been a long time since I canned or made jam, and I hope to do that again this year as well.

So we have a few goals, and we always start with a big picture, and work our way through it slowly, bit by bit, area by area. And planning a garden in winter is one of my favorite things to do.