Independence Challenge - July '09

Whew. Mom spent another week in the hospital after a string of "episodes" that culminated in what looked like a big TIA in the doorway of her doctor's office. After a lot of testing, they basically don't know what is wrong, but it's probably not more TIAs. It might just be the blood pressure meds they had her on after the first June TIA. She has a history of sensitivity to medication, and she hasn't had another episode since she stopped taking the Vasotec.

It did delay our move by two weeks - the landlord agreed to give us an extension. I was spending a lot of time at the hospital and we were not getting packed.

There is another factor influencing my preparedness - harder to wrap my head around. With DH gone at grad school, and my self-employment dissolved, I have no income while I care for Mom. I've had to apply for food stamps, Medical Assistance, and welfare. I don't like it, but it does help quite a bit. It's the first time I've had medical coverage since DD12 was born - I hardly know where to start.

We get $529/month in food stamps, far more than I expected - and far more than we spent on food with our own cash. But we don't eat like a lot of families do, and I have food storage. My mother technically does not live with us, but I also feed her from our food stamp budget. Several effects on our food patterns:

• We eat in more variety. We can afford more than the cheapest protein. I can afford some fish, organic chicken, organic store-brand milk. We can afford more fresh fruit and vegetable variety. I can take advantage of seasonal sales on a more efficient scale. I can't be a spend-thrift, and we still eat a lot of rice, beans, oatmeal, eggs, and potatoes.
  
  
• I can re-build our storage. I didn't have enough money to replenish what we were using, which was worrisome. Summer should be the time we stock up, not eat down.
  
  
• We eat far less locally. Almost no vendors at the large farmer's markets take food stamp cards - none of the produce vendors. None of the orchards or producer markets take the cards at all. Not only are we unable to spend our food stamp largess locally, the local vendors are missing that whole market of clients. So, we cannot buy local milk, produce, meat, seeds, or baked goods (except the stuff that makes it into the grocery stores). We do shop at the most-locally-focused grocery stores, Weis and Redner's. I really miss the producer markets and the pick-your-own orchards.

It's been hard to get much done regarding the Independence Challenge. I've been trying to wait until we get fully moved and organized at Mom's house. But I did mange to get a few things done:

Planted: I bought a slicing tomato start on clearance and put it in a big pot on Mom's front walk. It's got a number of tomatoes. I am planting at least basil, cabbage, peas, and carrots for a fall garden.

Harvested: Mint for tea. My chocolate mint died over the winter, so the mint is my less-favorite spearmint. It dries poorly, I discovered last year - almost no flavor from dried leaves. We also used the dill from a small volunteer plant in the backyard. Mom has peppermint and apple teas in her yard, so I look forward to experimenting.

Preserved: Not so much. I hope to make pickles, pesto, and more jam in August.

Reduced Waste: Oh, not. The problem is my Mom's house. Her approach to reducing waste was to simply save it. And to bring in hundreds of cardboard boxes to organize it. And now years of paper, plastic, metal, cardboard, and glass must go, in one extended outpouring. We recycle as much as we can, with the municipal program and at various scrap buyers. We will also have yard sales, freecycling, and ebaying. But still, we have been putting out 16 large bags of trash each week, plus a bulk item.

We are have much stuff for the county's fall hazardous waste collection. Decades of expired medication, nail polish, mercury thermometers, old oil-based paint, batteries, pesticides, herbicides, anti-freeze and motor oil. I have a pick-up truckload of metal scrap, and am hiring someone hourly just to flatten cardboard for a truckload delivery.

On the positive side, Mom has an established composting area that we will expand. There are some elderly canned goods that we will eventually empty into the compost stream when I get more worms. Some, I will just flush or dump in the sink. For instance - she had a dozen cans of Hawaiian Punch from the 70s. Apparently, it can eat through metal, because the contents leaked from some of them. The rest must be full of dissolved metallic elements - I am dumping that into the sewer system.

We could compost some of her paper and cardboard, but not most of it - it would exceed the capacity of her 1/3-acre yard. We put out 20 bags of paper for the recycling pick-up this past Monday alone. I am looking for a place to take wood scrap - maybe a biomass generator. There are lots of wooden odds and ends that I won't burn in a home fireplace - painted, varnished, poly-coated, particle board, soft wood, etc. A biomass generator will have a scrubber stack.

We did a bunch of plumbing work - new hot water heater, new bathroom sink/faucet, toilet guts, and a pressure-reducing value. Mom's split-level was built in the 50's and the builder was cheap with plumbing and electrical work. My parents did almost nothing to improve on that. By simply adding a pressure-reducing value, we have already solved years of plumbing fixture abuse, wasted water, and wasted water-heating energy. We couldn't have a tankless heater without seriously upgrading her natural gas lines, so we just went with a more efficient heater.

Electrical work is next - new 200 amp service (she has a 60-amp fusebox), more lines for outlets in the basement, and GFI outlets for bath and kitchen. I need to be able to plug in my freezer safely. I realize now that Dad spent his whole garage workshop life using only an extension cord plugged into an outlet screwed into the ceiling fixture. WTF, Dad? He was not nearly as handy as I thought he was when I was a kid.

We are also planning a DIY kitchen upgrade that starts with stock base cabinets, surplus counter, and maybe a vintage cast iron sink. We need to stretch Mom's funds to cover as much renovation as we can, so we will do the kitchen in stages. I hope to post photos after we have done enough clean-up not to embarrass Mom. The girls are old enough to learn to use tools, and I have a lot of renovation experience. My hands are wrecked, but I can instruct and demo, and they can be the hands.

Preparation and Storage: I stocked a case of assorted canned beans, canned tomatoes, peanut butter, bulk popcorn and split peas we stored in juice bottles. These food stamp benefits will run out, maybe within 6 months, so I hope to do a lot more stocking by then.

I am still skimming Craigslist out of habit, and I saw a pressure canner go by. I just had to email, and I got it! Only used a few times, for $20. I am planning to start by canning some chicken stock as soon as we get settled.

We have also found more things at Mom's. Old comforters that can become window quilts, lots of fabric for quilting, Lots of kitchenware, even more canning jars. I will have to buy new rings and lids by the case. I also found a few older organic gardening books that I had intended to buy. Mom must have gotten them years ago, with good intentions, but never really grasped what "organic" meant, judging by the amount of commercial fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide in the garage. She saved a billion articles about using vinegar and baking soda, but still bought dozens of chemical cleaners. We will help her get back on the greener path.

Build Community Food Systems: No. But I am collecting ideas for future activism. My food stamp experience alone gives me ideas for things that need changing. If food stamps are our society's temporary family safety net, they need to be spendable in the local food economy, not shut people out of it.

Eat the Food: We were eating too much convenience food at first. We were working for 8-10 hours a day at Mom's house, and cooking just seemed impossible. But we have now fallen into better patterns. We make oatmeal, yogurt, and fruit for breakfast, then spend the mornings doing email and phone work, or packing at our old house. We have lunch, often soup and sandwiches, and leave to work at the house for 4-5 hours. Then we come home and make dinner. Mom usually naps at home with one of the girls in the evening, and I take the other one back to work at the house for another 2-3 hours, usually leaving around 9:30pm. I try to go to bed by 10:30, and get up at about 7:30.

Having Mom around does keep us on more of a schedule than usual. She has had a loss of appetite, so she doesn't ask for food, although she will eat and enjoy it if I bring it. I have to remember to feed her so she can take her medications on time (and not get loopy from lack of food). I'm not used to that - if the kids are hungry they either demand a meal or go rustle up their own food. We usually only ate dinner together. Now, I am preparing three meals a day.

I gave up making yogurt, for now, but we do make crockpots of soup, and often something else for sandwiches, like roast turkey or meatloaf. Dinner is usually some form of boneless chicken with vegetable, salad, or side dish. DD16 might make chicken curry with green beans over rice. Or I might make chicken Caesar salad. There is often fresh fruit at every meal. The four of us can go through most of a watermelon in a day, a whole cantaloupe or pineapple in one meal. Cereal, bananas, and leftovers fill in the gaps.

By my next Independence Challenge report, I hope to be able to say I have my new pantry set up, my kitchen renovation underway, and our composting expanded.

An Update from the Trenches

I've been quiet, blog-wise, for a long time, but busy "off screen."

This week, we are in the final push to move into Mom's house by July 21st (which is when we've told our landlord we will be out). The house is not quite ready, so I am a bit nervous about whether the plumber will have the essential work done in time. And by "ready" I mean just able to physically accommodate me, the girls, and our bare necessities. We need to be able to sleep, cook, use a bathroom, hook up a computer, have room to sit down. It will take many months for the house to be fully re-organized and repaired.

On top of her cognitive issues, Mom had a mini-stroke in June. She has recovered well, but now takes a lot more medications than she once did. Her license to drive has been taken, and her independence much reduced. It is a sad time for her. We now think she does not have Alzheimer's, but that she may have had a number of small strokes that were not recognized. That is both good and bad news. I feel even more sharply the urgency of writing down more of her stories.

Once we are moved in, I hope to start blogging again, as we begin to completely reorganize a house filled to the brim with stuff, some useful, some not. It raises interesting questions of what needs stocking up for an uncertain future, and how much is enough. My mother's OCD/hoarding tendencies made her stockpiling ritualistic and excessive, but her urges are very similar to the things we talk about wanting to accomplish with our Independence challenges and our various prepping activities.

Jars, for instance. We've recycled vast amounts of saved glass and plastic jars. Possibly thousands, in carloads to the township recycling center. We've kept the canning jars (maybe 150), freezer containers, the larger glass jars with intact lids. We've recycled the rest - too many different sizes, all with different lids. I want to have only 2-3 lid sizes to manage.

There are still dozens of jars of hardware to look through - many dating back to my father's workshop days - but he's been gone for 27 years. Some will end up with the metal scrap. There is a huge metal scrap pile in the backyard, along with a large wood scrap pile, and a mountain of cardboard to be flattened - all bound for various recycling destinations. Hundreds of cans of old oil-based paint and house/garden chemicals will go to a hazardous waste collection event in the fall. There are also many 4-5 gallon plastic food buckets with lids, round and square. My mom used them ineffectively, but I am keeping them for now - future food storage.

Some things were more of an artifact of her hoarding disorder. Onions skins, for instance. Bags, bottles, and boxes tucked in everywhere. Long ago (40 years?), she did a craft project that involved dying eggs with onions skins. She's been saving them since, wanting to do more of that, but not able to do anything at all in her disordered house. The phrase "disordered house" is so apt in this situation. Onion skins can be useful, but there is no danger we will run out, since we grow onions.

Lest it all seem grim, we have also found many interesting things, some of which will be blogged later. My teen daughters were fascinated by a pile of Seventeen magazines from the 70's. I kept some Boys Life to give to my brother. Funny lists I made when I was in 7th grade. My mother's wedding shoes. Negatives from my father's darkroom. Jars full of seashells from our beach trips. Things my father and grandfather brought back from WWII.

There are also useful things. Lots of tools, books, lumber, plastic sheeting, fire wood. The many buckets and canning jars. (Oddly, I never recall my mother canning - I think she stopped when I was very young). A vintage croquet set and other games. Clothing, sheets, towels. Envelopes, stationary, wrapping paper. Hundreds of gloves (another item of obsessive focus for Mom). No need to go to yard sales this year!

And... we have only done the very-densely-packed cellar, garage, hallway, part of the living room. We still have the rest of the LR, a dining room, most of the kitchen, 4 bedrooms, 2 attic spaces, an enclosed back porch, and a crawl space. There is a collapsing garden shed to be emptied and torn down. We've been putting out 8 bags of trash twice a week, plus bulk items, and trips to the recycling center. We already have a very large "yard sale" department growing in the garage.

We have been using a rented storage unit to pack up our old household until there is room at Mom's. We got rid of a lot of our own stuff. Mom's situation has lead us all to examine our own habits of acquisition and disposal. I wonder if DD16 will now ever keep anything she cannot make digital.

A few weeks ago, I did manage to make small batch of strawberry jelly at our house. Two pints plus a half-pint. Nothing like the 18-24 pints I had intended to make, as DD12 will only eat strawberry. But, better than nothing. I suspect I will be doing few of the things I really want to be doing, until the major sorting effort is done.

Much more to tell another day. We canceled most of our TV cable and are making media adaptations. DH is off at grad school, working hard in a completely different way. DD12 is adapting badly to the changes in our life and we are seeking family counseling with her. DD16 is making choices about how to do high school. We are all facing a possible move to a new city when DH comes out of grad school next fall.

What a whirlwind we live in, right now.

Independence Challenge - Year 2 - Week 2

I had a great Mother's Day. I picked up my Mom on Sunday morning and took her to my church for Flower Communion, which she enjoyed. Then we went home, where DD12 had made us brunch waffles from baking mix I made in advance, breakfast sausages from the market, orange juice, tea, a cut-up pineapple, giant strawberries for garnish, and a pan of brownies. Then we watched a movie together, the funny-but-forgettable Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler.

Saturday, DH and I went out and saw Star Trek, followed by late lunch in a new Mexican place that we liked a lot, the Plaza Azteca near the Berkshire Mall. I had carnitas, and the roast pork was to-die-for.

DD12 gifted me a recipe book. She took down all the frequently-used recipes I had printed out and taped up on the cupboard doors, punched holes in them, and put them in a binder for me. She gave my mother some marigold starts they planted at school. DH gave me a bag of very good Australian licorice he got in Philadelphia at a stand in the Reading Terminal Market. We all gave my mom dark chocolate in various forms, her favorite.

DD16 sent me a Mother's Day greeting via Facebook, which included a coupon for 4 hours of yard work, or 3 hours of Attic Cleaning. Poor girl, I will be taking her up on that pretty quickly.


Planted: I feel deprived of gardening. My backyard is a mess. I've basically ignored it completely since last fall, not even doing a complete fall clean-up. But Mother Nature doesn't depend on human intervention, happily, and the perennials are coming up nicely. If I would just cut the grass, you should even see them. And I will do that, as soon as I remember to pick up the grass shears from the sharpening place - where I left them last fall. ~sigh~

Harvested: Nothing yet. The alley is full of shiny new plantain I could harvest for medical use, but I am restraining myself. Focus, focus, focus.

Preserved: Nothing. I made a big batch of whole wheat baking mix, but it got used pretty quickly.

Reduced Waste: I bought a watermelon - what was I thinking?! It's too early. They came from Texas. Not sweet at all. Composted most of it. That will teach me to ignore my "in season" rule.

I am trying to save my favorite 4-quart saucepan. I fell asleep a couple weeks ago, while applesauce was cooking on low. I woke up in my chair a few hours later, to the smell of burnt sugar. No smoke, but the blackened apples were carbonized to the pan bottom. I managed to chisel it out with a putty knife and a screwdriver, but there is still black stuff burned on after scouring with a Brillo pad and trying oven cleaner. I still want to save it, but I don't know what else to try. Anyone have suggestions?

There is massive paper and cardboard recycling. Sorting is going a little faster at Mom's, where generates lots of paper trash and empty boxes. We are also sorting here at home as we pack to move this summer. I put out 10 bags of paper recycling last week. I know I can shred and compost it, but I am not starting that until we get moved and I can set up a workable shredding station.

Prepped and Stored: The packing is getting us more organized and de-cluttered, which I think of as preparation. It's easier to evaluate what you really need to keep when you know you will have to move it to a storage unit, and then later move it again.

Community Food Systems: A family from church had a house fire, and the mom of the family recently had hand surgery. We are trying to pitch in with gluten-free meals for a family of three. I am making 2 quarts of curried split pea soup with ham. Interesting how many of my recipes involve gluten, when I start looking at them. I think I will ask if they like yogurt, too - I could make them some of that.

Eaten: We continue to eat from the freezer and pantry. I do buy dairy, cheese, bread, and produce each week, plus odds and ends like pretzels and crackers. That turkey last week made a lot of meals, but we are now sick of turkey. Turkey sandwiches, turkey curry, turkey and gravy with mashed, etc.

Last week, I took Mom to the doctor, to talk about her various issues. It was revealing. She had forgotten the things the doctor said last time, and lost two prescriptions. He also had the report from the pyschiatrist visit. She is going to have some testing to see if we can narrow down the source of her memory loss and confusion. I take her to get a lot of bloodwork today, and an MRI on Wednesday.

I feel a little bit of hope. If it is not Alzheimer's, there is a chance that she will continue on in her current pleasantly-vague condition, with the capacity to enjoy things, instead of descending more quickly into the less pleasant stages of dementia. Maybe there is time left for some happiness, after we clean up her house. We are going to start a new medication this coming week, Luvox, to see if it helps her anxiety and compulsive behaviors. Wish us luck.

Fabulous News

Out on the porch are two boxes of apple seconds that I bought for only $2 at the market on Saturday. I see a lot of applesauce in my future. I am the Queen of Market Scavenging: apple seconds, cheese ends, ham and bacon ends, day-old bread and rolls, bones, wilted greens.

March is more than halfway gone, and I am so far behind in my blogging. I have half a dozen unfinished posts in the pipeline. I'm gonna catch up with a series of quickie posts about things I don't want to forget.

First, Fabulous News today: DH was selected to be a National Urban Fellow in the 40th Anniversary year of that program. It's an intensive graduate program with two semesters of coursework and a 9-month mentorship that will result in a Master of Public Administration and admission to an incredible network of Fellows. The program runs a total of 14 months, pays a stipend and other expenses, and even includes health insurance. It's a wonderful , exciting opportunity and I am so proud of him for being selected.

But (isn't there always a "but"?), it means he will leave us for most of that time. We've had other times in our long relationship when we did not live together, so we will be okay, but I am not looking forward to his absence, even with all the digital means of staying close.

A huge clock just started ticking. He leaves the last weekend of May, and will be in NYC until August, then I get him back for 3 weeks before he goes to an as-yet-uknown major city for the mentorship. I hope he gets assigned to the Eastern seaboard, so I can visit him. We have a lot of work to do to be ready, and he will barely finish his EMT certification in May. Tick tock!

The Great Clean-up is Under Way. DH and I rented a garage for storage, and today my mother and I had our first clean-up session at her house. I took away two bags of trash and a 'donut' tire to Freecycle. I took photos of an old school desk and a child's bench to sell on Craigslist. That made just a small dent in the front porch junk, but it was a good warm-up. I hope to establish a schedule of working from 8AM-Noon four days per week, with some afternoons reserved for taking her to appointments and such. Now that we know DH is going to grad school, the pressure is really on.

Planning to Move. The current plan is to move to Mom's house in June. I have discovered that makes me really disinterested in doing things in our current house. "Is is worth doing when we will only be here another 3 months?" So far, "no" to new bathroom curtain, rearranging the living room furniture, and planting potatoes.

I've stopped buying for the freezer and pantry, and we will try to eat down our stores to avoid moving heavy canned goods. But I am keeping a list, so we can restock after the move. I'm also working on packing up things I can stash in the rented garage to reduce the size of the move - extra books, the fabric collection, and assorted boxed memorabilia.

I'm not going to plant anything at our house this year. Not even the early peas and lettuce. The clock is ticking too loudly, and I need to stay closely focused. I might try to get stuff in at Mom's if I can get rid of that groundhog, and score some compost to put in large containers.

We are planning an Easter weekend trip to DC. Tentatively, we'll visit DH's family there, visit the Smithsonian on Saturday, and attend at All Souls Unitarian Church on Sunday. We haven't been anywhere as a family since August, so a little road trip will be nice, and we seldom see DH's aunts.

Look for more posts shortly. I have things to tell you about the worm farm, a birthday trip to the Historical Society, and an Independence Challenge Update.

Giant Vegetable Man

Howard Trivelpiece (97), grower of giant vegetables

My family is descended from an old Pennsylvania Dutch family on my mother's side, the Drebelbis (dry-bell-BIS) family. There is big fat book that traces our roots to the 1732 arrival of John Jacob Drebelbis as a colonial settler from the German Palatine region. There is a reunion on an ancient family farm every summer. There is an old photo of my mother as a little girl at the 200th anniversary in 1932, and she appears again, with my kids an I, in the 275th anniversary photo.

Anyway, my mom has always been on the lookout for the Drebelibis name in the news. The name has been spelled many ways as people moved to other parts of the country. Many years ago, my mom spotted a man named Howard Trivelpiece in a magazine article about gardening. My mom wrote to him in California, to tell him about the Drebelibis Cousins of America reunions, should he wish to attend.

Howard has never come East for a reunion, but my mom has been exchanging letters and holiday cards with him ever since. At 97, he is still raising giant vegetables in his northern California backyard. He has a radish, a beet, and a 3.25-pound head of garlic in the Guinness Book of World Records. This past year, the Siskiyou Golden Fair gave him an award for 80 (!) years of competing at the fair, and they named a building for him: the Howard Trivelpiece Ag-Hort Building. He first entered rabbits, in 1928, as a 4-H member. In his best year at the fair, he won 67 ribbons!

His wife Velva is 94. Isn't her name cool? Velva. You don't often hear of a couple where both live into their 90s. They must eat their vegetables.

Howard raises a lot of vegetables and gives them away - except for the best of the crop, which he saves to enter in the fair. Every year, he says he has to save his best veg for what might be his last fair. He credits his success to careful soil building, using lots of rabbit manure, although he is also a Miracle-Gro fan.

I think it's fun that my mom has been writing to him all these years. I'm going to send him a card and a photo of Mom in the garden this summer. I want to know if Velva was a canner. Maybe he'll want to swap seeds!

Hiatus Update

Ring bologna, with heart-shaped
mustard, from Super Bowl Sunday.

It's been a few weeks since I posted. It has been hard not to give in to the blogging urge. But I have so many things to do, that I am sticking (mostly) to my plan not to blog in February. I have been reading other people's blogs - I couldn't stand not knowing how everyone is doing. I really miss blogging! It keeps me feeling like I am making forward progress.

My mom is back in her home for the moment, and we've gone round-and-round about what the next step should be. My first urge was to move us all into a bigger house, and just make her come live with us. But after looking at a lot of rentals, we can't find anything we can afford that is big enough. We pay $600 to rent a 3BR house, and it's hard to find even the same thing at the same price. Anything we can afford is in a noticeably worse neighborhood, anything in a decent neighborhood jumps right up to $1000 for 4BR. We live in a city, and urban landlords know they can get good money from larger families with public housing vouchers. There is a decent house with 3BR/1.5BA plus a finished basement that could be a bedroom for the girls, with a big yard and a garden shed - but it's $950. As DH heads toward grad school, this is not the time to sign up for higher rent. I could buy a house for that (as if we could get credit).

So, we are back to the fact that Mom already lives in a 4 bedroom house now. We need to figure out how to make it shareable. It will be harder, but it's what we can all afford. If you've been reading here, you might recall that my mother is a compulsive hoarder. There are no cats or garbage bags, but her house is filled to the brim with stuff that will be hard for her to let go. I'm talking every room up to 5-6' high, with little paths. She sleeps curled up on a love seat. Isn't that sad? Changing it will be a physically and emotionally wrenching process for everyone.

My current plan is to find a large storage space. DH has been renting one for $200/month. He sold a house to move in with us, and has a whole house worth of stuff stored closer to Philly, where the storage prices are higher. He has resisted moving it up here, because he hoped we would move back to Philly when he finished his bachelor's degree. That just didn't happen in this economy, and now he has the opportunity of a year-long paid graduate fellowship. So, it's time to get a truck and a bunch of friends to move that stuff up here. It will save him $1200 a year! I am looking for a large enough space that I can also start emptying part of my Mom's house.

I hope that once we get some momentum with storing and donating things, Mom will find it easier, and we will be able to get some repair work and painting done in her house. It's a terrible thing to know that your mom lives in a house full of non-working appliances. We look like we are neglecting her, but she insists on staying - it's part of her compulsive disorder. Now that her decision-making skills are eroding, she will have to be forced. I just keep thinking that a year from now, she might be living in a functional house, doing fun things with family, without the burden of utility bills or unmanageable chores. If she doesn't have a nervous breakdown in the process. (Or maybe I will!)

There is one big fly in the ointment. My thyroid medication isn't working as well as it did when I started it 3 years ago. I am constantly exhausted, falling asleep in my car in front of the house or in a chair every afternoon. My joints ache and I'm often cold, and when I get a chill I feel immobilized by it - not good in February! I need my medication dosage increased - but my doctor is a clinic practitioner that doesn't know how to read thyroid tests. I've gotten a copy of my test results and am trying to get into a different clinic. The stupid medication is only $4 a month - it's not like I am asking for narcotics, dammit. I need all my energy right now! I have another call in to the doctor tomorrow.

I know that I owe emails to a dozen supportive friends and fellow bloggers. My desk is overflowing with things that demand my attention - if I could just stay awake. I will catch up as soon as I can. I am hoping to have rented a storage space and planned the storage move by the end of the month, and then set up a work schedule with Mom.

I did get some good stuff done: freezer inventory, a 3-month stock-up of the bath closet, and we have been doing well at cooking from our pantry. I even cleaned the oven, after a quiche bubbled over and left the kitchen smelling like brimstone.

I just wanted to let everyone know I am still chugging along, and I hope to be back soon.

Hiatus

I'm taking a little blogging hiatus.

My mom's gas furnace stopped working last week, filling her house with smoke. Nothing was actually on fire, but she handled the situation poorly. It could have been very dangerous. She stayed with us for a few days while it was mostly fixed, but the whole process revealed new problems with her living alone. We need to dramatically speed up the process of moving her in with us, which will be challenging for everyone.

Right now, the kids take turns sleeping on the floor while she sleeps in their beds. We may be moving - very soon - at a larger rented house. Her house has 4BR, but is in no way ready for anyone to move into it, even with all the elbow grease we could bring to bear. It's not a solution to the immediate problem.

Our current house is so small that we don't have room for a sofa - we have two armchairs and the kids sit on the floor when we all watch a movie. We literally did not have room to add another adult. The single bathroom is a considerable choke point - we seriously need another half bath. All that makes mom feel even more like she is a burden -which we are trying to combat. The feeling that she is a burden or an interruption is one of the things that makes her fail to ask us for help when she absolutely needs to do so. She is actually harder to help because she waits too long to get help with things we could quickly solve.

I will be back soon, maybe just a week or two, maybe longer. I'll try to keep reading most of my Indy blog roll, but I probably won't comment much. I'll keep some notes, so I can return with a big fat Independence Days Challenge Report.

I'll miss you guys!

Battle Plan 2009

I don't make resolutions in January; I usually do that on my birthday. They tend to be short-term goals.

But this New Year, I am making some major life changes. There are a number of things happening in our lives that are leading me to change direction.

1. My 80-year-old mother is physically healthy, but is getting forgetful and indecisive. I do not think it is Alzheimer's, but she shouldn't live alone anymore. We want her to be living with us within 2 years. Her house can be rented out, which provides income, and leaves it available as an asset if she ever needs nursing care. We gave long thought to living with her, but it creates too many family issues.
   
   
2. My 39-year-old ex, my daughters' father, has now been formally diagnosed with a fatal incurable brain disorder that could strike my girls in their 30's. If you watch the TV show House, it is what the character 'Thirteen' has. I am not typing the name if it, because I don't want it to show up in Google searches. We have always known they were at-risk, but his diagnosis officially raises their risk to 50%. I want to be free to spend time being involved in their interests, like youth conferences and art exhibitions. I am also giving deep thought to planning for the future, which could include supervising my daughters' home care when I am in my 70's. I am no longer involved in my ex's care, but the girls will see his decline, and it will be hard to watch.
   
   
3. I am 47 years old. Reality says I have 18-23 good years of productivity left. I think of the saying from Horace Mann: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." I am drawn back toward urban planning, the discipline in which I have a Bachelor of Science, but have not practiced since about 1992. It is my food security concerns that are drawing me. I have been thinking about going back to grad school to revive my professional chops, and get involved in urban food policy. I will start with community involvement, to support future grad school applications.
   


4. DH is looking for a professional path after he graduated with a degree in professional writing this past May. He went after a lot of government jobs, but there are hiring freezes at many levels now. He is interested in the Emergency Management field, which I think is a good application of his investigation and security background, his practical personality, and his writing strengths - there is a lot of report and plan-writing in most government jobs. He is going to pursue further education to increase his marketability.
   

For DH: He found a part-time job tutoring writing at the local community college. It's a very short commute. He also signed up for an EMT training course that will improve his chances of finding work in Emergency Planning. It only costs $125 and ends in certification. Between job and EMT class, he will be at RACC four days a week. So - his next 4 months are laid out. Job, class, work on freelance writing.

Then, we hope to send him to grad school. He is applying for a one-year intensive fellowship program that would get him a Master of Public Administration. He would have to leave us for most of that, which would be hard, but we have many ways to stay connected. It would start in May, and he would again seek a state or federal job in Philadelphia or Washington DC, where he has family.

For Me: First, I am closing my existing web hosting business. I will keep a few long-time clients who would have trouble moving; they will help offset the cost of keeping a server for myself. I spent a lot of time in doctor's offices and court rooms this past year, and I am too often out of touch to stay in a technology business. I have not had good luck finding reliable hired help. A recent offer to buy the business fell through when the buyer lost his business line of credit in the banking crash. It will be better for my clients, and for my family, for me to turn most of my clients over to another hosting firm. My technical experience will undoubtedly continue to be useful, no matter what I do next. I invested a lot of myself in that business, and it is hard to let go, even when it is well past time to do so.

What will I do for a living next? I have a big list of ideas. I am not going to try to plan for more than a year or two ahead - the economy is too unstable to make predictions. I want to be adaptable. My plan is to tie together all my volunteer, church, and professional work under the heading of "urban food security." We are city people, and our future lies in finding new ways to live in urban areas.

There are three areas that interest me most at the moment. I've picked a project for each:

1. Supporting Urban Food Gardening
   
   Urban gardeners need many things - containers, plant starts, clean soil, community, etc. But free water is a big factor when the cost of water is so high in our city. Our monthly water bill is $85-100, without any summer watering. Free water is pouring off every roof. In January, I will start producing rain barrels and barrel conversion kits. I will sell complete rain barrels locally starting in February, and sell kits on the internet. I attended the first breakfast meeting of an entrepreneur support group New Year's Eve morning.
   
   
2. Discovering Urban Foodsheds
   
   I've spent the past year finding local sources of various foodstuffs, and bulk sources of things we don't grow here. I am ready to start a bulk buying coop. I am shooting for a monthly order cycle, with the first delivery in March. I'll start a non-profit with a paid administrator position, so I can turn it over to someone else if I leave this area. It will need to break even out of the gate, but I don't expect it to pay much in the beginning.
   
   
3. Relearning Traditional Food Skills
   
   I want to organize a series of events that provide opportunities for people to learn about cooking, food storage, seasonal eating, kitchen gardening, and preserving. I already have a list of films and a local film distributor, and a list of potential speakers and demonstrators.
   

I am organizing my activity by quarters. The barrel business will be my primary livelihood - it comes first, gets the most daily attention. In the first quarter of 2009:

• Attend weekly entrepreneur group for start-up support
  
• Rent barrel storage, shoot demo video, launch website
  
• Networking: PA Farm Show - Jan 14
  
• Present youth workshop about sustainable eating - Jan 23
  
• Networking: PASA conference - Feb 5-7
  
• Lead a monthly church discussion group about Ethical Eating
• Start a simple monthly bulk buying group - first delivery March
  

In March, we will know if DH is leaving, and the rest of my year might look like this:

• promote rain barrel business
  
• prepare to single-parent for a year
• help my mother clean out her house
• continue monthly bulk buying group
• present workshops at more youth conferences
• lead monthly discussions about food security
• plan a film/speaker/demo series
  

For DD12 and DD15: Both are happy in the school. Both are old enough to be left alone periodically, and to take responsibility for chores. DD15 wants to quit her job and go back to her internship at the community art center. It's good for her youth programming resume, and it reduces my taxi-driving. DD12 just wants to work on her computer graphics, and play spring soccer. They are ready for me to be home less, and it may surprise them to see what I can get done outside our household.

For my mother: She and I had a long talk over the holidays. She doesn't want to stay here over the winter. We agreed that she needs to check in with me daily, visit weekly, and I will be more involved in her doctor appointments. We will start getting rid of stuff at her house, at an increased pace in in the spring. She is worried about being poor, and I showed her that she would not be if she were not trying to support a 4BR house. If she lived with us, even if she contributed to food, she would have her Social Security, her small pension, and rental income from her house. Her new motto is, "I've got to get out of here." She is concerned about being a burden, and I explained that trying to help her maintain her in her own home was a far bigger burden that having an extra bedroom for her.

Beyond 2009: If this all goes well, when DH comes back from his fellowship, we will move to a larger city in 2010. We want a city with universities and good hospitals, that has a smooth tax sale process, so we can buy property. We will start looking for a site to start our city compound - like a warehouse with a lot or parking area. DD15 will soon be ready for college, and DD12 will be in junior high school, and my mother should be living and gardening with us. Somewhere in the future lies grad school for me.

To get all this stuff done, I am going to have to be more disciplined about several things:

• reduce my news reading
• reduce my TV watching
• better sleep routine
• avoid interesting time wasters
• stick to my daily action plan
• DH and kids do more chores
• engage everyone in decluttering
  

Interestingly, this Chinese New Year will start the Year of the Ox at the end of January. I was born in an Ox year, so maybe that is auspicious. I am not superstitious, but I enjoy the rituals of Chinese New Year - cleaning, paying debts, bribing the household gods, thinking of ancestors, gathering to celebrate family unity. I better make a bigger offering to the Kitchen God this year.

Plan for Food Garden 2009

Fish boxes with lettuce and spinach last May.

What do you do when there is sleet pelting the windows and cars skidding down the street? Stay home! I did some garden planning for next year.

Once again, I am not sure I will be at my current address all of next summer's growing season. Depends on many things: Will DH get into grad school? Will we be able to prepare my mother's house for habitation? Will we move to another city altogether? Will the collapsing economy have us all sharing a cardboard box under a bridge? The future is murky.

I am going to plan for a combination of my yard and my mother's. I will put most things in containers here at my house, so I can take them to Mom's if I need to move. My yard has the advantage of soil built up for a few years. Mom's soil is awful and thin in the sunny places, so I will have to build beds and use containers there, too. She also has groundhogs that will need trapping.

Another option is to get a community garden plot. I am still thinking about that. But then I would be tending three gardens. Maybe I could get a plot for just a few crops, like sweet potatoes, corn, onions, and cabbage. We'll see.

Lessons learned in this past year's garden:

• I don't have the patience for the many challenges of tomatoes, so no tomatoes next year. We always know people with excess tomatoes that we can have or buy cheaply, so I will put my energy into other crops.
  
  
• Consistent watering is not my strong suit. There always comes a time in the summer when something takes me away from the garden and things get too dry. I need to automate watering, using Self-Watering Containers (SWCs) and/or driplines.
  
  
• The potatoes were a limited success. I can buy them cheaper. I will just grow sweet potatoes, which did very well with little care in 2007.
  
  
• I liked the winter-sowing of herbs and annual flowers. I will do that in milk jugs again in late winter. Lots more basil.
  

Various herb sprouts in milk jug greenhouses in May.

I plan to use several growing methods. I like my fish boxes for for lettuce and other greens, raised high off the ground to avoid pests that munch and cats that spray urine. They are easy to cover with nets. I will sow the fishboxes around St Patrick's Day, when I plant onions at Mom's house.

I planted some big containers last year, and will do it again but make them SWCs. I got some recommendations from my container-gardening list, and I think I will plant peppers, eggplant, chard, zucchini, and celery in big SWCs.

I want to try Straw Bales at my mother's house. They will be good for a year or two, and will break down into her soil. I thought I would try the vining veggies there, cucumber and squashes.

What to plant in the ground when I might move? I was thinking lots of peas the mature early, and then beans if it looks like we will be here through the summer. Several rounds of basil can go in at my house and Mom's. Onions and other roots go in at her house, if I can get a decent raised bed prepared. I liked the carrots and beets this year. I am very tempted to buy "seed tape" for carrots and beets, which I spent a lot of time thinning.

I enjoyed growing my first onions this summer.

The herbs can go into portable clay pots again. Basil and parsley will come from seeds, but I think I will get another thyme, some sage, and some rosemary from starts at Glick's greenhouse.

I experimented with basil in pots and in the ground. Both worked,
but I need more of it. What looked like a lot of pesto in July,
is almost gone in December.

I want to grow larger amounts of fewer veggies, sticking more closely to what I know we will eat. I already have some seeds, from seed-saving, and from catalog orders this fall:

Corn, Ornamental Indian
Cabbage, Copenhagen (heirloom)
Pea, Mississippi Silver field pea
Pea, Tall Telephone - needs trellis
Pea, Black-eyed (saved)
Lentil, French Green
Basil, sweet Italian (saved)
Bean, Commodore Bush Bean (red)
Bean, Taylor Dwarf Horticultural Bush bean (saved)
Bean, Pole bean, Romano (Italian Flat)
Lettuce, Romaine, Parris Island Cos
Spinach, Bloomsdale Long Standing
Cucumber, Lemon Apple
Squash, Burgess Buttercup
Squash, Waltham Butternut

There is a Seed Round Robin coming in the mail from one of my lists, eventually. It might have things I am still missing. Otherwise, I will put in another catalog order. I still need:

chard
kale
sunflowers for seeds
pickling cukes
pie pumpkins
carrots
beets
thyme

Some things, I like as starts from Glick's where I can buy just one plant for less than 50-cents, for my small yard or container. Things I will get from starts at Glick's:

onions sets
sweet potato sets
one zucchini
one eggplant
celery

My cabbage and broccoli starts this past year were savaged in flats that were given to me when they were half-dead. I got a lot of veg from those free flats. I know that they originally came from the Kutztown Produce Auction. I am going to check that out in the spring. If I can get starts very cheaply, it will be a more efficient use of my time than nursing and thinning seeds. And, I can share extras with neighbors.

So, that's my plan, so far. I wish I could grow some fruit, but everything takes time to get established, so I will probably keep buying at markets and visiting u-pick places until we are settled someplace more permanently.

Independence Challenge - Week 22

My preciousssss....

I got my freezer Tuesday! DD15 and I picked it up at Sears, and then I carefully drove down the unpaved back alley. DH and DD15 wrestled it out of the Cherokee, through the yard, and out of its box. That was the easy part.

I opened the cellar doors for the first time in 5 years, and had to do a lot of spiderweb clearing in order for either DD15 or DH to agree to go further. Getting it the last few feet down the cellar stairs and through the door required removing some door trim and a little bit of knuckle skin. The ceiling is very low and DH whacked his poor head several times. But we saved the $65 delivery charge.

Came down these steps and through a low, narrow door we never use.

I let it sit overnight to settle the coolant, and plugged it in this morning. I've put in all my oats and rice to freeze any bug eggs they might be harboring, and I will do all the flour next. There is lots of meat on sale right now, and the holidays will bring sales on butter, nuts, and spices. I need to do some research on how I can stock up on cheese. Oooo, I am so excited.

Planted: Frost is on the horizon, so I took more cuttings to root over the winter: coleus, begonias, false indigo, salvia.

Harvested: Only some peppers, cabbage and broccoli are left and not quite ready. Not much harvesting will happen from now on, aside from the winter-hardy thyme I use in making stock. I still visit farmers and markets for local produce.

Preserved: Tried drying a few sweet peppers on a tray, but they got moldy. Better use the dehydrator next time. I would help if I stopped piling things on top of it.

Bought 10 pounds of Gala apples, part to dry and part to try storing in the basement. I plan to get some other varieties to try storing. I want to buy local, but the prices are 3x the supermarket price for Washington State apples. Even u-pick costs more. I need the volume right now. I've been trying to accumulate 10-15# of dried fruit, but the kids don't like raisins much. I have raisins, prunes, apricots, currants, and craisins. I need to flesh that out with dried bananas and apples.

Cooked: Shrimp curry and some pasta dishes came completely from storage. All of our baking does, too. We still need to shop for meat, eggs, and dairy, but more meals are coming from storage. Need to work harder on having "stuff" in the fridge for casual eating, without someone needing to cook a whole meal. Reheatables, and things for sandwiches and munching.

Not quite cooking, but we used some gourds to make Gourd Birds with black-eyed peas for eyes. I might put some skewer legs on them and put a few out front.


Stored: Starting to store tap water in recycled milk jugs. Six gallons, so far (plus the 45 gallons always in the water heater). I am planning to salvage jugs at church. They empty a few jugs of tea or punch every week at coffee hour. DD15 will also bring home the ones she empties and washes at her coffee shop job.

I studied the grocery store ads carefully, and shopped the sales from a list on Friday. Not a lot of extra driving. I mostly avoided impulse buying - just a bag of grapes, a big Rubbermaid canister for bread flour, a bag of my fav Goya soup bean mix, and a can of white hominy to try.

Redner's: whole chickens .68/lb, 2lb blocks of cheddar for 2.98/lb, Italian sausage for 2.18, and a pkg of beef shin to make stock. We ate some stuff from the little freezer, so I had room to cram in the chickens and meat.

Giant: 6 bags of pot pie noodles, 6 boxes of cake mix for doctoring up, 2 bottles of Hershey's syrup, 10# of unbleached flour, 4 boxes of Red Zinger tea (triple coupons), 6 jars of peanut butter, 10# apples, 2 quarts shampoo and 4 of conditioner, 4 boxes of jar lids.

Save-a-Lot: 5lb bags of white potatoes for $1, along with bananas at 3#/$1. Twenty pounds of taters for $4 is a good price to see how long they last in my cellar. Also got 6 cans of pineapple, bleach, band-aids, dandruff shampoo, garlic, 4# of brown sugar.

Found 2 large canisters of Sunmaid raisins for $5, at Rite-Aid. Drug store food is usually over-priced, but when they want to move old stock, they really mark it down. I had to go to Wal-mart to pick up a $4 Rx, so I snagged some ibuprofen, more allergy meds, and some toothbrushes.

Prepped: Installed bamboo pole to dry clothes, and bought more plastic hangers. Washed BR windows to prepare for bubble wrap and insulating curtains later this month. Heart-breakingly, the bamboo pole did not hold up under use. Back to the drawing board. I am going to try huge drywall screws right into joists.

This week's rummage sale loot included a roasting rack, 2 pair of gloves, three glass measuring cups, some sweaters for DD15, a few books. I've told each kid to expect the winter to be long and cold. They need to start doing their own rummaging for warm clothes at sales. Sweatshirts, bathrobes, socks and gloves, etc. Socks are often only a dime at sales - people think that "used" socks are icky, but I often find like-new socks for almost nothing. If nothing else, they make good dust cloths.

Got two unappealing paintings via Freecycle, so we can reuse the canvas. My kids are both good artists, and canvas is expensive. A few months ago, I was talking to an artist that went to the local Disney store when they had a going-out-of-business sale. He bought a huge number of printed canvas Disney poster for $1 each, to reuse the canvas. I have been keeping that in mind ever since.

Managed: Continued to re-organize the kitchen, now that so much food moved downstairs. Put away lots of pots, and jarred up the nuts and dried fruit. Still no good place for the stack of cast iron. I want a pot rack pretty badly, but I am afraid of damaging the (rental house) acoustic tile ceiling while poking around for a joist, and then being charged for damage when we leave.

I asked about 5-gal buckets at the Giant bakery department. They said they no longer save them for anyone, because it is too hard to manage with 3 shifts of bakery workers that don't communicate well. Apparently there was drama. I don't see how that stopped her from giving the empties immediately on hand to someone standing right in front of her, but it did. I will try some other stores.

Reduced Reused, Recycled: We had already replaced most of our incandescent light bulbs, but not the ones in our ceiling fan fixtures, which require a different shape. We found 5-packs of them at BJ's for $15 each. Pretty expensive for 10 light bulbs, when I can buy 40-watt chandelier bulbs for $2/6-pack. I hope to make up the difference in fewer bulbs and less energy used. We used to have to replace the bulbs pretty frequently, although we don't use those lights very often. The three fans (BR, LR, and kitchen) are in rooms that all have other light sources. I only turn them on to clean, when I want to see all the dirt. (No one wants to see it otherwise!) The new bulbs have a 2 year warranty, so I taped the receipt to the empty package and stashed it.

-->> Isn't it ironic that CFL bulbs come in huge hard plastic packages that cannot be recycled, and the old-fashioned bulbs come in recyclable paper and cardboard?

Got some free pallets from the playground construction project up the street. I am going to see what else I can scavenge. Posted a curb-alert to Freecycle so other people can get pallets. It so pays to have a sturdy teenager to haul your pallets down the block.

Local/Family: Getting ready to start a major effort at my Mom's house. I want to pack up the front and back porches, the living room, the kitchen and the hall. I hope to put a lot of it in the dining room, in numbered inventoried stacks of boxes, donating the tired old furniture. My goals are to make the outside of the house look tidy and to make room for a plumber to fix her pipes and fixtures. All of her bath/kitchen fixtures and hot water heater need replacing, along with the kitchen counter top. Long-dead washer and dryer need to be removed.

I dread it. There is so much stuff, and each item has emotional significance. Each piece of paper represents something she meant to do. It's like ripping off band-aid after band-aid. Getting rid of some moldering item she saved for 15 years represents a failure to keep something from the landfill, a failure to carry out a plan, and an acknowledgment that she has simply run out of time. I am getting professional support for her, but it will still be very upsetting. There is no choice - no matter how the future pans out for her, she needs to be able to tap the value of her house in order to live.

Learned: Signed up for a free self-study course online, about canning, through the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. I want to start pressure canning soup and other non-acid food, and I want to make sure not to poison us all.

Library: Found Tarot Made Easy at a sale. Thought it might be fun over the winter. We have a tarot deck in a drawer somewhere.

To-Do List Update

Things are on hold until this heatwave breaks Tuesday night, but then we have things to do in our yard:

- replant fish boxes with broccoli and lettuce
- start cowpeas to replace peas
- harvest remaining peas and compost vines
- harvest dill, bee balm, and mint
- pot up coleus and plant marigold starts
- water everything with epsom salts - 1 Tbl to 2 gallons
- shear the grass again later this week
- root cuttings of salvia, sedum, baptisia
- expand veggie bed for cabbage plants
- find source for food-grade 5-gallon buckets
- figure out peony problem - Phytophthora?
- move - bee balm, salvias, sedums, small peony, iris

And in Mom's yard:

- sort pots
- plant parsnips & sweet potatoes
- plant something new in fish boxes
- borrow pick-up truck to haul brush and scrap

Planning Round-up

As it starts to look very likely that we will move sometime this summer, I thought it would be good to go through my planning lists and round-up all the unfinished tasks that need doing.

In my own yard:

- water with Epsom Salts water, 1 Tbl in 2 gallons
- move potatoes out of pill-bug bucket - to Mom's
- finishing shearing grass for mulch
- Cut back the Sedums out front, and root cuttings.
- even out planting edge next to path
- make gift basket-gardens of greens and herbs
- find 5-gallon buckets to salvage
- buy 2 more bags of potting soil
- spray the peonies with baking soda water
- root cuttings of salvia and baptisia
- pot up - bee balm, small salvias and sedums
- move to Mom's - small peony, more iris (after bloom)

In Mom's yard:

- clear planting bed near gate
- prepare bed for carrots and parsnips
- plant sweet potatoes
- set up a fish box of greens
- find room for straw bales
- look for bean pole materials
- Patrol front yard for weeds
- call metal recycling places
- check into straw bales on Oley Turnpike Rd

To-Do for Next Week

Aside from adding compost and scattering some eggshells around, I haven't done much fertilizing. I got a lot of blossom-end rot last year, so I need to do a bit more than *nothing* this year.

- Put paper collars on eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes
- Water all the veg with Epsom Salts water, 1 Tbl to 2 gallons.
- Figure out a way to control the pillbugs in the potatoes.
- Shear grass and mulch with it.
- Cut back the Sedums out front, and root cuttings.
- Clear some space in the back for herbs and parsnips.
- Plant germinated parsnips in tubes. (done)
- ENJOY the iris and peonies that are about to bloom.

Going to work on Mom's yard tomorrow for Mother's Day:

- Clear planting beds near gate
- Plant sweet potatoes
- Set up a fish box of greens
- Find some pea fence twigs to bring home
- Make room for straw bales
- Discuss bean poles
- Patrol front yard for weeds
- Still need to call recycling places
- Look harder for straw bales - Oley Turnpike Rd?

We had to miss the Master Gardener Sale, much to my disappointment. But the Oley Vo-tech has a sale from its greehouse next Tuesday, so maybe we can still find some nice things. We can always get more veg at Glick's, or try another nursery.

Plan for Mom's Yard

My plan for Mom's yard is developing. So far:

- dig and amend a root vegetable bed
- do some straw bale gardening for other veg
- do a lot of the sprawling plants that don't fit in my yard
- culinary herbs in containers - she has lots of pots

Thinking: sweet potatoes, pole beans, winter squash/gourds/pumpkins, cucumbers, cabbage and kale, at least one tomato for her to eat. Watermelon?

Going to the County Extension's Master Gardener Sale next Friday, where I can look for veg to plant in her yard. Although, I got such a good deal on canna bulbs last year...

Kyle agreed to go pick up straw bales in his pick-up for Mom's yard. I need to find some bales first. I am going to dig a root bed for her tomorrow afternoon, and have Kyle get bales if I can locate some.

More good progress at Mom's

We put a lot of stuff out at the curb for the spring bulk-trash pick-up at Mom's house. Lined almost the whole front curb. It made a big difference in her back yard. Most importantly, she put out more stuff on her own, which tell me she is getting the message. On Saturday, DD15 and I worked on making one of the backyard beds look better. We want her to get immediate visual gratification for making changes.

Next to the back door is a brick-edged bed with roses, poppies, and lily-of-the-valley, but choked with grass and full of garden tools and stakes against the wall. We made a spot around the backside of the house to sort stakes and tools into milk crates. We sorted all the stuff, and sawed the ends off some broken tools to leave the handles for stakes. Mom got to work weeding. The bed looks good now, and the plants will fill in more normally. I still have to work on getting the poison ivy out of the Rose of Sharon bush at the corner of the house.

Made a big pile of cast iron scrap - have to call the recycling place this week to get prices and get rid of that stuff. We established a brush pile with a carpet path to it, so we can gather stuff for an annual chipping event. I want to also start a second compost pile near that. We will need to clean out the whole composting area behind the shed.

Next, I want to clear some actual vegetable bed. I want to be able to do some substantial planting by Mother's Day. Bean poles would be good.

Earth Day

We went to Earth Day at Centre Park on Sunday, between rain showers. It wasn't as well attended as I recall in the past. Partly the threat of rain, but there was also a lot of competition from the live Obama appearance at the high school at the same time. The kids found it boring - the face painting was lame, and there were not enough activities for the number of kids there. The whole event needs refreshing. It has turned into a series of tents with petitions for adults to sign.

They had recycling bins next to all the trash cans - but people didn't pay any attention. There as mixed trash and recyclables in both. We need a return to the basic messages about littering and recycling - and it need to tie into city living more. City gardening - container gardening, environmental issues in the city.

I thought the live raptors were cool - there was a booth with a live turkey vulture, a horned owl, and a red-tailed hawk.

We got two tiny lilac bushes Miss Kim, supplied by the Henry company, who makes the recycled molded-paper pots they came in. Miss Kim is supposed to have a smaller habit, more disease resistance, and less tendency to form suckers. Reported to have very fragrant flowers. But they are only 6" tall at this point!

We also scored a violet plant - which we didn't really need, and some sunflower seeds in newspaper pots. We will plant the lilacs and violets in Mom's yard today. We are going to go do some work this afternoon. I guess that's our Earth Day commitment this year - we are working steadily on cleaning up Mom's back yard and returning it to use as a productive vegetable garden.

Progress at Mom's

We have begun to work on Mom's yard. We went for a few hours each day on Wednesday and Thursday. There is a bulk trash pick-up on the 26th, and we want to have a lot of stuff out on the curb. We are sorting and organizing, filling trash bags and recycling bins that go out Monday. We assembled a lot of hubcaps that she thinks are valuable - we can take them to someone who trades in them, so she can hear what they are really (not) worth.

The kids have been working on raking leaves out of the bushes and flowerbeds, building a leaf composting pile outside the side fence. We have a good collection of stuff at the back of the driveway to put out for bulk pick-up. DD11 took charge of collecting all the artificial greenery and Christmas stuff that had been stuck into various crevices. We bagged it with a collection of 6 old rotted basketballs, and brought it home to put put out in our trash. She has an awkward by-the-bag trash arrangement.

It frustrates the kids sometimes, that we have to talk her into doing things that seem obvious, but she is more cooperative than I expected. No major blow-ups so far. I keep reminding her that she is at risk of enforcement action if her yard looks like she is collecting trash. We are making real progress. I think it helps to keep talking about gardening goals. We found a nice patch of Virginia Bluebells in the back corner. She has good boxwoods, dogwoods, and other plantings.

We are looking for a way to borrow or rent a chipper for a day, to make a pile of mulch with her yard trimmings. Kurt works in landscaping, and might be able to help us out. It looks like he did a good job of helping her trim the horribly overgrown pear tree.

There is room to do a lot of good vegetable gardening once we remove some of her stuff. She has some compost to get started with, although her dirt is horrible clay that needs a *lot* of amendment. She has been taking too much stuff down to the field to get rid of it - she needs to keep all the organics she can get to make more compost. I will get some more fish boxes for lettuce and greens for her - she has a real rabbit problem. But she also has a number of good places to put the boxes well off the ground.

We will go back this weekend for another few hours. I am buying a trash can to use for water collection, and a new clothesline. Need to clear a safe path under the clothesline for her.

If we go 2-3 times a week for an hour or two at a time, we will make progress, and keep her from back-sliding. Once the garden is established, she should feel good about it's usability. We can then move on to the back patio and get a table set up in there, so she can sit in the shady area when it is hot. The challenge will be to keep from re-filling the back yard with stuff when we start to work on the cellar and porch.