Peppers in my Garden

So I felt like my last post was getting really long, so I decided to make a new post to talk about the peppers.

For anyone who doesn't know, I got some Bhut Jalokia seeds for Raven's birthday this year, and it has been a project of mine to grow them for him.  When I started the seeds, I got a lot of seedlings and gave 2 pots of them away to friends.  I kept and planted 4 seedlings in the ground, and 3 of them have survived.  So three out of four isn't bad.  This is the little patch behind the apartment.

The bhut jalokias (ghost chile) don't look like much in their little patch, but I have some buckets set aside so that this winter we can dig them up and over winter them in the house.  In India, they plant these peppers as elephant deterant because they are so hot they hurt the elephants when they step on them! Really give that a thought- elephant deterrant and I know people who are going to eat them!  The middle one is doing the best and here is a close up of it.



Ghost Chile

I also picked up a green bell pepper at half price today and I have put it in one of my huge pots, because I don't have a "veggie" plot this year.  I will actually eat the bell pepper.  Raven won't, but that's why the spicy peppers are for him!  I'll take most of the jalapenos and ghost chiles and put them in the dehydrator so we can use them year round for seasoning.  I've done that for years, and I talk about doing it and what I use in my cooking blog, in case you are interested.

                                    

This is one of my humongous pots that I got Thursday.  I had found an old packet of lettuce seed and sown it loosely, but I needed a place to put my bell pepper, so I stuck him in there.  A few Marigolds as well, which will help keep the mosquitoes away.  No idea how old the lettuce seed is but if the lettuce actually comes up it will be a bonus!

The last plant I got today was a jalapeno.  It is going to go up closer to the house out of the way for Raven to mow.  I plan on putting in more up there next spring, but for now, the jalapeno can be a loner, LOL. You can't plant jalapenos with tomatoes or it will make the tomatoes spicy, and I don't want that!  I also couldn't plant it with my other peppers for fear that the jalapeno would get spicier!  

Garden Spot update!

Ok, so a few people know that I am super, super excited about my little garden spot that I am making.  It is thrilling me to no end to be able to get my hands in the dirt again.  This is the supplies that I picked up Thursday.  Yes, all in my little VW in one trip.  My car was driving a little funny with all that weight in the back of it (in addition to this stuff, there was a 40 lb bag of dog food and a bag of charcoal, LOL).  I got a 64 Qt bag of potting mix, a bag of mulch about that same size, 10 concrete edging stones, and 4 pots.  Two of the pots are big ones, like 15 qt I think, and the other 2 are like 5 qt or something similar.

I was glad I got the time to spend out with Raven, as we rarely get to do anything together anymore.  After we got to Lowe's and he was loading all this heavy stuff  he asked me what I would have done with out him.  I told the truth, I would act cute and get the Lowe's men to put it on my cart for me, then I would have them put it in the car.  Then when I got home, I would have unstacked the edgers in the yard and before he went to work, I would have asked Raven to get the two bags out of the car for me.  It wouldn't have been a lie either, LOL. 

The very beginning!

After we finally got home, I was so excited to get started on my garden and the sun was drifitng lower in the sky so it was a good time to get started.  Not as hot!  Raven unloaded my goodies and I got to work.  I had forgotten what a pain it was to get edging stones in level, having to dig out my area with a hand trowel, but I worked steady and had most of it done in about 2 hours.  I was happily filthy and had made a great bit of progress when I gathered my stuff up to go in for the night.  This is the first night's progress:

So after I got cancelled from work today, I had to go home, because the staffing was misread. There was an accident on the road home, so I stopped to browse at the Mayo garden center.  It had a bunch of plants for 50% off and a lot of them were ones that I wanted anyway.  So I made some more progress on it today.  This season isn't going to yield a lot since it is so late in the year, but next year will be a different story all together!  So in addition to what is in this entry is a green bell pepper and a jalapeno, I will talk about my peppers in another entry.

I got a few herbs for half price, on the left is a mint julep and on the right is a variegated pineapple mint.  The middle pot remains empty for a chocolate mint cutting a friend gave me.  I am just waiting for it to take root.



Chocolate mint cutting

 
 So the last thing that I have planted that I will share in this post are beans.  There are two varieties.  A purple bean that a friend gave me and some Blue Lakes.  They are both pole beans, since I freaking hate the bush varieties.  Here are their pots :

I am going to run some string from the lattice down to the pots so the beans have  something to grab ahold of and start climbing.  It won't take them long to get to the lattice and then I won't have any problems.  

So I have several things going on and I will leave off this post with a few pics od the garden thus far!  A closer shot of the little plot and a wider angle to show the entire area so it can be compared with the first shots I had up.













Building my altar

So my knowledge of my religion is growing, slowly.  In the house, we have a little make-shift altar that I am working on improving.  Right now it doesn't consist of very much, but it is getting there. It was just 3 little dinky candles on top of the television.  It just didn't seem right.

I don't have much to work with the altar on, and to me right now the one in the house is just a place to recognize God and Goddess on the solstices.  Nothing big.  Anyways, here is what we had so far...

Raven is picking up a plain red pillar candle in the morning on the way home to go in the middle.  I also have a jar of sea shells that Dalton and I picked up on the beach when we went to Panama City several years ago  that will do to represent water until I can get something that I like better.  I am just trying to figure out where to put them in the arrangement here. 


So for all my pagan friends, what do I need to round out the little family altar?  Most of my worship is done outside, not inside, where I can just feel grounded and connected to earth.  I don't even really know what all goes on an altar and what they are all used for.  I know that each of the 5 points is supposed to be represented: earth, air, fire, water and spirit...  but when I look through some of the pagan sites and search for altar things, I find also a knife and a bowl as well as altar cloths, incense and all kinds of other things.

What do you say about an altar and what it needs, or are the candles sufficient for the little family place in the house when you do most of your worship outside?   I need a little help and guidance here please :)

Gardening

So, I have come to terms with the fact that we are going to probably be in this cheap apartment for a while.  With that said, I am giving a lot of thought to making myself happier here.  I'm looking in to making a nice container garden at my back door and what it will take to do that. 

I would like to start acquiring the materials to do this now, since most of it will be going on sale and make it more feasible for me to do.  Plus breaking the project apart in to separate little steps will make it easier financially too!  Breaking things up into smaller pieces is always a good thing!

So this is the space I am working with.  To the left you can see my two tomato plants that I am growing this year.  The space is about 34" wide by 50" deep. In addition to that, across the back, right next to the house is a ledge of concrete from the footer of the house that is about 6" wide, but is not entirely flat.  I want to take the new bed to the edge of the house, which will go right up against where my tomatoes currently are, but I can plant them farther out next year.  The bed will come just to the end of the concrete slab that is already there.

This is a picture of the entire area outside my back door.  The trellis and poles of the little deck on the right side I intend to make use of next year with some larger pots and pole beans.  I'm not sure about the area under the deck, just that I want it to be more usable.  I think that will be easier with the weed eater fixed because there is some kind of mutant weed in there that has really fat sturdy stalks.  And it's shady... I think I just want the whole area to be more attractive, and just feel like a special place for me.

This is the view of my back yard, which is to the left in the other pictures (in the bottom of the frame, you can see the tops of my tomato plants). It is really quite large and very nice and serene.  I think I would spend more time outside and enjoying myself and feeling more grounded if the space were nicer.  There are nice bones here to work with, I just gotta do it.

I need to take a trip down to the end of the back yard and figure out how to get down in to the creek back there. I know that there are probably some rocks back there that I can use to edge it with, and that would be free, but I am not sure it is the look I want.  I am thinking more along the lines of this edger I found at Lowe's for $1.46 each.  I figure I will need 9 of them, 10 just to be sure I have what I need.

 

I'll also need to get some landscaping fabric, but since I don't plan on actually planting in the ground, I think I can use some black plastic, which I already have, to keep pesky grass from growing up between my planters.  The next step is to find the planters I want to use and get them situated in there.  I really want to to a kind of tiered look, with larger pots up next to the house in the back and work out to smaller pots, with a smooth river rock poured around the base of the pots.  

There are some inherent problems with using big pots.  Number one, they are freaking heavy!  No matter how you slice it, once the containers are filled, they are so heavy and hard to move, and if I take the time to pick out things I like and enjoy being around, when we eventually move, I am going to want to take them with me.  The second thing is, they take a lot of material to fill.  I think probably the best bet for regular plants in them is to use a cinderblock or two to take up some of the space in there, maybe putting a plank on top of it to keep from having to fill the entire space with dirt or rocks and saving some on the weight factor.  

I want to use at least one big galvanized tub, like these, at the back of my little garden, and yes, I am aware that I probably won't get to take it with me when we end up moving.  I don't know where to find these metal containers though, I really kind of lucked up on finding this picture on the internet.  I wonder if they have them at the tractor supply store or something.  I also don't want to spend a whole bunch on them either.  So, if I have a big one of these at the back, and to the far left of it I plant a dwarf evergreen in another big pot, then I can size down my pots toward the front of the space and put a whole variety of things in them.  I want to grow a whole bunch of things here.  I am going to have a whole wish list of seeds and seedlings!  I can't wait.  The more I think about it, the more excited I get!  I don't think I realized exactly how much I missed having my own little space until just this moment!

Hard time

So I am having a hard time adjusting to this dieting business.  I'm supposed to get between 1200-1600 calories daily to lose weight.  I feel like I am freaking starving to death all the time.  I hate this feeling.   I still don't feel like I am eating a bunch of bad things, except for my cookie binge the other night.  I just feel like I am waiting on the clock to hit midnight so I can eat something else.  Looking at my tracker seems like I am eating a decent diet, but I can't figure out why I am so hungry.  I wonder if it's because I am right after my period.  I don't want to make excuses, but I am SO hungry.  I don't want to be hungry, but I am tired of being fat too.  You would think that a lot of vegetables would mean a lot of fiber and it is supposed to fill you up.  I am not having that experience.

Yours truly,
Frustrated Fat Girl

Realized something

I am trying to punish myself for the damned cookies last night.  I felt guilty eating a half a cup of mashed potatoes.  Geez, I still have to have stuff for my body to run on now, no matter how many empty calories I ate last night. 

At least I realized what I am doing and I can try and get it on track now.  Well at least not have that horrible feeling anymore.  Who am I kidding, that feeling won't go away for a few days, but at least I know that I am doing it now and can work on rectifying the situation.  I know if I feel like I am punishing myself I am going to be more likely to binge more.  I will feel justified, you know, the whole "well I lived on raw veggies for 2 days, I deserve a box of cookies."  I think it would be easier if Raven liked the same kinds of treats I did and we could look out for each other, but it doesn't work that way and I would feel bad because they went bad before I ate them all. 

A step every day, is one step closer to the goal!

Stupid wagon

Well, as I said before I am trying to get back on the healthy wagon again.  There are things that complicate that journey.  Like the 3000+ calorie day I am having.  I hate hormones.  They make me crave things I don't even like and this time it was chocolate.  So when I stopped at the store to get fresh veggies to snack on, I had to get the chocolate no bake cookies I have been craving for 3 days.  So when I got home, instead of having a cookie or two, I ate the whole package.

Yes, I am a pig.  So what do I say about a 3000+ calorie day?  Shit happens.  I will do better.  But I do feel bad about it, probably more bad than I need to, because I usually do a fairly good job at eating well.  Hormones make us all do crazy shit, mine just have help because of the ongoing funk I am in. 

I did start working out the other night.  I couldn't do more than about 25 minutes, but at least I got off my ass.  I am still sore from it, but I plan on working out again tonight.  I just have to make myself do it.  Life changes are hard and take time to set in and see the results from them.  They are even harder to make when you have a predisposition to depression and addictions.  I figure if I keep plugging away at it, sooner or later I will win. 

And yes, I ate a whole pack of cookies, but at least I admit it and I have been eating veggies since I got up today.  I think I need more protein for the day though, so I will have some pork chop when I fix Master his dinner.