Clean Feels So Good!

        I hadn't really cleaned up after I got home from Tijuana. Since I was sick, I kind of just threw my stuff into my room without putting it away (and around the house too). I'm really surprised my family put up with it for as long as they did, but today I finished up putting everything away. It feels so nice to be able to walk through my room without having to pick my way over piles of clothes, bags, and papers now!

        We are getting ready to have a bunch of work done on our house; the roof, windows, etc. It has made me think about how much I really like my house. Sure, I would far rather live out in the country, but where I am is amazing considering we're in the SF Bay Area. I live in an 1896 Victorian style home right next to a creek. Kind of an ideal location, wouldn't you say? I really like my room, too. It's only 96 square feet - less than 10' by 10' if that helps - and it used to be part of an attic. It's cozy, to say the least. I have to have tiny furniture, and any small thing on the floor makes it feel cramped. I keep it clean, for the most part, because of that. :) After I finished cleaning today, I took some pictures as the sun was setting.

        No, my room doesn't look like it belongs in a magazine. The carpet is faded and strewn with straw half the time, the sheets are faded and the corners cluttered. Each of the hooks has about four shirts, dresses, or jackets on it, and the furniture is a bit banged up.

         But it's cozy. The sun shines in in the evenings, and it's a lovely place to read or knit that scarf that's taking too long. I still don't know why I painted the walls such a bright green color three years ago, but I'm living with it.

 

         Lissie enjoys the open window above my bookshelf, especially when it's open:

         She also really likes, um, the duck. She has a fit if I take it off the bed, so I have to keep this hideous stuffed animal. It's a family joke that it will be buried with her.

        We are all pleased with the clean room now. ;)

Blessings,

Reyna

Late Spring Harvest

        I've been doing quite a bit of work with herbs lately, both in my garden and along the creek bank. As I've been doing my work, I took my camera with me and snapped a few pictures of the plants and the processing. I think I have rosemary, thyme, peppermint, and catnip, but as I go through my pictures I may find more. 

        My rosemary has really been needing a haircut lately, so a few days ago I chopped a bunch of it off. I'm afraid it hardly put a dent in what needed to come off, but oh well. My dehydrator isn't big enough to do all that I need at once.

        I dried it and then crumbled it all up and put it in a mason jar. Don't ask me what I'm going to do with it all - I don't know. The other thing is, I need to take a lot more off as well. Maybe I'll go walking around town with a pushcart and a megaphone. Anyone want some rosemary?? Just kidding. 

        I put a picture of some thyme in a previous post, but I'll elaborate a little on what I was doing with it. If you remember, I was very sick when I got home from my ministry trip to Tijuana. I have found from prior experience that thyme tea with honey is one of the best things for a bad sore throat, next to ginger-sage tea. Well, I didn't have any sage at the moment, so I used thyme. I had about a gallon of this tea a day; I would brew a quart at a time and add a tablespoon of honey. Yum!

        Down on the creek bank, the peppermint is a few weeks away from blooming, and ready to harvest. When I let the goats out to graze I go looking for new stands to harvest from - it seems like they multiply exponentially every year. And no, I haven't yet figured out the constant for the equation {At=A0(e^kt}.

        More calendula (I am planning a whole post on what I do with this in a couple of weeks):

        I also have a bit of anise blue hyssop that I've been drying. I am planning on experimenting with different tea blends with that, peppermint, spearmint, catnip, and lemon balm. If you didn't already know, those are all mints as well. Most of the catnip I grow goes to this lazy animal below, but I do keep some of it for myself.

         Here is a picture of the overgrown mess that is my garden right now:

        My echinacea has its first bloom!

         As I said before, I have a couple of posts in the making on what I do with the things I grow in my garden (and forage from the creek bank). Keep an eye out for those in two weeks or so.

Blessings,

Reyna

Our Farm

        Now, don't get me wrong, it's not an actual farm. But it's as close as we can get for the time being, so we make the most of what we have. Here are some pictures of around, starting with our inside animals and such:

The girls, Cookie (front) and Felicity (back)

Cookie:

And Felicity. This is when she was a lot younger. Isn't she adorable!

  

Then we have my mom's breeding tank of tilapia, which are actually the only ones left. Sorry for the bad pictures:

        Now moving to outside. We had eight chickens, but sent two to live at my Grammy's house so she could try out the whole poultry thing. Now we have Lavender, Chamomile (Millie), Larkspur, Willow, and the Terra Cotta twins (as we call the red sex-links), Honey and Sorghum. Here are some pictures:

Lavender:

Millie:

Lark:

Willow:

Honey:

Sorghum:

 

        Then we have my baby goatling, Eponine. She is a purebred registered Nigerian Dwarf, and she is beautiful and cute and silly and many other wonderful things. I bought her when she was five days old and she is quite a character now at seven months.  When she is a few months older we will breed her and then she will have baby goatlings! In case you were wondering, they are not actually called goatlings, but kids. We just call them goatlings because it is cute.

 

        We also have (or I have) two rescued pigeons. Actually one is a wedding dove that got lost on her way home, but they are both Columba Livia.

Allegro:

And Tendu (pronounced ton-doo):

 

        We also have a garden (of course), but we just had three days of frost and it's not doing so great. I'll post pictures later, I promise. That means in a couple of months when stuff is growing again.

         In the side yard we have the outdoor tilapia aquaponics system. my mom built this whole thing about a year ago. It even has a large-ish storage shed under the grow bed. I think there are a few cabbages and broccolis in the grow bed right now.

        Our farm is always growing in one way or another, not in boundary or square feet, but in other ways. Oh, and our neighbors goat Lily is going to be kidding, Lord willing, in mid to late January! So exiting! And if you want to see an amazing farm and family blog, I advise checking out www.shannonranch.net. The Shannons are amazing people, and their blog is a delight!

        I'll most likely elaborate on most of the things you saw later, so there will be more details.

Blesings,

Reyna