The Trash Pile

There is a little section of my garden that I refer to as the trash pile. It is the area under a bradford pear tree (I hate this tree - it shades prime real estate, has stinky flowers in the spring and drops nasty little fruits all over the patio every fall) where I let the weeds grow rampant and where I pile up all the 'trash' at the end of the growing season.

It's not really a compost pile because I have a compost pile on the other side of the yard. This is just the place where I dump stuff. And I usually find treasures here when the new growing season starts. This year is no different than any other year.

The Trash Pile is currently home to 7 chamomile plants, mountains of catnip, and a few stray tomatoes. Truth be told, I have tomato plants popping up in such large quantities that I am giving them away to friends and family members. They have been showing up in such random places that I wonder why I bothered saving seeds from them at all.

I stepped on a thorn tonight and also ran another thorn into my thumb. Yes I know that there are things called shoes and gloves, but honestly, I just love to feel the dirt under my feet and in my hands. Even as I am typing this, I am still pretty well covered in mud.

I've been thinking about renting the church kitchen and having a 'canning' party later this season. Lord knows I'm going to have more tomatoes than I will know what to do with! As we get further into the year, I feel more strongly about preparing and helping others prepare for times to come. Maybe it's the fact that I cannot buy groceries for $50 a week anymore. ($87 this week - and I tried to get only sale items.) Maybe it's the dire economic predictions, the political scene and the state of our country in general. I don't know. But it's on my heart to prepapre and help others know how to prepare. Plus - canning in a group could be a LOT of fun.

Creative Inventory - Last Question

What time of day are you most receptive to inspiration?

I wish I had a definitive answer to this question. I wish I could say every morning I wake up with a fresh batch of ideas that came upon me in the places between my dreams.

But the truth is that I don't think I'm ever very receptive to inspiration. When it comes, it is usually haphazard and at an inconvenient moment in the day. I don't get a lot of time to just sit alone with my thoughts and allow them to flow. Even now, I am frantically trying to put together a sentance before I need to go to the post office and ship some packages and after that, go work at the bank for a few hours. If I did wake up with a good idea this morning, it is long forgotten in the rush of the morning. If I chance upon it later tonight, it will probably disappear into the exhausted folds of my gray matter while I'm falling asleep.

Part of my goal in drawing out this creative inventory is to discover when, where and how my muse reaches me. I am proud that I have gone through each question honestly and with my heart laid open like a book. I recognize that I need specific times and specific places. I realize that I am messy, disorganized and lopsided in my creative life. It's time for me to set these things right. I don't believe I'll ever fully reach my dream of becoming a full time 'artist' if I can't get the creative side of me in order.

There is probably more to be said, but the post office is waiting, and so is work at the bank.

Creative Inventory Part 8

What has been your greatest creative hurdle thus far?

Easily, my greatest creative hurdle is finishing what I start. This is even evident in the fact that I 'started' this blogging the answers to these questions, and it's been 4 days since the last time I posted. Not on purpose - I just have never had a really good drive to complete anything.

Starting projects is fun and new. It's enticing. The elements are sitting in various pieces all around the table and looking at each other, wondering how they will fit together. But once the project gets underway, it loses it's novelty and after awhile, especially if it doesn't turn out the way I intended, I will stop working on it. The poor project becomes just another of my unfinished pieces in a box. And I have a LOT of unfinished dresses and other sewing projects. A LOT of unfinished stories in Word files on the computer. A LOT of half-done paintings.

Finishing - staying interested to the end - it my greatest hurdle. It's also the reason I believe I need a partner to keep me accountable. I just haven't found the right partner yet. But I know he/she is out there!

Savory Leek Soup - Straight From The Garden

This morning was one of serious productivity. I had the grass mowed before 8:30 this morning and just now I dug up all of the onions and most of the leeks. The leeks were an interesting experiment for me from last year. They have been in my yard for almost a year now and I believe they struggled to grow almost as much as I struggled to lift them from the dirt. I unknowingly sowed their seeds in an area with heavy clay very close to the topsoil. The poor roots had nothing helping them achieve their fullest potential.

Though my leeks never got more than a half inch in diameter, they still had a fine flavor and sweet onionish fragrance. My plan all along for these babies was to make them into a savory leek soup with potatoes and freeze them for a day in the future winter when I can warm it up and think fondly back to this hundred degree, 100% humidity day in early June, when my deepest cares were simply the abundance coming out of the garden.

So this is the recipe. It would have been smart to take some pictures, but alas, I didn't think about that today. I just had digging and cooking on my mind.


Savory Leek and Potato Soup

6-8 small leeks (white and light green parts only), chopped
5 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed with a spoon
salt, pepper
two pinches of dried basil, or 4 fresh leaves chopped
3 cloves of fresh garlic
2 tablespoons butter
One can of vegetable broth (16 ounces)


In a saucepan, saute the leeks and garlic in butter until crisp tender.

After boiled and mashing the potatoes, add the broth to them and bring to a boil. 
Add leeks and garlic. Boil, stirring continuously. Mixture will be lumpy.
Season with salt, pepper and basil to taste.
Once the soup mixture is heated thoroughly, transfer the mixture to the food processor in batches and process until thick and smooth. Add milk if desired, to make the soup creamier and thinner.
Enjoy immediately, or put in freezer containers to enjoy at a later time! Especially delicious in a bread bowl, sprinkled with fresh cheese. :)

Creative Inventory Q&A Part 7

Does nature influence your creativity? How so?

In a word, yes.

But this sounds very similar to the question about whether or not there is a certain element that draws me.

I am a Taurus, and Earth-sign, and one that is definitely influenced by nature. Sometimes I am exasperating to others because I simply must stop in the middle of whatever it is I am doing to go and examine those roses over there, or the leaves of that tree, or the texture of those rocks. I am often compelled by Nature to stop and take in the beauty all around me.

I am always stunned by the amazing detail that is in the Earth. It's one of the things that leads me to believe in a Creator God and not just billions of years of accidental explosions - although I do have elements of the theory of evolution that I believe whole-heartedly. I just don't believe that it all came from nothing and will some day all return to nothing. (Call me crazy, it helps me feel like I have hope and a purpose on this waterball of a planet we call home.)

Side tangent - sort of. Often Christian ministers will remind their flocks that God is their Father, and the perfect father; the one who nurtures, and loves unconditionally and never fails, so unlike many earthly fathers, especially in our modern society. But I always had trouble finding God to be a heavenly Father because, well, my father was about as close to perfect as can be. I love my Daddy, and I don't think he has ever let me down yet. He isn't God, but he was unselfish and supportive through our entire upbringing. It's hard to replace that earthly father with God if you don't really have a reason to. It was at this point that I started identifying God as more of an Artist and source of true inspiration for me. Now of course, I recognize all the elements of Christian faith, but it was when I began to seek God for a facet of His personality that I could actually identify with, that I began to have a real relationship with him. God does fill gaps in our lives - He just doesn't fill the same gaps in everybody's lives.

Nature brings me  to my knees in wonder. Just as an example of how I draw inspiration, I will mention that I've always been a bit of a collector and still to this day I have a collection of stones and seeds and dried flowers lined up on my kitchen windowsill. The different textures, colors and patterns have incited different landscapes in my stories, specific details in my paintings and probably most importantly, make me smile during the day.

I thank God for the beauty and detail of his marvelous Art Project. Nothing brings greater joy to this artist's soul than knowing that He made it to help draw my best ideas out of me.

Creative Inventory Pt. 6

"Do you have any creative rituals?"

This concept confused me. I have never had any creative rituals, and it struck me that I almost go about my creativity rather willy-nilly, simply starting and stopping whenever I feel like it and giving up on ideas that don't come out right the first time. It seems like an extraordinarily self-defeating way to work. After all, one of my greatest inspirations, Ludwig van Beethoven, couldn't work unless he dumped buckets of water over his head. There must be something to this 'ritual' thing that has never presented itself to me before.

So I am going to attempt to invent some creative rituals to help my ideas blossom and my drive to complete my work grow stronger.

Anybody know how to invent rituals? I do not.

What I hope to do is begin with the things that I know lead me into inspiration. Certain pieces of music will probably be listened to before I begin to write, and I will probably walk through the garden, enjoying my beautiful flowers and plants for a few minutes to help focus my mind. (Unless that doesn't work and instead, I begin to work in the garden.) I will try to get out of the house for at least a little bit every day, and I am going to experiment with whether creating before work, or after work is the best time of day for me.

And I'm going to be reading. Doing lots and lots of reading. I have already begun, and there are several more books on the way that I hope will help me fine-tune my skills.

I am curious to know if there are any tasks or rituals that anyone else out there might find useful? What drives your inspiration or brings out your best ideas?

Creative Inventory Part 5

What activates your creative energy? What deactivates it?

I don't think I can even list all the things that get me in the mood to create!! I am inspired always by beautiful things. Now wait, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so what can I possibly mean by that? I guess it's more complicated than simply "I am inspired by beauty".

Remember how I said I have a natural talent for seeing the possible? It goes along with that. I am inspired by blank canvasses. A raw, uncut piece of fabric. A huge open stretch of land that has nothing growing on it yet. Entire days where I have nothing that has to be done! (I can't wait for Wednesday, my day off this week!) A basket-full of balls and skeins of yarn that haven't been woven into anything yet.

Sunny days inspire my Earthiness and pull me out-of-doors into the sunshine to dig in the dirt, to design gardens of flowers and vegetables and fruits and to adore the beauty of Creation.

Stormy days bring out my 'hand-made' creativity. All things fine arts are produced on stormy days - new dresses, new crochet designs, new tales of haunted house, pirates, and best friends, new drawings and worst of all - encourage me to redecorate a room of the house. (This occasionally gets me into trouble.)

Days that are in between stormy and sunny make me want to play the piano for hours and sing. Cloudy days don't give a lot of leniency for sitting around, nor do they make me want to coax seedlings to grow taller, and so my heart begins to sing the blahs away.

BUT I begin to feel drained when the project has carried on for too long. This is my creative downfall and why I am so terrible at follow-through. I begin projects with gusto, anxious to bring the thoughts in my head into reality. Once they begin to take much longer than I originally planned - especially sewing projects if they must be ripped apart and resewn - I begin to lose my creative spark toward that project and it will become just another statistic in my pile of things unfinished. When something no longer stimulates my eye for the possible, I lose interest, and, often, move on to the next stimulus. This is something that makes me believe that I need a partner to work with - someone to hold my nose to the grindstone.

Deadlines are especially effective for me. If I promised to deliver something the next day, you can bet I will pull an all-niter to finish it!

A Moment of Thought

Today a poor bird flew into our picture window, broke his neck, fluttered to the porch floor, closed his eyes and died..

And yet somehow, the Holy Spirit used this to bring to mind a Bible verse that seems to be just for me.

Matthew 6:26

"Consider the birds of the air; for they do not sow, nor do they reap, or stow away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them (and provides care for them). Are you (precious children) not even more valuable (to your Heavenly Father) than they are?"

Grand Re-Re-Opening

It's official! L.Peek Designs is re-opening tomorrow morning!

It's actually open right now, with one single listing - a pair of orange Baby Chucks. :) But tomorrow I will begin the relistings and while I will not be crocheting full time like I was prior to March 1st, I will be devoting a good portion of time to maintaining the shop.

I'm really excited about this. This is one of my true loves so it's going to be wonderful to get going again.

Creative Inventory Part 4

4 When and where do you create? When and where do you wish to create?

I actually do not have a specific time or place to work out my creative musings, and I am beginning to think that I might be more productive if I did. My work tends to travel around the house, depending on when and where I feel like coming to rest. That's the problem with knitting and crocheting I guess - it's portable. It may start life in the living room because I'm watching TV, but then I might migrate to the music room or the dining room or even the backyard. Maybe my 'where' is just simply 'Home'. My sewing room, our extra bedroom, used to be my 'place' but now it's become more of a storage closet in the last few months, housing anything that I can't find a place for in the rest of the house.

As for time, this is probably an issue that I need to resolve. I do not have good time management skills at all - not even remotely good ones. It might take me half an hour to get one room vacuumed because I will get distracted somewhere in the middle of it and start doing something else. I do not have a set time for creativity. Whenever I am not at work, not teaching piano lessons, not cleaning the house and not caring for my husband's needs. Sometimes I get an entire day to be creative. Sometimes I don't have a single moment's peace. Most of the time I am lucky to get half an hour before bed in the evening and it's when I'm tired, my thoughts are going into hibernation for the night and Alex is trying to force me into watching television with him becase that's how he winds down. I have never had a set time for creativity to flow.

Another problem I have with the 'time' aspect of creativity is simply that I don't really have the support. Now, before you think my husband is squelching my creativity, please understand that if he didn't keep me on track with things, I would be a complete mental case. I would be a hoarder, the city would forclose on my house, and I would probably never bathe. This is because if I don't have someone reminding me to care for things, one task at a time, I get into obsessive grooves that I don't come out of. I could literally spend an entire week doing a certain set of projects and never do anything else that week except pee. I often forget to eat during the day if I'm working on something. There could be a small list of chores and I will convince myself that they will take care of themselves because 'I'm busy creating something dammit all!' I do not have a healthy mental state when it comes to living life like a normal person should. When Alex comes home and sees that I've literally done nothing but sit on the couch all day with a crochet hook in hand, he gets annoyed and starts forcing me into finishing the tasks I should have worked on during the day. Now do I get upset and annoyed with this? Absolutely. But I need it. I am very co-dependent in these regards. Does my creativity suffer? I think so. I think my opportunities for inspiration are already few and far between, and when my husband comes home after a long day at work to find out that his wife has more or less failed to hold up her end of the bargain, he doesn't really feel like supporting my hare-brained ideas. He's also terribly practical to my terribly 'out-there' way of thinking. They do say opposites attract.

BTW, my husband is an AMAZING guitarist, so if I have portrayed him as not being a creative type, it's incorrect. His musical genius surpasses most - he just channels it differently. He has logic and practicality to his advantage. I..... do not.

Since I will begin a lighter work schedule next week, I am going to start establishing my creative times and getting the routine into a set schedule. I am hoping to establish 3 times per week where I can simply sit down and produce ideas and work on projects. I have to work this out with Alex, but I think in the long run it will be a great advantage to both of us.

And as for the migrating projects, I don't think that's likely to die as quickly as it should, but we DID start cleaning out the sewing room again.

Creative Inventory Q&A Part 3

3. What elements (water, wood, fire, etc.) draw you toward them?

I won't get all New Agey on you with this one for the sakes of those folks who only believe you can be inspired by God and not His Creation, but let's be practical for a minute. Elements of nature exist, and certain people are drawn to different elements in different ways. Let's meet somewhere in the middle and say that you can draw inspiration out of things that are elements of God's Creation. I find God to be the original Artist, and that is where I find His presence.

I was born on May 6, which means that I'm a Taurus in the astrological chart. It's an Earth symbol. Guess what? I am absolutely drawn to the earth. Not all Taurus's are, but I am. It's what prompts me to dig in the dirt, plant seeds and sit back and watch them grow. I love the smell of the earth, especially after a good storm. The rise of mountains, the cracks of riverbeds and canyonlands, the lush colors of wild places - whether they be open field, rainforests and jungles, or painted deserts - the beauty of the Earth inspires me.

I am also drawn to water, but in a lesser degree. I love to see the ocean, and the colors and fascinating oddities of the creatures that live beneath the sea always amaze me. But when it comes right down to it, I think the thing I have the most healthy fear for in the world is probably dangerous water. I'm not a hydophobe by any stretch of the word, but you likely won't find me on a ship during a storm, and my experiences white water rafting were terrifying enough that I probably will never do it again. I do not wish to die by drowning - the thought of it scares me more than most other types of death.

I am not really drawn to fire, air, wood, or metal in any way. I don't need candles burning, or open windows to draw inspiration. I can usually find what I need by walking through the park or sitting in the grass for awhile.

Creative Inventory Q&A Part 2

The second question in the creative inventory challenge in the book 12 Secrets is one that I don't really like to answer. I'm not sure why because who doesn't like to talk about their talents and abilities? Me, I guess.


2. What natural talents do you have?

It's difficult for me to produce a 'natural' talent. I have them, to be sure. God gives beautiful talents and abilities to everyone who is willing to open their eyes to them. But I wasn't BORN knowing how to play the piano, or paint a mural, or crochet a dozen pairs of baby booties. Those talents were acquired through someone teaching me - patiently. (I'm difficult to teach. I'm left-handed, right-brained, and stubborn.) I think my natural talent comes in my ability to see the possible. I have an eye for color and for sorting and combining. You can see this talent in my home - my fireplace mantle is always changing because I will find things to display in different sizes, shapes, colors and textures. I have a knack for seeing potential in found objects. I always have a finished product in my head - but never in my hand. That makes me laugh, but is also kind of sad. When I worked at the fabric store, I would walk through the apparel department and pull out the different prints and textures and already have a finished dress in my head before I could even measure the yardage to see if there was enough available to make the dress.

Possibility and Potential.

Those are my natural talents.

Creative Inventory Q&A

Earlier today I posted 9 questions from the book The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor. The purpose of the questions were to take an inventory on your creativity and begin to acknowledge your creative side. I journalled my answers to these questions and want to share them. I am hoping that some of my fellow creative friends will also desire to share some of their thoughts on these questions as well.

Q: When did your creative awakening (or reawakening) occur?

A: I feel like I have always been creating. I can't think of a time when there was an awakening in my creativity. As a very little girl, I was very ill and almost never slept. I spent my long nights wide awake, telling myself stories. I was always making up my own little games and adventures. I loved to color and play with building blocks. I spent more hours at the piano than is probably healthy for a little girl. :)

My mom, Sally, and my aunt Twyla were both insanely creative people. They were the right women to have around when it came to encouraging creative growth. The two of them often had hare-brained schemes that involved large amounts of paint and fascinating tools and fabrics. I remember a time when they decided to have a craft show - during the 80's when everyone's style was 'country'. My grandpa built type-set boxes for them that they painted in a variety of colors and embellished with stencils. Then came the wooden knick-knacks, the geese, bunnies, sock monkeys, pillows and painted sweatshirts and t-shirts. If we wanted to paint murals on the walls, we could. I f we wanted to cut an entire ball of yarn into tiny pieces because we were pretending to cut hair (like Mommy in the beauty shop) we were allowed to. There was no such thing as 'no' when it came to nurturing ideas in our household, and if things got out of hand, there were always suggestions for something else to try instead. My mom's motto in life seemed to be "It's only...." For example - "It's only paint! Just paint over it!" or "It's only hair! It will grow back!" 

 Then there was my grandma Betty, who was determined to make sure all of her granddaughters knew how to crochet, sew, embroider and cook. It was she who taught her poor left-handed granddaughter, ME, how to do such things - not an easy task. And it's because of her that I have had success with my crocheted baby Chucks and other designs. It's because of her that I have cross-stitched amazing pieces of art that are framed on the walls of our house. It was her coaching that led me to become a concert pianist.

And thusly, I can't think of a time when I haven't been creating or at least writing down ideas. Most of my ideas were unmanageable - either physical impossibilities or simply out of reach for the time being and then forgotten about.

How about you?

12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women

As usual, I am frustrated with my station in life because I live in a society that makes it hard to be creative and live comfortably. Thus, I work a job that I'm not crazy about, but happy and grateful to have, and my true love - my creativity - suffers.


My greatest downfall is my inability to finish what I start, or carry anything to the end. I have time-management issues, as I have been made uncomfortably aware of by working at the bank, and while I don't believe for a minute that I have something like ADD, I do believe that I have let a good portion of my memory and focus dwindle away. (But I am told that such things can be regained.)


I picked up The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women at Barnes and Nobel in Fort Wayne last weekend while we were killing time before a wedding. It was on the discount shelf, and definitely doesn't have the gorgeous cover art that the book on Amazon.com has. But I've never been one to concern myself with cover art - but instead, the text inside. After all, there's a great song about not judging a book by looking at it's cover.

The author, Gail McMeekin, and I seem to have a lot in common. Both of us have struggled with places to put our creative energy, both have struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome, and like her, I have noticed that women are often expected to push their creativity into the backmost parts of our minds in order to become productive members of society.  I am no feminist, not by a long shot, but I do agree that our modern society still has some expectations of women that aren't very fair. (However, I believe they were brought about BY the feminist movement, and they aren't doing anything to help get rid of them.)

I remember a time when I was putting together an elaborate scrapbook to chronicle my journeys through the south-eastern countries of Africa. My mom loved it, but I remember her saying, "It's great that Lindsey has so many creative outlets. It will really help her get through life." My parents have struggled their entire lives with poor financial choices and having to work minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. In short, they have both had to labor while pushing their creativity in the background. Sure, it came out in other places - my mom owned a salon for 20 years, and our house was the most attractive in the neighborhood. But my parents never got the opportunity to follow their true dreams.

I dread the thought that such could be my case. When I think about the years to come, I have a sense of foreboding that I might be one of those folks who simply travels around from job to job because they can't stick with any of the work - I have only worked at the bank for 3 months and I'm already hoping that another opportunity will present itself so that I can quit. I don't want to be one of the millions who pushes their true passions out of the door and conforms to expectations of them.

I particularly like that this book offers challenges to help a woman unlock her creative potential. I have already noticed that there are things I could be doing to help encourage myself into better ideas. I have recognized for a long time that I need a partned - but the right one hasn't come along yet. I am co-dependent in the sense that I need a coach - someone to help me follow-through. I am unsuccessful alone - but with that other person, I can do almost anything.

The first challeng in "12 Secrets" is to take a creative inventory of yourself. I am a little more that halfway through adding that to my journal. I am going to post the questions, and hope that someone out there feels like adding their thoughts on one or two of them as I put my own answers out there for the world to read in future postings.

Creative Style Inventory

1. When did your creative awakening or reawakening occur?
2. What talents do you naturally have?
3. Which elements (fire, wood, water, air, etc.) draw you toward them?
4. Where and when do you create? Where and when do you wish to create?
5. What activates your creative energy?
6. Do you use creative rituals? What are they? If not, invent some for yourself!
7. Does nature influence your creativity? If it does, how?
8. What has been your greatest creative hurdle thus far?
9. What time of day are you most receptive to inspiration?

In the next few weeks, I am going to put up passages from my journal exploring these questions and it would warm my heart to see one or two responses from others out there. Who knows, maybe somewhere out there is that creative partner I've been waiting for and haven't opened my eyes to seeing yet!

Beauty of the Earth

Spring has finally arrived to northern Indiana! And those greenhouse seedlings have been thriving in the warm, humid weather. We've had some great thunderstorms in the last few weeks as well.

Today is one of my rare days off from the bank, and instead of being beautiful outside for me, it's gloomy and they're calling for severe storms. So I have made a nice long list of things to be accomplished. I am discovering that it helps me to make lists - so that I can physically see what needs to be done and worked on, and that it isn't really as much as I think, and therefore keeps me from becoming to overwhelmed.

My darling Alex bought me a new lawn mower for our anniversary, and girls out there, I know that you might be a little put off by an anniversary gift like that, but it was a gift I really appreciated. Alex and I have an agreement when it comes to caring for our home. I do the outside work (that I am physically capable of doing, since I'm only 5 feet tall and weigh 100 pounds) and he does the inside chores that I don't like to do - like vacuuming. Yuck. So I was really pleased with the new mower, which has a catch bag on it, which now means that I can finally collect the grass clippings to use for mulch around the veggie garden.

I had some gorgeous red leaf and buttercrunch lettuces growing in the back garden, and imagine my shock yesterday in the morning when I stepped out the back door and found a family of bunnies muching away on them! So much for our fresh salads! But I'm not discouraged, because Alex finally said we would stop putting off the building of the fence and it's officially on the to-do list for this weekend. Sometimes it takes a loss to get other things accomplished.

I got the corn planted this weekend, and transplated the Early Girl tomatoes into bigger pots. They're almost 6 inches tall now, with 6-8 leaves, so they made it out of that brutal cold snap and are very healthy now. Still not ready to leave the greenhouse, but soon!

Had one of my little impatient moments the other day and got frustrated over my sugar snap peas, because they haven't shown a single sign of bearing yet! So Alex said "When did you plant the seeds?" and I pulled out my journal and was reminded that I planted them on March 30, instead of March 17, like I've done in the past. They take 60-75 days to bear, so I've still got about 14 days before they will show signs of flowers and pods. Silly me, getting impatient. :) I apparently forgot that the principles of sowing and reaping are not just for my spiritual life.

There are tiny buds on the raspberries, flower heads on the onions and leeks, and lots of broccoli, carrot and beet tops pushing out of the dirt. The potatoes are simply astonishing - about two feet tall now and a gorgeous emerald green. I've been building up the mounds around the plants so they will have plenty of growing space. I'm pretty sure I'll have spuds to spare this fall, but I'm also looking ahead to winter, and anticipating quite a haul for the root cellar.

Well, there's a lot to do today, so I'll leave you with these few pictures, which I snapped quickly this morning before the storm blew in.

Anonymous

I don't like not being able to keep up with the things that I love. I love my handicrafts, my writing, my experiences in the kitchen and the garden. It's been difficult not to keep up with them. I feel as if I am losing my identity.

Sugar Snap Peas

I am happy to be working again, and I am satisfied with the job. But there are things I am not happy about. I have to push loans, credit card applications and other unnecessary things on customers every day, and yet, I have a moral gut check about it when I do. I am strongly against debt. I don't use credit cards anymore, and I am working hard to pay off all of our debts. We no longer make purchases with loans and credit - we go without if we can't afford it at that moment. I feel like many people feel this way too, and yet it is now my job to convince them otherwise. It makes me feel conflicted. I'm earning my paycheck by leading others into something I don't believe it myself.



Very healthy potatoes!!



So a few updates over the last few weeks - the weather has not improved at all. It has rained nonstop here in the midwest, although it isn't quite as bad as the south, where tornadoes have been wreaking havoc. Thunderstorms and unseasonable frosts have plagued our spring, and my seeds have struggled to come up. Few of them have actually germinated at all. I have several broccoli (which thrive in the cool weather), and a handful of carrot sprouts. The potatoes are marvelously healthy and growing taller every day.

The peas are 5 inches tall, and a perfectly delightful, shiny pale green; their little tendrils are vining around the cages and reaching toward the sun when it occasionally is so inclined to come out.



Raspberry Canes



Broccoli sprouting

 There are two strong seedlings of Early Girl tomatoes in the greenhouse and believe me, I am nursing them like sick babies. I pray for my heirlooms, since they haven't germinated yet. Even the beans and zucchini are refusing to put out any sprouts because of the temperatures.

I planted a few canes of raspberries, which will probably not fruit this year, but by next summer, it will be lovely to have fresh raspberries, and perhaps even make some raspberry jam.

I've spent my entire day off digging up weeds and nursing the greenhouse. There is so much to be done. There are new beds to be dug out and a lot of crabgrass that needs to be dug out. My lawn looks terrible - bald patches, mole hills, and lots of weeds.

Oh, and the sourdough starter was an EPIC FAIL. Shameful really. So much for that.

For The Love of Vegetables

 Cannellini Lingot - Dry Shelling Beans

These beauties are wonderful for soup. It's going to be a few months before I can harvest these, but when I do, I plan to dry them in my dehydrator and store them in a few big jars. This winter, when the snow raises hell all around us, I will have a hot ham and bean soup, flavored with thyme and oregano. I can already taste it. :)

 "Jade" green bush-type beans will grow in 2-4 foot tall bushes instead of vining around and taking over the garden. The bean pods themselves can grow up to 10 inches long and are virtually stringless. They're also tender and sweet. I plan to transplant them from the greenhouse at the same time I sow my sweet corn into the same bed together. Beans and corn are natual companions, each one providing necessary nutrients to the other that are needed for healthy and vigorous growth. Corn, beans and squash are the traditional "Three Sisters", grown together by Native Americans for hundreds of years.

I can't wait to bite into one of these Pink Accordian heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are a very valuable piece of the garden. They are not modified in any way, not hybrids, not altered to suit some commercial farms needs - perfectly natural and the way that Mother Nature intended them to be. The seeds are savable, and can be continued on for years to come. They never look as perfect as the tomatoes in the grocery stores, but beautiful in their own way.

"Country Gentleman" shoepeg corn is also an heirloom variety. It's especially grown in the south, and is considered one of the best roasting varieties available. It's self-pollinating, and not hybridized, and will grow perfect with my green beans. I have plans to dry some for seeds, scrape the kernels off of the cobs for freezing and perhaps an ear or two on the grill with the hamburgers and bratwurst at family BBQ's this summer.




All of these pictures were borrowed from Territorial Seed Company's website, but only because I already purchased the seeds for them and they haven't turned into big beautiful vegetables yet. Do yourself a favor - start a garden. Grow a tomato or two. Put some herbs in a pot and be proud of yourself when you can add them to your cooking. Nothing is more beneficial to the soul than waiting on a seed to come forth.

Pickled Beets and Purple Eggs

I have a wonderful memory of my Grandpa Orlin, who was my greatest inspiration and hero. It's not my favorite memory, but it's a beautiful one to me just the same. We always had certain foods when I went to Grandma and Granpa's house in the country. We always had tapioca pudding, applesauce over white bread and butter, oatmeal with milk for breakfast, green beans from the garden and sweet corn from my Uncle Dwayne's farm down the road. And pickled red beets with hard boiled eggs.

I just planted 5 rows of red beets in the garden and it made me remember sitting on the patio at the glass-topped table and Grandpa came out of the garage with a big plastic bucket full of purple juice that would permanently stain anything it came in contact with and said "Who wants purple eggs?!"

And my sister and I would say "Eggs aren't purple! Eggs are white!" And he would chuckle and dish out pickled red beets and hard boiled eggs that had been stained purple with beet juice. Carrie would never touch the beets, but it was one of our 'special' foods that we only got at Grandma and Grandpa's.

So in about 9 weeks, I'm going to say "Who wants purple eggs?!" And even if there are no takers, I'll be sitting on the patio, staining my teeth and tongue with beet juice, thoroughly enjoying my pickled beets and purple eggs. :)

Apollo's First Shoes

This is Apollo Joseph, our newest customer! A.J. is modeling his new Baby Chucks in hunter green and I must say, he IS adorable! A.J. is just 3 weeks old and already on his way to making great shoe choices. :)

L.Peek Designs on Etsy will be open again on April 18th! Be sure to stop by and say hello!

Sourdough Starter

I have known about this for awhile, but have not had the opportunity to get started until today. In an effort to wean my husband and myself off of white bread loaves from the store, I am going to try to make more homemade bread this spring and summer. And it all begins with sourdough starter, or wild yeast cultivation, which is what our ancestors used to bake leavened bread for thousands of years before the invention of commercial grade yeast in little foil packages. (And btw, is quite expensive these days.)

So today I have begun the cultivation of my wild yeast. I'm sure Alex is much less thrilled about it than I am. He tends to see my little attempts at pioneer living 'cute' at best and a giant mess and many tears when I fail at worst. But if this turns out well, than we will be eating potato soup and clam chowder out of bread bowls and serving bistro sammiches on thick slices by summer.

Starting The Starter

1 Get a glass or ceramic container with a lid. It should be able to hold at least three to four cups of liquid, so a quart sized Mason jar will work well. (I have an abundance of them.) Do not use a metal container - it will contaminate the starter.

2. Different types of flours make different types of breads, but I recommend starting with white flour. Apparently whole wheat and rye starters have a tendency to rot before the beneficial culture of lactobacillus and wild yeast have had a chance to develop their symbiotic relationship.

3. Mix one cup of white flour with one cup of lukewarm water in the glass or ceramic container and stir until smooth. Put it in a warm place. Mine happens to be sitting on the furnace right above the heating pipe right now. (Ideally 70-80 degrees.) You can also put it on the stove if you have a pilot light to keep it warm. In the summer, I will probably keep it in the garage, in a box on the floor.

4. Every day, pour off one cup of your starter and add a half cup of flour and a half cup of lukewarm water back in to feed what remains. The biggest mistake most people make and probably the most common cause of failure is neglecting to feed it every single day. Unfed starters will begin to mold very quickly and in any case will not creat a successful loaf. You MUST feed your starter EVERY SINGLE DAY without fail. I can't stress it enough.

5. The cultivation should start to get bubbly after a few days. A layer of liquid, sometimes called 'hooch' (LOL) will form on top. Don't be concerned, this is natural. Stir it in every morning when you add the additional flour and water.

6 After two weeks have passed, you should have an active culture of wild yeasts that you can bake bread with. About a week after that, instead of throwing away that cup of starter in the morning, use it to make a practice dough. The starter gets stronger as it ages, but give it a try! Try it in sourdough pancakes if you're particularly brave and have an agreeable household! (I do not.....yet.)

7. After the wild yeast has cultivated, if you aren't going to bake every day, put the starter in the fridge and feed it once a week. To revive it, take it out of the fridge and give it two or three days of feeding before baking with it.

I will update you on the progress of this little experiment in a few days! I do not expect our house to become a bakery, but I do expect to be able to bake bread once a week.


UPDATE!!!! - The sourdough starter is doing exactly what the instructions said it would do! It is getting bubbly on top and the hooch started getting nice and thick on top today after I mixed the new stuff in. :) Alex said "It takes two weeks?? That better be the damn best bread I've ever eaten for how long I have to wait!"

El Dorado Heirloom Seeds

I was clicking through some of the advertisements on my blog this morning, which I do from time to time to see what kind of companies are using my space for their marketing, and I was excited to see a company called El Dorado Heirloom Seeds. As I am a sucker for organic seed companies, and always researching and looking for the best companies to purchase my seed from, I began to research and delve into their story and their product offering. I was delighted with what I found.

This is just a small excerpt from their 'About Us' section of their website, and it has the heart and soul of this company wrapped into a few paragraphs:

We are honored to live a simple life. We lived in a chicken coup for six months while we passionately built our tiny straw bale cabin in Montana. With no electricity or running water we forced ourselves to learn how to raise our own food and live by our own efforts. Those eight years were as hard as it gets and we value them more than all other years because they molded us into what we are today. Because of the rough times and the doubts and stress then, we laugh more today.

Just six years ago, our dad started over again, this time by himself. He cut his way into a wooded five acre property he bought for almost nothing, pitched a tent and built a chicken coup, which worked as his home five days a week, while he built another small cabin, this time with wood.
This simple and somewhat humble lifestyle fits us well and if you ever gave it a try, you’d discover how much we have in common.

Our Mission at El Dorado Heirloom Seeds is simple:
To get American’s to return to growing their own healthy food and thus eliminate unhealthy GMOs and sterile hybrid vegetables grown by corporate farms.


Our Personal Philosophy is rather basic:
Accept yourself and the responsibility of making yourself a little better each day. Then no matter where you start it’s only a matter of time before you are worthy of the greatest rewards and respect. And what goes for you should go for others, meaning, all of us have the right to be wrong and broken, so don’t force your beliefs and desires upon others. Be an example! Plant a powerful idea.


The world would improve in every way if the people grew authentic and organic heirloom vegetables out the back door and down the street and on the rooftops. The next step would be to start eating our meals together.



Are you impressed yet??

Check them out for yourselves!

Blue Day

I remember reading a novelty mug once that said "Put on your big girl panties and deal with it!"

I don't feel like putting my big girl panties on today. In fact, I don't feel like putting any panties on at all. I will mope around in my fuzzy Walmart bathrobe for awhile, pouting and randomly bursting into tears, and feeling sorry for myself for about 15 minutes. Then I'll stop pouting and get on with my life.

Definitely not bothered enough to quit, but bothered enough to leave in tears.

I know it will get easier. I know it. But right now, it feels like I'm at the bottom of the well

Pride Goes Before A Fall...?

This blog went viral yesterday due to the extraordinarily BAD behavior of the author on this reviewer's comments about her self-published work. Read it - it's like watching a train wreck. 300 and some comments, few of them out of pity and more views than the writer of the blog could have hoped to achieve.

In some ways I feel sorry for the author - not because she received a less than glowing review - but because she clearly believed that her work was exceptional and couldn't possibly recieve anything less than 4 out of 5 stars. She's really bitten the dust now. Good luck with ever selling another book now Jacqueline Howett. You will never be more widely read than you were this week - and it isn't your mediocre writing that everyone is talking about.

Anyway, if nothing else, I've started following this blog!


BigAl's Books and Pals: The Greek Seaman / Jacqueline Howett: "Genre: Suspense/Literary Fiction Approximate word count: 55-60,000 words Availability Kindle: YES Nook: YES &..."

The Official Start

Although I technically seeded my spring cabbages back in December, today marks the first official day of the Peek Family's 2011 Vegetable Garden! Hooray!

I have BIG fat plans for this year's garden, including turning my front yard into a virtual haven of edible landscaping when not only will the vegetables flourish, but the wildlife (except for that wretched mole!) will be welcome and enchantment abounds. My magnolia tree is about to have its own special raised bed and the days of those 3 Bradford pear trees (that serve no purpose except to shade important parts of my yard that need the sunshine and drop nasty inedible fruits all over the sidewalk in the winter) are numbered!

I had to scrub under my nails and pick dirt out of my nose of course, but these annoyances actually made me smile because I got to spend 2 hours out in the dirt.

I started today's efforts by digging all the leaves out of the front flower bed. Friends, autumn's leaves are nature's way of protecting things over the winter. I piled up the autumn leaves around all of my perennial herbs in the front flower bed this winter, and while they hibernated under 6 feet of snow (we had 5 snowstorms over this past winter) the leaves kept their roots warm and safe. I just cleaned out all the leaves and I am delighted to see the new growth coming in on the lavender, parsley and thyme. I intend to intersperse basil, oregano, marjoram, sage, lemon verbena, chamomile, comfrey, tansy and angelica around in the front and make a tea garden envious of the most austere British gardener. I'd like to have a row of sunflowers along the porch wall as well, but I tried that last year and was not successful. This year however, I am using a new seed company, and will try it one more time.

I went to our backyard and extended the bed that I used for lettuces last year and joined it to the bed that formerly held pumpkins. I now have blisters on my thumbs, but they are trophies of my hard work. This bed is now four feet longer than it was previously and will hold an heirloom variety of sweet corn called 'Country Gentleman' or shoepeg corn. It is an open pollinated variety, not a hybrid, and I am planting it so that I can save seeds for next season as well as enjoy fresh sweet corn this summer. But I can't plant corn until the beginning of May, as the ground is simply to cold right now to ensure proper germination. So instead, I direct seeded sugar snap peas and seed potatoes into the far right third of the bed, since they are relatively cold tolerant and the peas will germinate and grow quickly.

In the green house, I sowed a lot of seed today, including several for the heirloom tomato pictured above, which is a variety known as a pineapple tomato. These tomatoes are heirloom, so their seeds are savable, and they grow to be about 5 inches in diameter and I am told they are sweet enough to eat for breakfast. I also seeded another heirloom variety called the Pink Accordion, which also grows to be quite large, and has a rosy pink hue instead of red. And of course, I seeded my Early Girls, which I am just dying to get out into the garden itself. Early Girls germinate in less than 10 days and then grow and ripen in about 60 days, and I hope I can wait until the beginning of June to taste my own sweet tomatoes. And tonight I plan to pay a visit to the garden center to pick up a few more peat cups and another bag of seed starting mix, so that this weekend I can get the rest of the produce started. The lettuces and broccoli didn't get the early start I was hoping for this year, due to all the frosty weather and snow that wouldn't let up.

If you're in my neck of the woods, do stop by and see what's springing forth from the ground!

Old Man Winter Better Move Along

March and April of 2010 was probably what I would describe as a perfect spring. When March rolled around, the days immediately warmed. They rose to the mid 50's and 60's and stayed there consistently until the end of May. It rained a lot in April, a perfect amount I would say, because my garden had plenty of water throughout the summer with very few efforts to keep it hydrated with the sprinkler. The sun shone and warmed up the ground beautifully and most of my seeds in the greenhouse germinated and sprang to life without too much coaxing.

This year, Old Man Winter has me by the balls. Figuratively speaking of course, since I don't actually have any balls to be had by. This winter weather just will not let up!

Come on Mother Nature! You need to shake off these blues you've been feeling and let some sunshine in!

I have cabbages, broccoli, peas and lettuces to plant, and the ground is hard and frozen. It actually snowed last week. Not that snow in March is an uncommon occurance in Northern Indiana, but instead an unwelcome one.

So Friday is April 1 and I have a paycheck coming in. I have planned to use part of that paycheck at the garden center on a few trinkets to help me finish up my landscaping. It's also supposed to be reasonably warm outside. With any blessing from Mother Nature, the herb garden should be planted by Sunday, and the seed potatoes should be in their beds.

I'm going to be visiting my sister-in-law, Rosa, in mid-April to help her and her family plant their 2011 vineyard. It's very exciting. In the last couple years, they have become very interested in wine and the fine craft of wine-making. And the products have not been too bad either! Personally, I teared up a little bit when I drank the last dregs of her cherry wine! It's definitely a retirement investment for them, and I envy them a little bit, because they have the kind of property that I would really like to have someday - 12 acres of land, space to hunt, horses, a perfectly proportioned home for the amount of land.... and so on and so forth. One day, one day. That's what I continue to remind myself. Alex and I will not always have to live on a 37 foot wide plot between the cruddy neighbors that we have now that keep encroaching on our property lines. One day, we'll have that 12 acres, maybe even more.

So anyway Old Man Winter, I'm really ready for you to shuffle along until November. Please move along so that I can get outside and get our summer produce going! We need to eat you know!

Suckerpunch

After weeks of watching cast interviews, directors' interviews and being teased on G4 by trailers for Suckerpunch, we went to see it on the big screen on Sunday night.

Let me begin by saying the special effects were amazing. It was a breathless, edge-of-your-seat ride.

But I was almost in tears at the end. It ends SO SADLY, and it twists in such a way that you are left feeling like someone literally suckerpunched you!

The film takes places in what I percieve to be around the late 40's, perhaps the early 50's, when mental institutions were horrible, frightening places where horror movies take place and lobotomies were perfectly acceptable forms of treatment for those perceived to be a violent danger to themselves or others.

Babydoll (Emily Browning) is placed in a mental hospital by her evil stepfather, after the death of her mother leads to a tragic accident. He makes a deal with the head orderly to have Babydoll lobotomized so that she'll never be able to tell her side of the story, or be able to claim her inheritance. It's 5 days before the doctor who performs the lobotomy (Jon Hamm) can be there, and that's where the movie takes off. Just before receiving the lobotomy, you get a peek into Babydoll's imagination, where she teams up with 4 other patients and attempts to escape.

The film takes place in 3 different mindsets - the hospital, Babydoll's imagination - wherein she and the 4 other patients are dancers in a brothel, trying desperately to escape, and a fantasy world that combines themes of Japanese anime, steampunk and MMA. It's a little confusing to put into words, but when you see it in the film, it becomes a little clearer.

At the brothel, Babydoll becomes the center of attention when she is set aside for the 'high roller' (also played by Jon Hamm) who arrives in 5 days to claim her as his special pet, so to speak. She is determined to escape before then and convinces Rocket (Jena Malone), and her older sister Sweet Pea (Abby Cornish), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) to join her in her plan of escape, which was shown to her during one of her dreamscapes by the man I will refer to henceforth as the 'guardian angel' (Scott Glenn). They must retrieve 4 items - a map, fire, a knife and a key. There is a 5th item, but it is a mystery that will be revealed at the end. And so they begin their escape, each one retrieving their piece of the plan, and entering the dreamworld, where they battle monsters and villians to succeed.

But as I said, the ending twists very suddenly and is quite devastating after you've watched the girls get so far and have become attached to them.

I give it a solid B. It didn't end in the way I had hoped it would, and for me (someone who rolls movies around in my head for days afterward) I needed a bit of closure or at least a bit of a happy ending. Instead, I got..... suckerpunched. :)

And Emily Browning is absolutely gorgeous.

The Joy of Marriage

Alex and I spent the most amazing weekend together. I would definitely place it as the best weekend of 2011 and in the top 5 of our marriage together. I am a bit sad that it's Monday and our beautiful weekend is over, but I have stored its memory into my heart to think back on fondly in the coming future.

To begin with, we attended a marriage retreat with our church, Southgate, which took us all the way to Roseland, IN (best known for its rediculous nonsense involving a 3 person town council where 2 of the 3 were a married couple bent on owning that little town), where we checked into the Comfort Suites Hotel for one single night. We had dinner at the Ho Ping House, which isn't the best place to eat, but wasn't terrible. Later we discovered that we had accidently left our leftovers in the refrigerator in our room.

There was a guest speaker, who's message detailed the 5 things that cause couples to break up - in his experience. Communication, finances, sex (a lack of), unfaithfulness and a lack of faith. And we heard from several couples in our congregation and watched a couple videos, and I started to feel very secure and delighted in my marriage.

To begin with, I was fortunate enough to marry a talker. Sometimes he talks to a fault and I get annoyed because I am actually not much of a talker. I am more of a thinker. Our communication is pretty much.... excellent. If anyone is at fault for bad communication in our marriage, it definitely isn't Alex. (It would be me, bottling up my anger and irateness, which is what I do, which is what he is trying to change.) And Alex was fortunate enough to marry a red-headed spitfire. Not all women are as adventurous as I in the bedroom. Lucky, lucky man. ;)

Our finances are better now that I'm working again, and it would take wild horses to drag either one of us away from the other toward unfaithfulness. And we have a very Christ-centered marriage. The Fearsome Five things that break couples apart are of NO consequence in this marriage!

But what made me feel secure was to hear different couples, many who have been married for many years, say that they felt the strains of marriage very early - some just 2 to 3 months into their marriages. They felt like 'Good God, what the hell did I sign up for? And who is this stranger I'm married to?' And I just want to say that on May 19 Alex and I will celebrate 5 years of marriage and I have never once felt that way. My husband really and truly is the same person now as he was when we were dating and engaged. He has never changed on me, or shown a side of himself that I wasn't aware of before we tied the knot. I am as happy and in love with my husband now, 5 years later, as I was on our wedding day. Yes, we've had fights and arguements, some that lasted for hours, even days. But our marriage is so strong, and I feel so secure in it, with Alex.

Of course, we don't have any children either.... but let's cross that bridge when we come to it. :)

Been Awhile!

My goodness! I feel like I'm returning from death - I've been away for so long!

Well, to get the good stuff out of the way at the very start, I am very pleased with my new job at the bank. I like the people that I'm working with, I like the customers (thus far) and I haven't run into anything that I'm uncomfortable with yet. I am concerned with getting referrals when my 90 day grace period is up, but I guess that if I can trust God to come through for me when I needed employment, I can also trust Him to come through for me when it comes time to meet my quotas for the months. My feet get tired by the end of my shift, but there is always something to do, so I'm never bored. The pay is great, the best I've ever received for any job, and I've been working much more than I was promised - the last two weeks I've logged more than 70 hours, and I was hired to do 40-45 hours over a 2 week pay period. This makes my husband really happy since he no longer has to work excessive overtime to help me pay my share of our bills.

My branch manager asked me if I woke up or went home with feelings of never wanting to come back. I told her no, and she asked if I was being honest. In the back of my head, I thought about the dreaded insurance job that made me cry every single day and put feelings of dread, anxiety and guilt into my spirit - all things that are unnecessary. I haven't felt any of that working for the bank. With the insurance job, I knew from the second day of training by the feeling in the pit of my stomach that it wasn't for me. I enjoyed the training for the bank and I transitioned seamlessly into the branch activity. By my third full day, I didn't even need to be supervised. My drawer has balanced every day, and my work has been perfect.

Yes, I am aware that I have a personality defect that is linked to performance. Why do you think I wanted to become a concert pianist? Everything in my life is a performance. It's unhealthy, but I mentally validate my self-worth by how I perform at any given situation in life. It passes after a few weeks and I become more tolerable of my own mistakes and less disappointed in myself. I've learned to adapt. I should probably ask for healing for that, but it's amazing what we learn to live with.

Now for the ADD moment of the day - I was horrified to hear the Weather Channel using Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as a background for disaster photographs from Japan.

I am always hesitant to comment on any kind of disaster that happens around the world, just like I am very hesitant to comment on anything political. There are far too many opinions out in the etherspace, and most of them have zero substance. I don't know why it happened, or what will come out of it, or if people around the world will handle it correctly, and therefore I am not qualified to offer any kind of opinion. I AM very sorry for what has happened, and human suffering brings me to tears, but I really have nothing else to say about the situation at this time.

I've had to shut my website down for a couple weeks. There is a LOT to do, and keeping up with orders was getting difficult. Just until I am more comfortable with work, get the spring yard cleanup underway and the plantings finished, and finish up some other projects around the house. So fear not! L.Peek Designs is not out of business! I just need to play catch up. :)

Speaking of catching up, I have been sitting around all morning. It's time to get busy on my day off!

Adult Time

This isn't one to read in front of the kids! You've been warned!

I am a big supporteer of the sexual revolution. No, not the damn hippies and their free love. I am a big supporter of Christian movements to bring sex out of the shadows and red-light districts and finally show young people that not only is sex a perfectly wonderful, natural part of life, but they can also enjoy it!

I found 'Porn for Christians'. Awesome. A woman name Susie Bright does a podcast of sexual content for Christians. I'm going to dowload a few and give them a listen. Alex and I are going to be reading a book called "Sexy Christians" by Ted and Diane Roberts and I can't wait to start it.

I'm not a prude in any way. Growing up, I went to Baptist school, which I have repeatedly bitched about, because we still thought boys had cooties and called sex 'it' when we were in the 7th grade. My own mother, who made some very bad choices growing up in the 60's and 70's regarding her sexual behavior, trapped me in a car and forced me to read Dr. Ruth's book out loud on a day trip to see her therapist. My experiences with coming of age and learning about sex were terrible. I was afraid of sexual behavior, and not just because I knew if my mom found out that I had been kissing boys or holding hands, she would immediately jump to the worst case scenario. (She demanded to know if I was pregnant when I returned from a 3 month stay in Africa with a stomach virus and chronic dysentary. Thanks for the support Mom.) No one should grow into adulthood fearing their sexuality. It's just plain wrong. Sexuality makes us what we are - capable of establishing an intimate relationship with another being - so close that you are literally occupying one space.

The Christian faith does NOTHING to help young people develop their sexuality and learn how to make good decisions regarding sexual behavior. They hide it. They say it's only for grown ups and married couples. They build up unrealistic expectations around sexuality so that when two young people who have just tied the knot jump into bed together on their wedding night find out that it kinda sucks on the first try, they're disappointed and think something must be wrong. The 'powers that be' in the Church say its 'special' and 'beautiful' and fail to mention that there will be times that he's going to have trouble getting it up, and she's going to be dry as a bone and unresponsive. Know what else? Staying 'pure' until marriage does NOT guarantee a happy, healthy marriage, and it definitely doesn't guarantee that you'll stay together for the rest of your lives. Silly religious people.

Christians have stigmatised romance novels, masturbation, erotic films, pornography, sex games and toys. I LOVE THEM ALL!! Guess what? I use them - frequently - in my very healthy sex life with my husband, and we both enjoy it! It cuts down on disappointment, arguments and hurt feelings. I'm pretty proud of it - can you tell? And I don't hide it.

So maybe this isn't conversation you want to have with me while the kids are playing in the same room, but let me tell you, I can't wait to share what I read and hear in these so-called 'Christian' sex books. And if it's more of the same religious crap jargon that we've been fed for years, I will let you know - and loudly! I am not ashamed of sex. No one should be, unless you are doing something that you are ashamed of. In that case, well, I can't help you.

SEX IS NOT A SIN.

Vegetarian

I subscribe to the Vegetarian Times magazine because I love to try new recipes with strange and exotic ways to cook veggies. I am not a huge fan of meat - except for bacon. I love bacon. I can do without almost every kind of meat.

One of the downsides of living in the Midwest is that, being a traditional agricultural society, we tend to boil or fry our veggies and slather them with butter and salt instead of getting creative with them. No wonder my husband wouldn't touch a veggie with a ten foot pole. There are a lot of veggies that I just recently learned to like because all of my life they were improperly prepared. Plus, I learned how to roast them - and that has changed everything. :)

Anyway, so I subscribe to the Vegetarian Times, which I appreciate for the recipes, but hate the politics.

So I'm going to cancel my subscription and start searching for recipes online again. I'm sorry about it, because I would really like this magazine if it wasn't so preachy!

Is there a single vegetarian community in the entire USA that ISN'T a holier-than-thou, liberal, tree-hugging, in-your-face, animals rights, environmental terrorist organization? Because I might have to start one pretty soon if there isn't. Where are the vegetarian communities for those who don't live in California and feel like the world is going to end if we don't stop eating meat? Are there any vegetarian communities that don't feel like they have to convert the entire country to their way of eating, which in itself is like a misguided form of religion?

Would you actually believe that there are people out there that would enjoy a vegetarian diet without shoving it down someone's throat and treating that poor carnivore like a convicted sex offender for enjoying his cheeseburger? The preachiness is what turns people away.

The issue of VT that I got this week had a former NBA player as a primary interview and he said "You can't be alive if you're eating something dead. You are what you eat after all."

FLAWED LOGIC.

Plants are LIFE. A carrot IS a living, growing, breathing, pro-creating thing. When you take them out of the dirt, and chop them up on your cutting board, you are killing something. So answer me this - just because it isn't staring at you with giant brown eyes like a cow, or bleeding all over the place, does that make it any less living?

Chew on that.

And since you're sitting there, thinking to yourself what a moron I am, there is a LOT of research to support a vegetarian diet, but there is a lot MORE research to support a well-balanced omnivorous diet. For every study out there that says we should eat a strictly vegetarian diet, there are approximately 5 completed studies that say we should be eating more vegetables and balancing our protein intake with carbohydrates and fiber.

So my vegetarian recipes and meal plans will be for people like me, who are simply looking to eat more veggies in new ways. I shall never hold any political ambitions, such useless endeavors anyway.

And I'm heading out to the market in about half an hour - we're going to have a vegetarian dinner tonight, because we ate McDonald's last night. Balance!

Heat Wave

It's almost 40 degrees Farenheit here in Northern Indiana right now, and I actually just ran outside in short sleeves with no coat! Just for a moment though, it isn't THAT warm yet. But I think it's funny what our bodies do to adjust to fluctuating temperatures. In September, 40 degrees is downright frigid, but in February, after 2 full weeks of single digits and negative temps, 40 degrees is practically a heat wave!

I talk a lot about the Territorial Seed Company, which was brought to my attention when I started reading a book by Steve Solomon, founder of Territorial Seed, titled Gardening When It Counts. I requested a catalogue from them last year, but I wasn't prepared to purchase anything yet. This year I am. And with the recent success of my etsy shop, all those sold baby shoes are going to help finance this year's garden, which I am expecting to be a showstopper.
To begin with, I heard on the news yesterday that there is a drought in China's wheat belt, and a cold snap in Mexico that is ruining imported produce. Corn prices are at an all time high, and food prices are expected to triple all across the USA. It will be easier for those of us in the Midwest because we're very close to our food sources, but for those in the city, things could get downright tough. By the way, you can thank good ol' President Nixon for our corn woes. It was at his behest that things like corn-based preservatives, and high fructose corn syrup were put into almost every single food item in the grocery store shelves! It helped people be able to keep their food longer, but it also introduced a dependency on corn that is unsustainable, and has been a chronic suspect in the creation of things like learning disabilities, food allergies and immune system disorders! BUT, you can also thank other presidents for pushing E-85 ethanol fuel production - because that's going to cause an even greater strain on the production of corn products in our country. But I digress...

Anyway, I can see the earliest of golden light coming through the glass in the back door, and the depth of the snow is down to left than 12 inches. We've even got grass poking up here and there! And in between trips to the post office, episodes of 'An Idiot Abroad' and cups of tea, I am going to place the first seed order from Territorial Seed Co. I am quite anxious for fresh produce after the winter's menu of hearty stews and protein-laden dishes. I'm ready for fresh greens, fruit pies, and grilled veggies.

So if you're plotting out your garden in Zones 4-6 right now, remember that March is the time to plant cabbages, peas, lettuces, brussels sprouts, beets, broccoli, onions and potatoes! Some are quick to grow (lettuces) and some take a looooooooong time (cabbages and onions), but they will be so worth it when they are smiling out from their beds at you in April, ready to be picked and prepared!

This year, I'm going to be very adventurous with the preserving and canning, so I'm warning you ahead of time - there will probably be sauerkraut, every manner of frozen and canned oddity and jellies and jams made from the strangest of fruit combinations. Be ready!