Okay, 2010 here I come

It is the 31st of December. Final decisions about what the new year should be focused on have to happen today, in the next 11 hours in fact.

1. Find a new permanent job.
2. Increase and improve my food production.
3. Find ways to make money at home.
4. Improve water reclamation system.
5. Learn a great deal more about solar power and ways to use it.
6. Increase my knowledge of webpages and their administration.
7. Have a party.
8. Clear out significantly more clutter.
9. Convert the dining room into the office and the den into seed production and breakfast area.
10. Learn, learn, learn!

Things to do on this holiday weekend to get the ball rolling.
1. Put the new vegetable bed in the front yard, and fill it with hay and compost.
2. Work out cost and pricing for some of the 'make money at home ideas'.
3. Go to that 'Harbor Freight' store that has all the solar stuff.
4. Move the desk into the dining room and the dining room table into the den.
5. Clear out more clutter.
6. Laundry...more of a weekly resolution, than a yearly one ;o)

It's a little early for resolutions, but...

I usually refrain from making New Year's Resolutions, but this year they keep coming to mind. I haven't got anything major that I want to change and maybe that is what makes the resolution seem like a reasonable idea. The 'I will lose 50 lbs by March' sort of resolution seemed so fraught with looming failure I never wanted to go there. This year tho' I don't have a huge amount of things and need changing, just improving and improving it natural and part of the forward motion of things.



In the year 2010 I would like to find a permanent job. I have various things that I would like to have in that job, but they are various and do not all have to be met in the same job for me to consider finding a job successful. I am currently doing temp work in a hospital. I have never worked in a hospital before, so I had no idea how much I would like it. The work is important and the importance is brought home to me every time I type the words "oncology" or "labor and delivery". I would like to work nearer my home, but if I end up in a hospital not so near home then at least my need for feeling that my work is important to people is met. I would like to work near my house to allow me more time to work on my self sustainability and if that kind of opportunity comes along then I will meet more of my household goals and that is good, too.



I want to expand my vegetable garden, the plans for this resolution are already in the works. I have priced the wood for my raised beds and for the organic soil that I will need to buy to fill them. I want to improve my green house in a couple of ways. I would like to increase the amount of gravel on the dirt floor, I would like to add more structure for hanging plants over the winter, I have ideas to increase the weatherproofing/heat keeping properties of the structure, I would like to put together additional candle heaters, and finally I would like to build shelves for seedlings. (just a few resolutions for the greenhouse)



Water! I want to increase the rain gutters on my house to add to the water collection that I do for the garden. This includes a gutter along the west exterior to collect in or next to the greenhouse, and a gutter along the south exterior to collect at the southeast corner of the house for the shade garden. There are alot of improvements that can be made to the collection system that I already have around the shed as well. I need to put a leaf blocker over the gutters to prevent the buildup of gunk. The drums that I have need to have spouts connected to them so that I can connect them to a hose.



Chickens! I need to dig out the chicken coop, that is valuable guano and it needs to be placed in the compost pile. I would like to come up with a better way to feed and water the chickens and I think that they are out there I just need to find them. I need to work on weatherproofing the actually coop as well to prevent rain getting in when a serious storm occurs.



The Shed! Man this needs so much work I cannot even imagine it all. Number one is just cleaning it out. I don't even remember what is in there. Then it needs to be reorganized in some way that makes sense. I do not have any idea what that way might be yet.



The Garage! It is coming along, but still needs work. More things need to be removed and then...maybe insulate it a little bit and then put up peg board. Too much to know right now I will wait for inspiration on this one.



The Den! I am constantly re-inventing this room. Right now it is the dogs room, the VCR/DVD room, the Barbie doll room, the knitting room and the seedling room, oh and the office. It must remain the dogs room, and I would like it to remain the seedling room, but every thing else if up for grabs. In fact it would not hurt my feelings to turn the dining room into the office and the dogs room into a breakfast room of sorts. This idea appeals to me. Since I generally watch TV programs on the computer and use the TV to watch DVDs which I actually do from the kitchen or while really sitting on the sofa and concentrating on what I am watching. (This happens very rarely.) This means that the dining room becomes the office and that would require a little redesign for electronics purposes, but it has potential. :0)

I think that there are enough resolutions for the entire year of 2010 at Powell Cottage.

Getting the Stuff Out

Wednesday night, I went to my den and living room and looked for 5 things from each room to give to the Kidney Foundation Drive. I did find 10 things. I found about 15. This was basically unplanned clearing of stuff that worked better than expected. I do not know where this will lead, but I am very happy about the direction.

The winter months are a little more difficult for me because of my lack of central heat. I am working on baking more which actually keeps the kitchen warmer which in turn keeps it cleaner, cuz I will stay there longer. The bedroom is just fine and the space heater in the den is good and I have the new space heater in the bathroom which is good as well. The closet room feels like a deep freeze, but that's okay with me.

I am working on using my space more effectively. This is very difficult for me for some reason. It goes along with my difficulty of finding a home for everything. Both of these things motivate me to move forward in may getting rid of stuff. My wish is that once a lot of this stuff is gone, homes will spring into view for the remaining items.

I find that I can clean out an area, drawer or pantry and then a few weeks later clean it out again. On the second go round I suddenly see new things that I no longer need. These things were there the first time, but for some reason my subconcious can deal with reducing only so much stuff at a time. It's okay. It's slow going, but it is going and that is for the good.

I went over to help a friend clean up her stuff a few weeks ago. She had gotten to that "can't see the floor" place in her bedroom. We worked for two days and, yes, the carpet was still there. Basically this was a "home for everything" issue, with some junk mail and store receipts thrown in. I was in such empathy with her tho. It seems like life is so full and the time to decide where everything should go is overlooked and then it just snowballs. I do it, I do it all the time. At one point she said that she should be embarrassed by me seeing her mess, but she wasn't (good to have friends like this) and I told her that if she started feeling embarrassed then we could just go to my house and do the same thing in my places where the hurricane hits and she would feel all better.

My 2010 goal will be to remove "places of the hurricane" from my house. I almost have this accomplished, but there are always set backs and I want 2010 to be the year the "set backs" are set back, here at Powell Cottage.

Today a hawk landed on my dead tree. It was amazing. I was washing dishes and I looked out the window and thought, 'man that is a large bird'. Then I grabbed my binoculars (which I keep by the sink for this very opportunity) and I checked it out. I grabbed my camera and walked slowly towards the already open back door! Snap! I had proof. Now I don't know why this hawk landed in my yard, it was only about 10 feet from the chicken coop, but that is completely enclosed so no fear for the hens. The hawk did jump over to my brush pile and check it out, but mice in the middle of the day - I don't think so. Maybe lizards. It flew away and then came back again. I keep that dead tree for wildlife purposes and it just made my day!

When I arrived here at Powell Cottage, nearly 20 years ago now, it was late December 1990. The grass was brown the trees were bare, and the stone cottage that I fell in love with was trimmed in a harsh brown against white clapboards and beigy/yellow stone. I knew at once that the dark brown had to go. I spent time picking out the paint colors so that the house would be softer to the eye and not outlined as if in a coloring book for children. I changed the brown to a medium taupe and the white to a light taupe and that was the beginning of my influence at Powell Cottage.

The front yard had only one tree. It was a about 4 feet tall and as it was Winter it was leafless. In the Spring I discovered that it was a Maple. It was on left of center in the yard as you looked at it from the street. I had no preconceived ideas about trees at that time so I thought that I would just let it grow. In the backyard there was one Pecan tree at the center and very back of the yard. It was relative large and the only large tree on the entire 1/4 acre. There were several old and spindly peach trees scattered about the yard, but they wouldn't last much longer so I didn't give them much thought.

Twenty years later I look back at it and I do not know when each change took place. It is an organic process in every way. I would always be an organic gardener and the creation of the gardens of Powell Cottage would be organic as well. I was moving towards sustainability, maybe even permaculture back then and I had not even heard the terms. When left to our own devices I believe that most of us will move in that direction. You might even call it laziness. The natural happens. If you could find a way to take care of yourself and your family without needing to keep up in a capitalist society then I think that the ways to do that naturally are in fact the easiest. As I sit here the back door is open I have one ceiling fan whirling above me imitating the outdoor breeze. I am easily more comfortable than when I am in the same temperature brought about by air conditioning or heating.

Back to the Maple tree. I let it grow for a year or two longer. It never seemed to get any larger. Then one evening I got a wild hair and decided to move it to the back yard. Now, I cannot remember what made me do this. I worked for a very long time digging the hole around the tree deep enough to encompass the roots as best I could. I remember that it was dark when I finally pulled it from the hole leaving some roots behind and I recall. It was dark and I truly don't remember how I stored it for the night, but I did plant it the next day in the back yard and now it is over 15 feet high.

That tree if over 15 feet tall now, and even after all of that trouble, this tree will be coming down soon. As my Pecan tree continued to grow and two of the neighbors Oak trees have grown as well the Maple is scrawny and branches out in a weird distortion of Maple growth just to get to the sun. That was however my first foray into transplanting success. Moving that tree less than 100 feet changed something and it began to grow at a much quicker rate.

That first transplanting success is one of the things that keeps me going here at Powell Cottage.

And The Fun Begins!

May 7, 2009
Okay -- Inspired by simple mom 's Spring Cleaning Party I am going to join in with some caveats. I work full time so my spring cleaning will be spread over weekend days. I will post before and after pictures even tho' the "befores" will humiliate me. It's tough for me on the cleaning and organizing front, as I have stated before.

One of the concepts that I have a problem with is the "everything should have a home" concept. It's not that I don't believe in it, nor is is that I don't agree with it. It's that it has taken me at least 4 books on organizing and many websites worth of reading and podcasts worth of listening to even hear the term OUTLOUD in my head (if you know what I mean). One day very recently I said to myself --- OH! Wait! You don't just mean what room should it go in or how do I sue this item, but in what actual drawer or on what actual shelf does this particular item should this item always be found and returned to! A place that if I went so far as to print a label and stick it to that particular spot, in six months not only would I probably find the item there, but I would still agree that it belongs in that chosen location. Ooooohhhh!

CONCEPT HEARD AND FINALLY RECEIVED!

This has opened up some thoughts for me. The decluttering has been working somewhat, but the step further to determining -- why what is left is where it is and should it be there -- is a much bigger deal. I have just started working on that part of the picture and man I have a lot of work to do along those lines. A lot of thoughts to process, first I have got to clear out spaces in my brain for all of the "no kidding" comments that I am anticipating to be stored. Augh!

A Little Success

ORGANIC GARDENING - ANIMALS - BEES - WORMS - WATER - WILDLIFE - KNITTING - FRUGALITY - LOW CARBON FOOTPRINT - LEARNING

My garden is going very well. I planted 3 kinds of peas: English, Snap and Snow. All of them are producing excellently. I planted them in early January even tho' all the information I read said to plant them on Feb 1st. I am glad I was too impatient to wait.

My tomato seeds -- all heritage -- also have done really well. I have 18 tomato plants in the ground. 16 of which I grew from seeds. The other two I bought at the March Dallas Organic Garden Club meeting.

My tomato varieties are as follows: Russion Black Krim (from the DOGC mtg), Beefsteak, Yellow Pear, Sweetie Cherry, and Brandywine. All are doing great. In fact last night I got the soaker hose in place, so all that is left is for me to feed them -- then they can feed me.

My Brussel Sprouts look suspiciously like 2 - Brussel Sprouts and 2 - others (?), to early to tell for sure, but I am thinking maybe brocoli or cauliflower. Lettuce is going great as are my potatoes. My potato tower is 3ft high now.

I got two new chicks. They are Heidi and Helen. Heidi is a Buff Orpington and Helen is a Silver Laced-Winged Wyandotte. The are nearly completely feathered now and have been making daily treks (on the weekends) out to the yard. I have them in a pen so that the other three: Hester, Hilda, and Hazel can get used to them.

The worms are doing fine, but wormeries are a little slower going than I had realized. Other than a few ounces of worm tea, the wormery still hasn't earned it's keep, but I have high hopes. And, the worm tea did go on the peas which are doing great soooo.....

I have decided against rabbits. Rabbit poo that could immediately go into the garden would be great, but I have old chicken poo to use in it's stead. They are not necessary and would be an added expense so frugality wins.

The swimming pool for the duckweed is cancelled for the time being. I haven't quite figured out the right spot for it.

Guppies are needed for the pond and a new air pump. Sounds like an expense for a future paycheck.

No knitting going on -- it's gardening time!

Cutting electricity -- I need to work on this goal. I have just read about a very interesting power strip on sale thru my electric company. It notices when your computer goes to sleep and it turns off your peripherals automatically.

My water bill should improve this year. I have completed the guttering around the garden shed and I currently have 2-30gal drums piped together collecting rain water. This is in addition to the 20gal drum by the front porch. This is just the beginning of the rain catchment system planed for this place and I have already noticed some improvements that I need to make before the entire 6 drum system will be working in unison.

Cooking outdoors -- I've done nothing to further this goal except buy a sun tea jar. It is in my thoughts though and the BBQ already exists so it's really the solar oven than I am pondering. I have done some research. It's a project for the future.

Couponing is a real boon for me! I have cut my spending by 40% I bet, and I have built a bit of a stockpile. I am feeling really good about that.

My short falls are in decluttering and cleaning. I donated two boxes full of items to the church garage sale, but that truly doesn't begin to make a dent. And the cleaning, well...it's still in a desparate state. Obviously I am not giving these aspects of my life improvement enough emphasis - since they are not even in my headline. That will have to change.

I still have a goal of having my garden on the DOGC garden tour in 2010. Hope my house will be clean enough by then so that people can come in a use the bathroom if they need to.

I still panic occasionally about keeping all of the balls in the air, but when I write it all down it looks like I am making some progress here at Powell Cottage.