Garlic Time!

Now is the time to plant if you’d like to grow your own fresh garlic! And you should because fresh garlic runs circles around the aged stuff you find in the store. Plus it's easy to grow an entire year's worth in a few feet of garden space that won't be doing anything else this winter. Why not tuck some in your flower beds when you clear them off for winter? If you plant it now, it will be ready by early June. Garlic is easy to grow – just as simple as planting bulbs. All you need is a head of garlic.

I like to experiment with heirloom varieties, but you can use any old head, even the one beginning to sprout in your cupboard right now. All you do is break off each clove and plant it pointy side up. You’ll want to plant it as deep as it is big, or a little deeper. I tend to err on the side of too deep when planting just in case the winter is worse than imagined.

Cheez-it Hoarding

We’ve turned our children into Cheezit-hoarders. It was quite by accident. In general I’m opposed to Cheezits, partly because of their addictive quality which I came to know first hand when I was freshly out of college and in charge of my own food budget for the first time. I ate them by the boxfuls. It was quite uncontrollable, and I was young and clueless. My main opposition to Cheezits now comes from the fact that they are a processed food of epic proportions. Read the label if you don’t believe me. And while you’re at it, notice the salt content and the hydrogenated oils. There truly isn’t much good in Cheezits. But I completely understand they taste good. That said, my children and I had to come to terms in regards to the number of boxes of Cheezits I would provide on a weekly basis.

For several years now, the three boxes of processed snack food a week (primarily Cheezits, but sometimes goldfish or whale crackers) has been our bottom line. But as they all are in or approaching their teens, their appetites have increased. So has their mistrust of their siblings’ fair consumption of the Cheezits. Fights began to break out and nasty comments about who was eating how much were flung about. When my kids were little and fought over a toy I would always take the toy, place it on top of the refrigerator, and say, “If you’re going to fight about it, then I’m going to get rid of it.” That would settle that. But life, apparently, can’t go on without Cheezits. And all of them can reach the top of the fridge now.

Happy Organized Homemaking

I just returned from a wonderful weekend leading a women’s retreat on the topic of happiness. It was fun to explore the idea from many perspectives and a delight to meet so many interesting, passionate, caring women. Being away from my little tribe always makes me appreciate them more, but coming home to a mess cuts those warm fuzzy feelings short every time. Except this time! This time I came home to a relatively clean home. What a nice change. The children are growing up. Either that or my hubby’s getting better about cracking the whip!

This morning as I sorted out the piles left on the counters and laundry dumped in the laundry room, I thought about one of the topics that came up over the weekend. We agreed that an organized home makes you happier. Most of us feel more content and energetic when our surroundings are not overwhelmed by clutter and chaos. I whole-heartedly agree on this one. Lucky for me I married an engineer who works for a tool company. He can build or fix nearly anything. I cannot. But I have lots of ideas! We make a great team.

Let me take you on a pictorial tour of some of the ways we’ve organized our family life. Maybe it will inspire you to organize something in your home which just might make you happier! (please note that I didn’t clean up for the tour. I figure we’re all friends here and you won’t hold the cleanliness of my counters/walls/floors against me!)

My Favorite Colorful Culinary Creation (and NO this is not becoming a Foodie Blog)

At the risk of making this seem like a foodie blog, I have to write again about yummy food I had this weekend. Every year I plant mini-sweet peppers. The first year I watched them grow and said, “They’re so adorable,” but then never figured out what to do with them and they mostly rotted on the plant. But the next year I was determined to do something with them so when my hubby’s best friend and undiscovered chef, Nate, came to visit the two of us created mini-stuffed peppers.

Now each year about this time, I make stuffed mini peps. The recipe has changed only slightly over the years. I try to pull them out for a special occasion. Last year I made them for my book club ladies who loved them (let’s hear it ladies!). This year, with the Tomato Pie stealing the show at the few occasions we’ve had, I couldn’t find the right time for the mini-peps. So last night, on an ordinary Sunday night for no particular reason I created perhaps the yummiest version yet of my mini-peps. Here's what how it went down.

There Are Nematodes in My Wine Fridge (what?)

There are fifty million nematodes in my wine fridge. That’s not a sentence I ever imagined writing in this lifetime. The nematodes arrived in the mail yesterday and as the weatherman is predicting a lengthy dry spell it seemed best to store the little beauties in an appropriate place until the forecast changes. That only makes sense to you if you’re a biologist or a nerd-gardener. I’m decidedly not a biologist, I might be the latter.

On the off chance that you are neither a biologist or a nerd-gardener, but you are a person interested in eradicating Japanese beetles from your garden, let me explain. Nematodes are beneficial insects. In the world of organic gardening, beneficial insects are tiny friends that can save your garden.

They can silently, effectively, and non-toxically control the grubs of Japanese beetles and masked chafer beetles. They attack soil-dwelling pests like cutworms, corn earworms, cabbage root maggots, weevils, wireworms, armyworms, and even flea larvae. What’s not to love?

The reason I did not immediately rip open the package and set them loose, is that their application is important. They need to be applied just before a rain so that they can get down into the ground and do their dirty work. Sure, you could use a hose to simulate rain, but that is only practical if you’re just applying five million. We’re talking about 50 million. I don’t want to lose a single tode, so ours are residing in the wine fridge where they can enjoy their optimum storage temperature of 55 degrees until the weather cooperates.

If you’re looking for a source for nematodes, I recommend Gardens Alive. But don’t pay full price, sign up for their newsletter and get the $25 off coupon or bid your time and wait for them to make an offer (they will).

Milky Spore is another option if Japanese beetles are your issue, but it’s a little more pricey. We’ve seen better results with nematodes. A quick search on Organic Gardening website found only nematodes recommended rather than Milky Spore. One other benefit is that nematodes go after even more bad guys than Milky Spore.

Spam and the Art of Carpet Cleaning

I don’t get a lot of comments on my blogs. I probably shouldn’t write that since it’s not something to brag about and might cause a reader to think my blog isn’t worth reading. While comments directly on the blog may be lacking, I do get a lot of hits (in fact this summer I passed 100,000!!). Most people who comment on my blog do it through facebook, pinterest, or e-mail me direct if they are subscribers. Sure, I wish they’d write on the blog itself so it would make me look good, or at least popular, but honestly I’m happy to hear from people no matter how they reach me. It gives me comfort that I’m not writing in a vacuum.

Periodically, there are some comments on my blog that puzzle me. One post in particular generated a wealth of comments. It wasn’t my best post or a particularly provocative topic, but it gained momentum and had 397 hits beyond my regular subscribers. It was titled, Natural Carpet Cleaning (or the Cat’s New Digs). I suppose it was the words Carpet Cleaning that attracted the wealth of readers. At any rate, many of the comments were bizarre. Some seemed to be from people who don’t claim English as their native tongue. Some made no sense at all. I regret that I deleted the first dozen or so. After awhile it became amusing and I left them posted. Here are a few samples:

This post is so informative and makes a very nice image on the topic in my mind. It is the first time I visit your blog, but I was extremely impressed. Keep posting as I am gonna come to read it everyday!

The post is talking about natural carpet cleaning or the cats new place to live. Useful post

I am very thankful to all or any your group to share specific heartening stuff.

congratulations guys, quality information you have given!!! 

Impressive work....it will useful for any carpet cleaning consumers.!!!!!

Many of the comments were signed by Carpet Cleaning companies. Which made me wonder, what was the point? Would commenting on my little blog actually garner more carpet cleaning business? Is there a program out there that generates comments on blogs that cover certain topics like carpet cleaning? My site’s host, Blogger, makes it so difficult for a well-meaning normal person to write a relevant comment on my blogs that I find it amazing that spammers can get around their frustrating system. Or maybe you have to be a carpet cleaning spammer to be able to circumnavigate it in the first place.

A slew of comments came from carpet cleaning companies in Australia and New Zealand. This amused me to no end. I love that my post was being flung around on the far end of the earth. Here’s a little more publicity for them:

“Your blogs are totally worth giving time and energy.” -carpet cleaning Auckland

“The is a great article”  -Bond Cleaning Brisbane

“You completely duplication our mean and the difference of our information.” -professional carpet cleaning auckland   (That’s actually exactly what was written. They do speak English in New Zealand don’t they?)

You have to admire this commenter who went for the really obvious and stuck their advertisement smack in the middle of their complimentary comments about my blog:

“I enjoyed the tips you are providing on your website. Az Carpet and Tile Cleaning is the best carpet cleaner in Phoenix Arizona. It is remove of stains, dirt, grit and sand for long term cleaning. Thanks for the the information……” (again, I copied the comment exactly as it was written.)

I do realize that re-posting these silly comments is just rewarding odd behavior, but I couldn’t resist, especially since one of the last comments was from someone so famous.

“Asd”  -Angelina Jullie

I looked up “asd” in the urban/internet dictionaries and here’s what I found:

 Asd:

1. A spam word that doesn't mean anything, but more than often typed in a spamming frenzy. 
2. American Sign-language for the Deaf.

In the hopes of inciting another “spamming frenzy” I’ve tried to type CARPET CLEANING as many times as possible in this post.

If you can shed some light on all this, feel free to comment on my comments but first you have to get past the stiff security of Blogger. I'm assuming some of you out there can explain all this - I'm not gonna ask how you know this information. The deep, dark recesses of the internet remain a mystery to me.