Sometimes something someone says gets stuck in my head and I can't get rid of it. It sits there, tugging at my thoughts, pulling at my emotions, until I give it the attention that it desires and perhaps the attention that I need to give it. After all, if it's there, it must be there for a reason, right?

In this case, a man that I was involved with a few years ago, perhaps more now, wrote me this rather horrible email to not only end our relationship but to end any association he had with me. Honestly, it was cruel and below this person, but that's not what this post is about. It's about what he said to me in that email that has hung around in my head for all these years and the fact that I'm finally at a point where I can deal with it clearly and without wasted emotion. After all, emotion is wasted on someone who was flat out cruel to you.

I'm not going to directly quote him because honestly, I have no desire to open that email. The gist of what he said was that I'm not me. I'm not someone who stands for anything or has her own beliefs. I'm merely someone who morphs herself into whatever she thinks the other person wants. I'm nothing more than a mimic.  Harsh, huh?

That one single idea has stuck with me ever since I read it and I wondered if it was true. Who am I? I'm reminded of this quote from the movie Music and Lyrics:

"Since then, every time I pick up a pen, I'm haunted by those words that he wrote, you know? "She was a brilliant mimic. She could ape Dorothy Parker or Emily Dickinson, but stripped of someone else's literary clothes, she was a vacant, empty imitation of a writer.""

Stripped of other people's interests and beliefs, who am I? You see, he was right in a way. I do tend to take on the interests of those I care about. Do I do it to define me? No, I don't think that I do. I do it to have more in common with them, to learn about new things. Rob is a perfect example of this and someone who, on the tiniest off chance that he ever read this, wouldn't care if I used him as an example.

Rob was/is very much into roller derby. Me? I knew next to nothing about it. When I'd visit him, if one of his friends stopped by, they'd sit and talk about it and I'd be left out because I knew nothing about it. I hated that. It was also something he was very passionate about so I wanted to know more. I downloaded and read the complete rule book. They teased me that the next thing they knew, I'd be some sort of official. The reality is that I never intended on playing myself or getting involved. I just wanted to know more. I'm still holding out for Rob to take me to my first bout.

Did I change myself into a derby girl because Rob was into derby? No. Some would point out that I did go and buy a pair of skates. I did. I still have them though due to illness, etc I haven't used them since right after I bought them. Skating is fantastic exercise and a lot of fun. It was something I could do on my own or go with Rob to do when I was visiting him. Was it because of him that I looked into it? Yeah, it was. Did it change anything? Not really.

So where am I going with all of this? I guess I'm going to the part where I say Stuart was right. Over the years, I've molded myself at times. My upbringing caused that. If I wasn't what was wanted, things happened. When I was with the boys' dad, that continued. Please don't misunderstand. He never raised a hand towards me, but he knew what buttons to push to get me to be or do what he wanted.

Then, I was on my own. I was no longer his wife. I no longer had an identity. I didn't know who I was. So, over the years since then, I guess I've explored options. With Rob, I explored the idea of skating and I discovered that it was something I enjoyed. I totally sucked at it, but I enjoyed it. With others, it may have been certain television shows or hobbies. Does that mean that I continued to morph? Perhaps, but only to the smallest extent. As someone who had no idea who they were anymore, what their interests were or what they wanted to do/be in life, it was a way to discover the answers to those things. I discovered that no matter how much someone else liked it, I just could not get into Buffy, but that I loved Doctor Who. I realized that I do kind of like certain types of science fiction. I found a tiny piece of me.

I tend to think of myself as one of those jigsaw puzzles that have 10,000 pieces and each time I discover something, a tiny piece slides into place. With enough exploration, I may find me again. I think that I started my container garden a number of years ago because Rob or someone was growing tomatoes and it gave me an additional connection to him. It also allowed me to discover that dirt therapy is really good for me. Does Rob still grow tomatoes? Heck if I know. I do know that right now, there are 8 plants on my front porch that I need to water later today.

There are also things that I do simply because they're a part of me. I love to craft. I've been making things since I was a child and while I don't do it as much these days it's not because someone has frowned on it. It's simply because I got in my own way and now I need to clear that out so that I can get back to it. Nick once told me that coloring is my therapy...crafting always was and I suspect it always will be. I can't draw but I can still create in my own way.

Which brings me to writing...another thing that I've done for as long as I can remember. In fact, if you asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I'd tell you that I want to write. It's another thing that I'm just plain getting in my own way of. Will I ever be famous for writing? Probably not. Could I be successful at it? Probably. It's my own fears that are getting in the way of that, but that's probably another post for another day. It's another one of those thoughts that have been bumping around in my head lately.

What does this all mean? It means that you may see me becoming interested in something that you do. I may try it out for a little bit. I may discover that I love it and stick with it. I may discover that it's not me and leave it. Either of those things is okay. The only way to truly discover if something is me is to try it. I'm not mimicking, I'm exploring and exploration is healthy. It's good.

In order to reclaim me, I have to find me.



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For every gardener who cares about the planet, this guide to designing a bee garden helps you create a stunningly colorful, vibrant, healthy habitat that attracts both honeybees and native bees.

In The Bee-Friendly Garden, award-winning garden designer Kate Frey and bee expert Gretchen LeBuhn provide everything you need to know to create a dazzling garden that helps both the threatened honeybee and our own native bees. No matter how small or large your space, and regardless of whether you live in the city, suburbs, or country, just a few simple changes to your garden can fight the effects of colony collapse disorder and the worldwide decline in bee population that threatens our global food chain. There are many personal benefits of having a bee garden as well! Bee gardens:

· contain a gorgeous variety of flowers
· bloom continuously throughout the seasons
· are organic, pesticide-free, and ecologically sustainable
· develop healthy and fertile soil
· attract birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects
· increase the quantity of your fruit and vegetable harvest
· improve the quality, flavor, and size of your produce

Illustrated with spectacular full-color photos, The Bee-Friendly Garden debunks myths about bees, explains seasonal flower progression, and provides detailed instructions for nest boxes and water features. From “super blooming” flowers to regional plant lists and plants to avoid, The Bee-Friendly Garden is an essential tool for every gardener who cares about the planet and wants to make their yard a welcoming habitat for nature’s most productive pollinator.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's still winter here in Michigan, but there's something lovely about daydreaming about putting in this year's garden. To be honest, I neglected mine the past couple of years and it's time for a fresh start so when this book became available, I clicked accept about as fast as I ever have.

This book is filled with a ton of useful information and absolutely gorgeous photos. Honestly, it's the type of book that some people may pick up just for the photos. Don't overlook the information though! It's already given me some great ideas for my beds this year and I know that before I start collecting up what I need, I'll be diving back into the pages to see what other information and ideas I may have missed. After all, I don't want to pick up something that drives bees away by mistake! Know how I'll avoid that pitfall? There's a section on it in the book!

So, gardeners, bee lovers, flower lovers and nature lovers...pick up a copy of this book and start planning your own gardens!



I received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments, and opinions are my own.

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Wow, you can tell it's been a long time since I used this graphic, huh? It has the old domain on it! Goodness gracious, I'm going to have to do something about that. I wonder if I still have any sort of software. Probably not! No worries though. This is a minor thing in the story of life. Now...on with the proper Save the Planet Saturday post!

One of the things that the boys and I are doing this year is putting in a fairly good sized container garden. We're growing all sorts of things and while they're not as excited as I am, it really is a great family project. The boys each have a plant of their own and once summer rolls around, it will be their responsibility to care for it.

If you've ever planted a container garden, you'll know that it takes a few things to make it happen: containers, seeds and a lot of dirt. Did I mention a lot of dirt? To be honest, I've lost track of how many bags of topsoil and garden soil we've purchased this year and we're not close to done yet. I don't even want to imagine how much money we've spent or how much money, etc went into getting that dirt to a location where I could purchase it. Some of you may be thinking... but it's just dirt. How much could that affect the environment? Well, how about the plastic bags that it's all packaged in? The cost, not just in money but emissions, for transporting it to the various stores? Plus other things that I won't take the time to mention.

So, what's a girl with a garden to do? Compost. Now, if you're like me, you can't have a giant compost pile just sitting in your yard. It's not precisely attractive and they can take up quite a bit of space. My solution? Trash can composting. Keep reading for just how I did it...

 Step 1: Collect up your supplies. In this case, a 32 gallon or larger trash can with a lid that snaps closed and a cordless drill with a drill bit attached.
 Step 2:  Using your drill, drill holes into the lid of your trash can. These serve multiple purposes. To properly get your compost composting, you need to have air and moisture. Having the holes in the top allows rainwater to drip in and for air to circulate.
 Step 3: Flip your trash can over and drill holes into the bottom. Again, this helps with air circulation, but it also serves the opposite purpose of the top holes. It allows for excess water to drain out the bottom.
Step 4: Continue your drilling by adding holes all around the trash can itself. Be careful that you don't drill so many that you ruin the structural integrity of your container. After all, you want this to hold soil, not break open and dump who knows what all over the place!
 Step 5: Find a location for your brand new composter! You have a couple of options. What's shown in this photo is actually not a recommended one! It doesn't allow for air circulation or drainage. If you'd like worms to find their way into your trash can (and this is a good thing! Worms make great compost helpers!), place your new composter onto a patch of soil. This will allow them to wriggle their way up through your drainage holes and to start munching away at all the worm goodies that you'll be putting into your compster.
Step 5 continued: Your other option is to place your composter up on something like bricks. This is actually my original composter. It's almost halfway full of some seriously great looking dirt. Once it's full, I'll be switching over to my brand new one. This gives me a chance to pop into the store (or look around) for a few bricks. Having the composter raised allows for drainage and for proper air circulation. It doesn't allow for our friends the worms to climb up in, though. So, if you want some worm help, you have a couple of options. You can buy some or you can do what I've done and as you spot them in your yard, pick up the little wrigglers and move them into your composter.



Once you have the structure built, you're ready to get started! For my composter, I added a bag of old topsoil, a bit of water and then started adding the "gunk."  What defines gunk? Gunk includes fruit and veggie scraps, produce that's past it's prime and yard debris such as grass and leaves. Things that you don't want to include? Meat and dairy products because as they break down, they stink! Not only do they stink, but that smell is much more likely to call critters that you don't want hanging about. You also don't want to add in things like sticks because they don't really break down in this sort of composter.

A couple of quick tips: Compost does best when it's rotated to get a good mix. You have a couple of options for this. If your lid snaps down firmly and won't come off, take your bin, lay it on its side and roll it around a few times every couple of weeks and then put it back in place. If this won't work for you, do what I do..whenever I add something new, I take a shovel and mix it all up.  Also, if you can, chop whatever you're tossing in there into small pieces. This will decrease the amount of time that it takes for it to break down. Again, I've found my shovel is really useful for this, especially when I don't want to touch that science project veggie that I found hiding in the back of the fridge!

With any luck and a little patience, you'll have some great soil for your garden beds, flower beds or containers!



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 Ok, I admit it. I totally dropped the ball on posting the weekly challenges here on the site. I hope that you can forgive me. If you're ever wondering what they are (because I yet again forgot to post them), they all are up on the Facebook group. It's pretty quiet over there but don't let that put you off. Just jump right in!

This week's challenge was to tackle our hobby supplies. Since I feel like the queen of hobbies, I chose just one and decided to tackle it. Since it's going to be getting cold here soon, I decided I ought to try to make some sense of our barn/garage. It's a total disaster and you're lucky if you can find a path through it. Don't believe me? Here's the corner that I decided to turn into our gardening/tool area before I started:

See what I mean? Things are stacked everywhere! Right after I took this picture, I spent about 20 minutes just rearranging things and throwing some stuff out.  This got it to here:


It's amazing what a mere 20 minutes can do to a space, isn't it? I created a path and discovered that there really was a workbench under all of that, just like I remembered! The next steps required three..yes, three trips into Lowes. I decided to tear down the old peg board (it was cheap and filthy and badly hung) and replace it with some new and improved peg board. Then, I decided I didn't want it to be brown...and here's where I made my mistake. For some unknown reason, I thought it would be easiest to spray paint it. So, I bought one can of spray paint...yep, just one...now you see where this is going right? One can got me this far:



Another trip into town and 4 more cans of spray paint later and I had this :



Yep, this required a 3rd trip into town and 2.5 cans of spray paint more and finally all of the peg board was painted :


Then, I grabbed the gallon of yellow paint that we had bought for the kitchen (right before I decided I wanted to paint it red!) and I painted the top of the work bench. It took 3 coats and needed a 4th but since it's a workbench, I don't mind it looking a bit scruffy.

Today, I headed back out to the barn and after...well, we won't say how long or repeat a few of the words I may/may not have said...I managed to get the peg board hung up.  It's not the prettiest job but my nails kept bending and I was trying to hammer and hold at the same time :


Ta da! Badly seamed peg board! That's ok because I promptly went to work covering all that up. First, I added this cabinet that I picked up on the side of the road last summer. It was missing an interior shelf, but a quick look around the barn/garage and I came up with a scrap that fit perfectly!


Up next was sorting out the tools and getting things onto the workbench itself.

Last but certainly not least, I hung up the tools that I saw laying around (I'm sure there are more somewhere!) and put those pretty flowers into a larger vase. They probably won't survive too much longer but I'll enjoy them while they do.  When it was all said and done, here's the final look:



Oh! I forgot to mention that I did do one little side project while I was doing this. I had 2 partial and 1 full bag of potting soil laying around. Since nobody has invented a bucket on wheels, I bought a 5 gallon paint bucket, wrote potting soil on it and put it on top of a plant dolly. Now, whenever I need potting soil, I can just pull it out. I filled it with both of the partial bags. The full bag is going to end up in my composter as soon as I drag it out back.


My thanks go out to the guys at Lowes who good naturedly teased me every time I walked back in the door to buy just a few more cans of spray paint. I hope y'all enjoyed this little step by step walk through of the first but certainly not the last of the home improvement projects I have scheduled for around here!



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Just a quick note to those of you, who like our family, are planting gardens. Watch where your water is going. While a rain barrel is your best option for collecting water to take care of your garden, not all of us are fortunate enough to have one. If you're using a hose or sprinkler system to water, make sure that you do it early in the morning. That way your flowers/plants are getting as much water as possible with as little of it evaporating off into the atmosphere. This will keep you from having to water as often which will save on that water bill.

It's Tuesday and thank goodness, the weather has changed for the better! I've already moved all of the planters off of my kitchen table and out to the back porch. Thank goodness for that! Trying to keep the cats out of them was becoming more of a challenge then I wanted to deal with. They're usually good critters but those planters were more than they could resist!

Speaking of things you can't resist (nice segue, eh?), I heard of an opportunity to write a Going Green guest post on another fabulous blogger's blog and I jumped at it! It went live yesterday and I can't believe that I forgot to tell you about it. If y'all want to check it out, and I totally encourage you to do so, head on over to Parenting By Dummies and check out the blog post written by yours truly!

There, I think I've caught all of you up on everything. I told you about my radio show yesterday and about my guest blog post today. I don't think much of anything else is really going on so that just leaves me writing about today's tackle.

Laundry. The never ending mountain of laundry that is always waiting for me to get it washed, dried, folded, hung up and put away. Well, today I'm going to try to get through the large basketful that is living in my bathroom. This will open up the rest of my bathroom to being cleaned and I can finally get in there and scrub it down properly. It always amuses me that even if the rest of my house is a total disaster, my bathroom will be clean. Having this basket of laundry in there has been driving me nuts!

Now, since it's a gorgeous day outside, I won't be at all surprised if I tackle a few other areas. There's just something about warm (not hot) sunny days that seem to fill me with energy and motivation. I won't complain, I'll just take advantage of that!

I'm off to take some tylenol (woke up with a blinding headache that I'm stubbornly ignoring) and toss in a load of laundry!

Happy Thursday, world. Today is going to be a fairly busy day. I need to bag up some items that are being picked up to go to kids in Haiti. Those will be picked up sometime this afternoon. I also want to run the sweeper on the landing and in the boys room.

None of this sounds like anything for me, right? Well, that's pretty accurate. I do promise I'm going to take some time for me, though. I'm thinking that I'm going to go out and get a bit of a start on the garden and maybe even plant a few seeds to get them going. Oooh, I know! I'll get our strawberries going. Yummy!

What are all of you going to do for you today? Are you going to find some time to pamper yourself?

Whew! I was just too tired to write this post yesterday. I tackled something pretty important yesterday. I drove into Hastings and took Hemi(ngway) to the vet. The poor guy had to be fixed. His sister went into heat and we just don't need/want kittens. Since it's about a 30-40 minute drive into Hastings, I decided to spend the day there.

I went out to the Goodwill store and to Walmart. I've been trying to find yard/gardening tools for a good price. No such luck but I did find some good deals on items we do need. I also picked up some more seeds and 9 little baby broccoli plants. I'm hoping that the weather is nice this weekend so we can start working on our garden.

I also went and checked out the new library in Hastings. Oh my goodness, it is so nice! It's so much bigger than their old one. I so wish that I still had my library card from there. They do have free wifi there, though which is super nice for if I need to waste some time in town again. Plus, they have a used bookstore inside! I love used books!

After all of that fun, I picked up my Hemi boy and brought his poor drugged, drunken sailor looking self home. For those of you who knew he was going to the vet, he's just fine. The drugs wore off and he was back to himself today.

I bet everyone has pretty much given up on me getting a post up today. Surprise! I made it! I had a great day with the boys but I'm still fighting a sore throat and feeling a bit drained. I'm thinking it's just the change in weather and I'm not getting sick. I'm certainly hoping so, anyway.

I was pondering what to write for today when inspiration hit in the most obvious of ways. The boys and I went out to the wonderful Swede's for lunch and I watched in awe as Ben packed away one of their 1/2 wet burritos and ate part of mine. Only those of you who have had the delight of eating at Swede's knows just how much food that is. When we got back, the boys and I were talking about books and I happened to look down and see a UB bookstore bag at Roger's feet. I pulled it up to see what was in it and discovered 3 new books! Yay! Then, I caught a wiff of something nasty smelling. I looked back down in the bag and saw a Subway sandwich bag with umm...the liquified remains of something. *shudders*

How does all of this related to today's post? Well, one of the books was a really nice book on organic gardening. Sadly, it now smells like a compost bin...and tada! We have a topic!

One of the things I want to do very soon is start a compost bin here at the house. I can't afford to buy one so I'm going to make one. Are you ready for how I'm going to do this? It's super easy.

Step 1: Find two containers with lids: a smaller one to sit in my kitchen and a larger one that will be the main compost bin.

Step 2: Set up the kitchen bin. For this, I'm thinking one of those big gallon tubs of icecream. We'll enjoy the icecream and then use the plastic tub w/ the lid. Setup basically means tucking it under my kitchen sink w/ the lid on it.
Step 3: Set up the main compost bin. This will be a larger bin w/ a lid. I'll poke small holes in the bottom for air to get in and put it up on a couple of bricks. I'll also need something to stir it with.

Step 4: Make sure to mix the main bin and add a balance of browns and greens to keep the compost happy.

Step 5: Enjoy the "fruits" of labor in anywhere from 3-6 months, depending on how busy our bin is.

And there you have it, a quick and easy compost bin that any of us could put together. Once I get ours setup, I'll try to post some photos and let you know how it works! For now, I'm going to try to figure out how to defunk my really nice gardening book.

Today we're gonna go outdoors. If you're like me, you're plotting your gardens and your flowers. This year, how about making those areas no-spray zones? Start with disease and pest-resistant plants. You can also repel many pests with homemade concoctions and certain herbs and flowers. Basil, chives, mint, marigolds and chrysanthemums are all good for this. Mix them in among your other plants. Use live traps or barriers to remove pests instead of using chemicals. Buy ladybugs to control aphids. Also, while you're at it, why not try organic compost and mulch to improve soil health, which will also reduce the need for pesticides.