...Growing, Building, Cooking, Preserving, Crafting...

2006 began our urban homestead when I broke ground on a garden, which now includes perennial fruits, flowers, & many vegetable varieties. We dream of solar panels, keeping bees and hens. Until then we'll continue growing and preserving our own fruits and vegetables, building what we can for our home, cooking from scratch, and crafting most days.

2.11.2010

Mushrooms, Seeds, and Scarves, Oh My!

We are officially mushroom-sitting.  Our next-door neighbors went to the Vancouver Olympics and have entrusted us with their mushroom kit.  If you've never seen a mushroom kit, it's quite amazing.  It's a big box of growing medium inoculated with mushroom spores.  You keep it moist and cool and within a week or so many, many, MANY mushrooms begin to grow.  We tried a kit one year in our basement and had a scary amount of portabellas.  This particular kit grows white button mushrooms.  The deal is that if we take care of the mushrooms--spritz them with water and keep them at the right temperature (and out of Vera's reach)--that we can enjoy all the fungi we can harvest.  It's perfect timing because I hadn't yet purchased mushrooms for our weekly Friday night pizza.
Started my vegetable seeds today.  First I prepared the soilless planting mix--1 part peat moss, 1 part vermiculite, and a little perlite--and filled the seedling containers with it, dropped in a couple seeds and topped them off with more planting mix.  I haven't tried growing eggplant before but today I seeded two varieties: Hansel (purple) and Gretel (white).  I'm excited to see how they'll do. 

I also found time to sew.  I love to create new clothing and accessories from recycled/repurposed materials.  Today I upcycled a pair of worn-out yoga pants into a tube scarf.  It's basically a huge continuous loop and when I put it on it's like putting a giant hairband around my neck; it's nice and snuggly.  We'll see if Ben likes it; he may not be crazy about me turning another pair of pants into a scarf.  Most recently I upcycled a pair of flannel pj pants (circa 1995) into a big wrapping scarf.  I'd had the pajamas so long that I finally wore a hole in them.  Thought I'd patch it up, but then I got the idea for the scarf.  When I showed him my latest creation he was not excited, but kind of pouted about it, "I never wanted to see those pjs again!"  Whenever he sees me wearing the scarf he teases that I have a pair of pajama pants wrapped around my neck.  I think it's cool.  Anyway, this scarf is more neutral so hopefully it doesn't look as much like it did in its previous life.

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