The Little By Little Principle

This year- 2011 has been a long series of "little steps" for me. I am learning day by day that little steps can lead to grand results. It is a long process and one that is never complete. However, I love the outcome from taking this approach! I tend to be a "worker bee" type of person. This can be very positive because when I put my mind to it I can get a lot done quickly. However, sometimes if I don't have a lot of time to get something done I feel overwhelmed and I don't get started! This tended to happen with yard work and continues to happen with sewing projects.

So, I have found that if I think about a project with the "little by little principle" and I work on it a little each day or when I have a few free minutes it goes much more smoothly and I am surprised and what I can accomplish! Not to mention- it has given me more time to relax and focus on spending time with my dearest son Adam who is almost 3 years old! It is a joy to have more time to spend with him!

Adam "climbing" a maple tree in our back yard.

It all started in January with my New Year's resolutions to clean the garage, do more exercise and come up with a better routine for cleaning the house and doing chores. To realize these goals I found a great system. I decided to try the Flylady's system and this has been helpful in so many ways. I will explain how I have used her system here. However, if you would like more details please check out her website:

http://www.flylady.net/

I got started by writing down my morning and evening routines as outlined in the Flylady system. I included in my morning routine time for exercise and getting ready for the day. This helped me get up early each day to do my exercise, some chores and get breakfast ready. Here is the routine I started with: ( I am continually adjusting this due to the fact that Adam seems to be waking up earlier each morning!)

Morning Routine

1. Rise and Shine

1. get up at 5:25am
2. do workout for 20+ minutes (watch TV, listen to ipod)
3. shower, get dressed, do makeup and hair
4. swish and swipe-clean up bathroom (a five minute bathroom clean up)
   
5. eat breakfast-fix Adam’s breakfast/read book

2. Kitchen

. If you did your Before Bed Routine, the kitchen is clean and all you need to do is empty the dishwasher.

3. Think About Your Day

. Check your calendar.

a. Make your list of what you are going to do today

b. Get Adam up

c. Have breakfast time with Adam

d. Make beds

e. Gather up clothes and do laundry

f. Hit the hot-spots. If you did your Before Bed Routine there will not be any.

g. Now reward yourself with some computer time. Check your e-mail.

After I got my routines in place I worked on my next goal of cleaning the garage. I cleaned a little bit each day whenever I had time and I was so happy to see that within around two months I had gotten rid of about 30 boxes of stuff and now knew where things were in the garage and had things more organized!

As you can see- I had now accomplished my goals of cleaning the garage and getting more exercise. And, along the way I kept my house clean and organized without going crazy! Another thing I like about the Flylady approach is that things don't have to be "perfect." I know that my house is clean but it doesn't have to be absolutely spotless for me to feel good about it. This way of thinking has lead to more free time and less worry.

For example, my weekly routine includes my "big cleaning day" which is Monday. On the other days I just do my morning and evening routines and keep up with laundry. This way I am not going crazy doing too much cleaning! On my "big cleaning day" I vacuum rugs and carpets on each floor of the house, clean the bathrooms, do a quick dusting of the living room/dining room, take out all of the trash, wash and change sheets and mop floors. I also do 3- 4 loads of laundry that day. It is nice to have this "big cleaning day" because the rest of the week it is smooth sailing!

I have had some trouble keeping my morning routine going lately because Adam has been waking up much earlier! Also, sometimes it is hard to wake up so early- I admit! So, I will have to adjust my routine a bit to accommodate that fact and make sure I have a bit of time in the morning to do a few things before he wakes up. I was able to do this routine without too many changes for about 2 months. However, like most plans it needs changing sometimes. I am usually able to at least do a bit of exercise, shower and dress most days before Adam wakes up. That does help a lot!

I have been able to apply the "little by little principle" to gardening and yard work as well. In order to get the yard in shape I simply tried to do a bit of weeding, edging, mulching, etc. every time Adam and I would go outside together. Some days I was able to do a lot and other days just a little but it helped me towards my goal. It has felt good to get so much done. There is still a lot to do- but I feel like this year I am learning so much and really enjoying my yard and gardening in general!

Now, on to gardening news:

Suburban Garden:

A view of our front yard on a sunny day in May, 2011.

Our yard is looking so nice these days! There are just small projects left to do- such as finishing putting in the edging stones around the lawn and pea gravel around the garden bed- but beyond that the yard is looking so pretty and it is nice to sit back and look at it! Our front yard looks so nice now that we have trimmed back the rhododendrons and our side yard is planted with flowers. It was spectacular on a sunny day a few days back!

Geraniums I planted in a large pot on the deck. I bought small geranium starts and they are growing very well now.

I forgot to mention how I decided to plant mostly geraniums along with a few other annuals in my many pots on our deck. I have finally learned that these types of flowers are best for the full sun!

A view of our deck and back yard. I love having lots of pots of flowers on the deck! Hopefully soon they will be in bloom!

A small bit of news in my vegetable garden is that my lettuce is starting to sprout as well as my basil plants that I planted in pots indoors! Hooray!

Now, on to country garden news....


Country Garden:


This last Friday. May 20th Adam and I headed out to my parent's place to work in the garden and visit. It was such a lovely day- again in the 70's. So pretty! The orchard is looking spectacular with many healthy fruit trees- some still in bloom! Lovely!!

The little by little approach certainly had to be in full force that day because Adam was interested in walking around everywhere and didn't stay long in the garden area. Even so, my Mom and I were able to do quite a bit of weeding. I worked on weeding around the gooseberry bushes that are near the raspberries and boysenberries. Now, they have more room to grow and look great! My Mom took care of lots of small weeds in between the potato rows. We also found that we had a few "volunteer" potatoes from last year that have sprouted! Hooray!



Adam had fun helping to water the seeds that my Mom planted last weekend. He got a bit of help from Grandma and Grandpa!

Later on we went for a couple of nature walks and we spotted a lot of native plants!

Here are some pictures of these:

A twin flower that we saw on our walk.

A flower we called "flag" when I was a little girl.

False Solomon's Seal- a very delicate and lovely plant.


A flowering Oregon Grape plant.

We had such fun going on these "trail walks" with Adam on Friday. I love how he likes to explore the countryside!

Adam walking up from the "gully" near the orchard.

Here's to spring and a summer to come full of gardening, sunny days and working on every thing little by little!

Our Background and Preparations for Spring

A Bit of background:

This almanac will include a lot about our gardening adventures as well as capture many of our baking & crafting projects.

Although we're mother and daughter we don't live in the same house; in fact we live in two different counties. Serena is mom and lives in a rural county and Trista is daughter and lives in a nearby suburban county. However, they love to start all kinds of projects together. To this end, this year they decided to start a large garden together and share in the rewards & harvest!

A Bit about Serena and Trista:

Serena has fun creating handwoven fabrics and hand-sewn garments. She is also very interested in growing & raising a lot of her own food and cooking from scratch. She is also a part time instructor at a local community college. Trista loves baking and cooking, and is especially obsessed by bread-baking right now. She is also a part time ESL instructor for the local community college. For the past few years along with Serena's daughter in law we've had a baking business called "Farmer's Tea" in which we baked from scratch many delicious goodies using local, fresh and organic ingredients. We decided to stop our baking business this year and concentrate more on our gardening efforts as well as start other projects.

Our Garden Project:

In order to start our organic garden we bought seeds from Seed Saver's Exchange and Jefferson's Monticello. We didn't want to use hybrid seeds and wanted to use varieties that people have been growing for many years with success. We chose a lot of favorites such as tomatoes and corn but also decided to grow some new things this year.

Last year Serena and her family acquired some chickens and built a chicken coop & yard. They were interested in having fresh eggs and all of the benefits that chickens provide to a garden. Now, there are sixteen chickens that are busily weeding and fertilizing the soil in our garden. The hen house sawdust is removed from the chicken house and moved to mix into the garden soil. This has proved to be very beneficial because there are so many worms in the soil that it looks like they are swimming in there! We are also going to try growing most of the feed for the chickens in the form of sunflowers to produce sunflower seeds as well as all of the garden scraps that they enjoy after the harvest.

We are planting things we've never grown before and we started plants from seed indoors in the beginning of April including tomatoes, peppers, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli as well as onions and some flowers.

Planting season started a bit ago by planting peas in March and later on in April we put in dill, swiss chard and carrots as well as some of our plant starts. Also, we planted gooseberries, raspberries, boysenberries, apple trees, rhubarb, grapes and tea plants. Since Serena and her family live at a higher elevation- at around 800 feet we have to make sure and plant things slowly so that it is warm enough for them to grow.

Serena, along with her family, has a large orchard with many permanent fruit trees in it including plums, cherries, pears, apples, figs, walnuts and hazelnuts. In order to pollinate the orchard and berry patch a beehive has been installed near the orchard and garden area.Trista is starting small with an Asian pear and an apple tree in her backyard. She and her family also have a beehive in their yard to help out with the garden.

There are plans to start some peanuts and sweet potatoes at Trista's home because she lives in a slightly lower elevation which has a warmer climate for such plants. She is also growing strawberries, rhubarb, blueberries and pumpkins at her house in her large backyard. We should note that the lovely pumpkin plant is provided by a "sharecropper" a friend of Trista and her family needed a sunny spot to plant his pumpkin start and so it's in the backyard in a raised bed that it will share with sweet potatoes and peanuts!

We are excited about the possibilities for delicious and healthy food that our garden represents! We'll keep you posted throughout the season with recipes that we create to use our produce as well as how we can, freeze, dry and otherwise preserve our bounty! We'll also update you on other projects including baking, sewing and weaving!