30 Cloves and Counting

It's fall, y'all and that means: time to plant some garlic!! Garlic is such a staple in my garden. I've been gardening for a little over 13 years now and for nine years straight, I always found space to plant a few cloves, every year, and every year more and more cloves were planted. Before my family and I moved into the house we're in now, I think the most garlic I've ever planted and harvested was sixty.

Last gardening season marked the end of a streak of these hands meticulously breaking down garlic bulbs searching for the biggest cloves from each bulb to plant. Yup, there wouldn't be a 10th Anniversary planting to celebrate simply because I couldn't find anywhere to plant them in time, and when I finally decided to plant a few, I felt it was too late-weather wise.

I really missed having garlic in the garden and won't be missing out this year.After harvesting the corn and some of the sunflowers, this area become the perfect spot to start planting.

The plan is to slowly clear off more space as the rest of the sunflowers are pulled up, so

garlic goes in. Right now, thirty cloves have been planted and who knows how many more to come.....hopefully 100!!

😊😊😊😊😊😊

We'll see.

#backyardgardener, #garlic, #organicgardening, #growfood

From Pain to Love

Been a bit sidelined these past 3 weeks with a large boil on the top of my foot, so many of the gardening and household duties haven't been my top priority. Not being able to do many of my daily tasks was been a bit annoying at first, but self-care is more important than making sure all the laundry is done on laundry day, every wall is wiped down on Fridays, and making sure weeds and dying plants are pulled. Even though these tasks are important, nothing wasn't as important as staying off of my foot as much as possible.

Before I continue, I would like to thank my children and my husband for all the help and support they gave. Love you, guys!

Now back to the post.......

This boil has been so painful and itchy. Even though my toes felt numb, and at times the boil felt like it was hitting a nerve in my foot, nothing and I mean nothing drove me crazy like the itchiness. The itchiness felt like my foot was on fire and was traveling up toward my lower leg. Apparently, as the boil was forming a head it became larger and the itchiness intensified which also became the start of the healing process.

As the boil grew, I started soaking my foot in warm water with Epsom Salt and tea tree oil. These foot soaks which eventually became feet soaking times happened three times a day while I took my daily French lessons from the Duolingo app(haven't missed a lesson yet, 235 days strong), or watching gardening videos and making plans for next season. This little time for self-care started off as just trying to ease pain for myself and I thought that I would leave it as that, but I'm happy to say, I'll be adding foot soaking twice a week to my life as a little love letter to moi.

Do you have a simple self-care routine that's a must for you?

#selfcare #agardenerheals #agreenhaven, #footcare #boil

Beauty in the Garden

Sometimes something just catches one's eye and that something was the water droplets that sat on my elephant ears, yesterday.

With the abundance of rain my area has been receiving this summer, unfortunately I haven't been able to catch a picture like this all year. It always seemed like it rained later in the evenings or earlier in the day and any trace of rain would've dried up before noon, and I'm glad I was able to catch such a nourishing moment.

Quote of the Week

No two gardens are the same. No two days are the same in one garden. 

                             -Hugh Johnson

Be a Seed Saver

*This post was written a few weeks back and with all of life's happenings, I totally forgot about this post....Oops!

**I grow heirloom varieties only.

A bit of my Saturday was spent collecting seeds from the radish pods that were allowed to dry in the driveway for a few weeks.

Last week I spoke about seed collecting as being an exciting part of gardening and how summer is the height of gardening season, and just knowing that you grew something that will nourish your body, and help ease your grocery budget.

Another financial ease is seed collecting and if you grow your own food, you should at least consider saving seeds. It would be great if you could save seeds from everything you grow, but if you can't that's okay, but try to save seeds from a few of your favorite things to grow, and then add to your seed collecting over the time.

Tomato seeds were the first seeds that I ever saved in my first years of gardening--mainly because that's the only thing I ever grew in my garden, my first two years as a gardener. I guess you could say, I was the female, Benjamin Buford Blue--Bubba, of Forrest Gump fame. Not only did I use tomatoes in a variety of dishes, I tried to grow a plethora of them: yellow ones, cherry tomatoes, paste or Roma, and I can't forget Cherokee Purple- such a beautiful tomato. These were the mainstays in the garden, and others would come along overtime.

Growing my own tomatoes and tasting the incredible deliciousness of homegrown tomatoes convinced me to always grow tomatoes in my garden for years to come, and in order to save some money when it came to seeds, I would need to start seed saving. Of course, every now and then there's a new tomato variety I might want to try, so I'm okay with spending a little money here and there.

Saving tomato seeds is a pretty easy task and collecting radish seeds are, too---it's fun, they germinate better,and saves us gardeners money, too!

#agreenhaven, #growfood, #saveseeds, #backyardgardener,#tomatoes, #budgetgardener, #radishes

The Height of Gardening Season

*There are no photos or pictures in this post, just my thoughts and words.

The joys of midsummer for this gardener are: seeing the abundance of crops that I've invested my time and energy into become a source of nutrition for me and my family, and if I have enough, friends and neighbors as well.....preparing new compost bins/piles for the fall garden, collecting seeds and making wish lists for seeds that I would like to order from my favorite catalogs or shops. All of these things make midsummer so special to me: its the height of gardening season--- growth, harvest time and planning all wrapped up into one season!

As a gardener, what thing(s) do you love most about this time of year? 

#growfood, #harvest, #gardening

Before the Rain

Picked two carrots for a salad before the rain came in today.