Baby, its cold outside!

Ok...so, I knew enough about gardening to start some seeds inside a few weeks ago, and I know enough to know that anything that is outside tonight may not make it without some help. I had a dilema. I wanted to garden, but did not want to kill any precious plants

I could not help myself, however...I had to plant something in my garden. The seedlings in the solo cups had lost their luster and I needed something new! I had cut up some potatoes and shoved them in the barrel containers last week, but c'mon, BORING! Nothing visible but dirt and grass clippings for mulch (I did not know that I could use my grass clippings for mulch, so I have been throwing them away all these years!but here I should note something that I over-heard Saturday at Full Circle Compost... DO NOT use your grass clippings for garden mulch if you use weed and feed on your lawn!!!!)
No, I needed something green, something that looked like a real vegetable in my garden. So, I bought four (4) bell pepper plants (two yellow and two orange), plugged them into my beds and promptly encased each of them in their own Wall o' Water (which will act like a personal sauna until all threat of freeze has passed).

I also desperately want some fresh strawberries. So, I stole a really cool idea from my new favorite book called Edible Landscaping, by Rosalind Creasy (pages 148 & 149, if you are interested), and a built a patio strawberry patch. Now I guess...I sit and wait? Oh, and make more compost...I can always make more compost!

My adventure began...

about eight (8) years ago when I found out that you really "are what you eat." I had eaten junk for so long that I was starting to feel like junk, and with two (2) little kids at home, I had no time for feeling like junk. More importantly, I did not want my kids to feel like I did.

Like most things I do, with very little information and almost no real direction, I dove right in! I began by reading about healthy eating. Somewhere along the way, I read that organic food were the way to go. So, with very little information on the "why," of it, I started forking over the extra dough for organics. I would later find that besides the famed "pesticide residue," which you will not find in organic foods, there are lots of healthy reasons that organics really are THE way to go.

Soon, the cost of all those organic foods would start to stack up. I went from paying $2.89 a gallon for milk, to $5.99, for organic (at some point, I may touch on some very real and specific reasons that I believe this to be an investment, not only in my health, but in the future of our planet and in preserving our natural "God-given" food supplies). I had not yet learned how important it is that our foods be locally produced and processed, or that there was even an ethical/moral dilema with any of the foods I bought at the supermarket...that would come years down the road.

This radical, and expensive, approach really worked. I ate sprouted and organic grain breads, lots of organic fruits and veggies, organic cheeses and grass-fed beef...and I started to feel better. I had less fatigue, fewer body-aches and more energy.

One fatefull day I watched a little documentary called Food Inc. It changed the way that I looked at everything that I put in my mouth. For months I could not even eat meat because I was horrified to think that the animal may have been genetically modified, exploited, tortured, shot-up with chemicals, etc., before I cooked it up and shoveled it down. I committed to the local food economy and finding ways to get everything that went on our table from the closest possible supplier. I joined the Great Basin Food Co-op and started shopping there.

I soon found that there was no possible way that I could afford to get all our food from local, ethical, reliable sources...at least not with the mind-set and lifestyle I was currently entertaining. I would need to get creative. I would need a personal revolution.

So, I guess, at the heart of my new gardening adventure is a new world-view, a more focused, responsible and educated view of the food I eat, and a financial motivation to grow lots of healthy, delicious food in my own back yard.

Now I know cool things, like that you can make compost yourself.... That makes even the way that I view my trash can more of an adventure! Come on this adventure with me? Come on, please? I would do it for you, and you know I would! :)

p.s. The photos above are (1) Jes weed-eating our weedy-dirt patch...which is now my raised garden bed, and (2) an arial view of my recycled paver patio...I don't want to sound cooler than I am, so I will confess that about 10% of the pavers were purchased new.