Planting days are numbered

It started yesterday – winds strong enough to make the falling leaves look like a shower. A cold front moving in. By Tuesday night we are forecasted to have our first frost here. Our planting days for 2022 are numbered. Time to get the rootings planted.

This year I rooted two Autumn Joy sedum from breakage (planted them together), one Sundazzle sedum from breakage, and one coneflower from breakage (planted them together). If they survive the transplant and the winter we will have three new baby sedum and a new baby coneflower in the spring.

The two Autumn Joy rootings I planted out front.

The Sundazzle and the coneflower rootings I planted in the corner by the patio, where I was deliberating what I was going to plant there after we pulled out the Patriot hosta last year. (There is too much sun there for the Patriot hosta.)

As an example, these are Autumn Joy sedum rootings, all grown up 🤗

Hybrid – harvesting seeds

Where do I separate daylily seeds from pods?

Outside on the Traeger of course 😉

Well, most recently, that is.

Because if I don’t, the pod will sit on our clutter hot spot, the dining room table, for maybe days, and then I will deliberate – Save the pod? Or just the seeds? Is this thought related to save the clothes tags until you wash up the clothes the first time? Should I save the pod until the seeds germinate? Oh, the things I do!

Discipline, GF!

Separate the seeds from the pod, gather the seeds, put them in the envelope that is already labeled, put the envelope back in the safe storage space (not the dining room table ;)), where they will be joined by siblings until all seeds are gathered, and put the pod (which you, on purpose, out of discipline, left outside on the Treager) in an enticing place in the garden, to be eaten by – whatever eats empty seed pods. Bugs?

Clutter prevention 101, or is it 2 by 2? Or 19 by 19? Because that’s how many viable Purple D’Oro seed pods we got this year.

And now there are 5

Plus 1

Because a plus 1 is fun. Right?

OK, I will stop 😊

One thing – tags, yes tags

My daughter-in-law caught me at this. I save clothing tags until I see how the new clothes wash up. Old habits. If all is well, I throw them away. But sometimes I cut off the tags, throw the new item in the laundry room, and don’t wash it for a few days. The tags sit on the table in the dining room, which, yes, is clutter.

So here’s how it went down: My daughter-in-law walked by the table, swept them up, and threw them in the trash. I don’t even think she thought much of it. She is a wife and Mom. She works hard at maintaining sanity in their modest home. It was probably a reflex – lol. She knew the clothes the tags went to were a good brand for our grandson, and they would be perfectly fine after washing. I, on the other hand, haven’t bought Geranimals in 25 years.

I noticed, and didn’t say a thing. Ok, yes, and I had a moment of “I like your confidence.”

Turns out Geranimals still makes great casual kids clothes. The “next time you come to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and get dirty and Grandma wants to give you a new outfit” clothes did, indeed, wash up perfectly fine. Whew! Cuz we already took out that bag of trash with the tags ;).

Hybrid – bonus

Oh boy! I was afraid of this! My garden blog ideas got together for lunch with my decluttering thoughts, and collaboratively raised a question. A very small one in the grand scheme of things, but nevertheless …

“Are these seeds worth putting in an envelope and saving for next spring’s planting?”

There – it’s out there.

These are seeds from a 2 year old, first year blooming daylily that enticed pollinators, and then enticed the bunny, probably “Gigantus Bunimous”, to try it’s luck at midnight dinner, and, alas, must have been driven away, or preferred something better. It was left on the ground 5 feet away from the daylily, but I knew where it came from because I was watching, hoping, the pod would produce viable seeds.

Remember, I am a gardener, not a landscaper. I rescued that seed pod from being breakfast for the squirrels, and put it in the seedling box, on the off chance it was mature enough to somehow produce viable seeds. And seed it did produce. But they do not look viable. And they are sitting, where? On my clutter hot spot – the dining room table.

Discipline!

Will they go in an envelope, or out to the garden for critter enjoyment?

Look closely.

One thing – and yet another tray

Seriously, this one is goofy.

You know those trays that come with small appliances, that you don’t use? Why do I save them? Now if it would be a bin – I could probably use that, no problem.

I have enough trays I like, and use, including a plastic faux crystal one from a meat and cheese tray many years ago, that I liked, and saved, and use regularly 🙂 It holds A LOT of food for gatherings, and never buckles, or chips, and it washes up like a charm 🙂 It is my charcuterie tray, procured WAY before charcuterie was a thing 😉

The little white tray that came with a mini fridge, not so much.

One thing – this one got shuffled a while

Day 4 is a common thing, and something we personally tackle annually – company logo items, often tied to good memories. It falls, however, in the categories of limited space and keep what you love to use. Drinkware that leaks, drinkware that is not easy to clean, drinkware we don’t reach for, it goes. Just like keychains we don’t need, totes we never use – you get the idea. Even if we have fond memories of the experience.

We brought one of those pieces of drinkware up north. I have super fond memories of the time I was with the company whose logo is on that drinking glass. But I never use it. I loved my time with the people and company, but I don’t love the item. It goes.

Frost warning

As some of you may have guessed, I queue up blog posts. Many are not time sensitive, so whenever they come up is fine. But this one is actually today. Yeay!

Fall! It’s here! And it’s accompanying temperature drops are coming, fast. We already had a frost warning up north, and we will dip into the 30s for lows here next week. The shamrocks will be coming in some time in the next couple weeks, and it is time to finish up any transplanting. The summer of 2022 is gone.

Life has been a little intense, and I, for one, could really use a weekend in the gardens. Hoping for that. There is a chance of rain late tonight/early tomorrow. But looking good Sat/Sun.

We are also getting antsy with “what does our home, go forward, look like” thoughts. We saw something that was enticing, but before we even had time to think – gone. That is the way it still is here. Snooze, you lose.

We need more family gathering space, and definitely more kitchen functionality, so our thinking caps are on. What does that look like?

And, as always, the landscape v garden issue continues to roll around in my head. I garden. I do not landscape. That is who I am. Our living situation needs to satisfy that. As I shared in a previous blog, I don’t want to go weed at a church on Thursday nights. I want to garden, here.

So lots of grey cells firing. Time will tell.

One thing is certain, we are feeling cramped and cluttered with the stuff from the little house up north coming back here. There will be a lot more decluttering/purging blogs to motivate (and entertain) for sure! In fact, I think there is another one coming up, today. Enjoy!

One thing – another tray

One thing, day 3, is a deviled egg tray, with a cover. Why I bought that, I have no idea. I don’t even like to cook stuff like that. We eat them at gatherings. My mother-in-law makes awesome deviled eggs. But we do not.

We brought it up to the little house. Again, maybe thinking we would magically become deviled egg makers. (Laughing so hard my eyes are watering as I write this.)

Goodbye sweet deviled egg tray, with cover. Someone who makes deviled eggs should own you.

One thing – Old Chippies

As I mentioned yesterday, we are pretty simple people in what we use and maintain. High maintenance dishes are not our thing. But we get off the beaten path from time to time.

Time was, we had given one of our sons our Corelle dishes, purchased some white dishes, loved them, and then saw some very pretty blue pattern dishes advertised on a TV show. All in we went! Dishes, bakeware, trays. One time in the oven and we heard a tray crack. A couple times and the casserole cracked. Even so, we kept the dishes and we decided to use the loaf pans to “hold stuff” – you know – breakfast bars, water flavoring mixture packets. Right? Be creative. One by one the dishes cracked and chipped. Eventually we were left with one dinner plate, a couple small plates, and some bowls. Many with chips. And we are not hard on dishes.

We brought them up to the little house up north – and barely used them. Meanwhile we had gone back to the sturdy everyday china, white, we already had, and also bought some for the little house up north.

We brought the few unused blue bowls back when we brought everything back. I have no idea why. The silly things you do.

All in all, it was a good lesson. You live and you learn, and you stop buying things you really do not need just because they look great on TV.

One thing

Continuing yesterday, we recently decided to sell the small house we had bought in northern Minnesota as our “when we retire” home, before grandbaby came, and other “need to change direction” events. We moved the stuff back to the townhouse, we had an “ahhh” moment – mostly thankful that dreaded work was done – and then … The fall reality set in, more time in the house, summer is over, and “what are we going to do with all this stuff?” Back to decluttering again.

It occured to me that while, yes, the garden is still blooming away with sedum, and the fall colors are starting, and there is still some work to be done, my “garden”, the place where I encourage “bloom” from October to March, is, once again, transitioning to more inside than out. We can look out, walk out, sit out, but we do not “live” as much out Nov-March.

I looked around last week and said “not peaceful, need a plan”. I am not in a place to take on a big project right now. I need to keep it fun and simple. It occured to me – 1 thing per day goes away. Not overwhelming. No decision fatigue. No 30 day challenge where I am looking for 30 things to get rid of on day 30 and resort to 30 sheets of paper from old files.

One thing. Big or small. That’s it.

I will share. I hope you enjoy. Sometimes I will be laughing as I compose. Life can be that way 🙂

Let’s get started.

Day 1 – A rice cooker, vegetable steamer thingy

We had a wonderful rice cooker for years. It was super simple – a cooking element, a pot inside, a lid with a steamer vent. I think we got it for free with Coke Rewards (remember that program? :)) We literally used that rice cooker up until the non-stick coating started to flake off – at which time we knew that was not pepper. We couldn’t find a replacement pot. We went back to cooking rice on the stove. And then, we were walking down the aisle of our favorite household staples store where you pay a membership and buy larger quantities of stuff than you really need, but at good prices, and we saw – a rice cooker, with a vegetable steamer bonus! How fortuitous we thought. We were trying to eat more vegetables! This is going to be great!!!

Yah, no. It is huge for us, and it is a pain to clean compared to the rice cooker we loved.

As a last ditch attempt at trying to use it, we brought it to the little house up north. Like we would change being “us” up there 🤣. It was still a “not for us” item up there. When we moved everything out, we realized we had used it once, to keep Velveeta and Jimmy Dean sausage dip warm for a New Year’s Eve gathering.

We moved it back, only because we know where to donate here. In the donate box it goes. I really hope it blesses whoever owns it next. It is just not us.