Homewreckage

House / Personal — Comments
26
Jan 12

Sloughing it off

We moved, in a rush, in late September. Even though we had tossed a lot of stuff and already had many things organized in boxes, we were not prepared for losing the storage capacities of a 2-car garage and a basement when moving to a one-car garage. To say that our current garage is in even more of a disarray than our last, is an understatement. I have gardening tools. my lumber, and a stove taking up room. The lack of storage in the house (we went from having a laundry room to an niche in the wall), means that other items that haven’t yet found a home indoors are still in half-packed boxes.

I need to streamline. My goal is to get everything that we need in weatherproof boxes. All other items either need to go away or being used in the house and garden.

It’s admirable to have goals. Unfortunately, for me, I tend to ignore my goals once I get bored and I can get bored of a project, easily. The other day, I started rearranging the kitchen cabinets. I got rid of many dishes that needed to not be there. I moved stuff around to wear it makes sense and is accessible to all in our family. Then I found a stash of sunflower seeds. Laugh all you want, but I couldn’t not think about them. So, under the guise of ‘taking a break’, I started cracking open shells. That was on Tuesday. It’s now Thursday and I still have a lot of dishes sitting out that I just never got around to putting away.

It’s like that.

The bonus is that I recognize how I am. The not-so bonus is that that just sounds like another project I’ll get bored of doing a project once it’s near completion; my mind racing on to some other thing I could be doing instead. I didn’t used to be this way. I was always the one who went over and beyond. I finished what I started and appreciated a job well done. But when you have 3 other people in the same abode who don’t have the same care about keeping things clean or putting items back in their place, it all seems like an uphill battle. It’s the melodramatic, “Why bother?” *flops on divan with glass of wine*

But I will try. I hope to be able to let go and get rid of many things instead of keeping them around with the thought, “Oh, this would be great to use in [random craft project].” A project I may not even finish, let alone start.

With that, here are my hopes of things I want to get done:

Finish building the planter boxes for my food garden.
Hang all of my tools in the garage.
Find a solution to my crafting situation.
Clean my closet.
Hang the rest of the pictures on the wall.
Find a solution for laundry.
Organize the remaining items in boxes in the garage’s attic or storage areas in the house.

Sounds doable, especially if I liberally toss items. Let’s hope I stick to it.

So you want to grow your own food (Part 2)

Your soil is prepped and you have a rough sketch of your water needs, as mentioned in Part 1, but now it’s time for the best part: picking your plants.

Choosing Your Plants

Find Your Zone

I love growing vegetables, even the ones I won’t particularly eat. I often grow extra produce so that I can trade with neighbors or use in my compost pile. Most people start off with tomatoes. Tomatoes are easy to grow and aren’t too tempermental. Best of all, they only need minimum watering. If you live in Southern California, you can actually grow some tomatoes year round if you let them go to seed. Ideally though, they need warm weather to get sweet and ripe.

Depending on your growing zone, you may be able to grow many different kinds of plants. For example, I’m in Sunset Zones 19, 20, 21. I would love to grow apples or pears for eating, but it will be a toss up as to if I’d get fruit at all. Sunset Zone 22 can grow edible pomes.

You’ll notice that I listed 3 zones above. That’s because my tiny backyard ans 3 different microclimates. In fact, even the temperature will vary 3 -5 degrees depending on location. Some areas are in full sun year round. Others get only 3 – 5 hours of sun during the summer months and are in shade the rest of the year. I highly suggest checking out Sunset’s Western Garden book for Southern California gardeners.

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Gardening / Nature — Comments
31
Jul 10

So you want to grow your own food (Part 1)

Recently, I’ve been asked about how to grow food at home. This is something I get rather excited about, not only because I love gardening, but I love seeing people talk about how they use the food they grow in their meals. Let’s face it, this economy has us all re-evaluating out food choices. When you go to a large grocers and see sad produce at exorbitant prices, it gives you pause.

I hope to be able to get you started on growing your own food, but this is especially geared toward people who live in the city. I grew up in the suburbs. We also had herbs growing in pots and grew a few vegetables, but most of our plants were indoors. When I moved to Hollywood in ’98, we lived in a courtyard apartment. The courtyard was very shaded and cool. Had I wanted to grow lettuce year round, I could have. Behind our apartment was a 6′ strip of concrete that was sunny year round. Trial and error taught me what I could grow and where. All of my produce and herbs were grown in pots and buckets. In 2006, we moved to El Sereno. I took my back yard from looking barren to a complete jungle in just a couple of years. (Side note: Those pots you see in the second photo are the same ones I used to grow veggies in, back in Hollywood.)

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Gardening — Comments
18
Mar 09

2 years later

Every time I go through my garden photos I am amazed at how much it’s changed in the past 2 years. I see plants that gave me joy and have died. Plants that I forgot I even bought! I can see what I’ve changed around and there’s a lot of that. I also see the mistakes I made, some plantings of regret, now that things have grown fuller.

Here’s December 2006 on our final walkthrough:

Here is March 2009:

Gardening — Comments
10
Mar 09

Sprung!

I’ve been so wrapped up in my problems that haven’t taken the time to, well, smell the roses. My garden is indicating spring is here and I missed it. For me, few things are more exciting and wonderful than watching the buds on plants swell to just the point before they open. The other day I noticed that there are actual leaves on my grape plants. Today I saw not only 3″ buds on the wisteria ready to bloom, but 3 of them have already opened!

Welcome to my garden…

Mandevilla

Grape Bud

Japanese Wisteria bud

Rosemary in bloom

House — Comments
16
Feb 09

The flooding basement

You may remember my posts from last year about my basement. About waking to find almost 3 feet of water lazing about ruining my shit. Well, a big reason why is that I had put a stack of newspapers over the drain. Duh.

We’ve been vigilant, but lacking funds we could only hope not to reproduce last year’s drama. We know now that the water is coming up through the cracks of the concrete floor, so explain to my why I thought it to be a great idea to put a rug on that same floor during the winter months? After this morning’s rainfall, I peeked downstairs to see that the cracks were wet, but all was well. Not too long ago, Adrian asked if the basement was alright. He took a peek to find that it wasn’t.

There was only about 3 inches of water in the deepest parts and thankfully everything had been put up high. Still, the carpet is wet, as are cords to various small appliances. I ran to the back to grab a bamboo stick and see what was clogging the drain this time. One little slip of paper. That’s all.

So, the water has gone down the drain, the cracks are still swollen and weeping water, but at least we didn’t have to spend 3 days with the sump pump.

Homewreckage — Comments
26
Jan 09

$24,760.85

Deadline February 19th.

Yep, that’s how much money we need to have to come current on our house.

Sigh.

So, it’s pretty clear, this is our last month in this wonderful place. Obviously, we’ve looked and are looking into our options. Even thought the mortgage company offers on paper various options, talking with them the past few months has shown that they are really less than eager to actually allow these options to happen. So, the next 3 weeks will be full of us packing up our belongings, repotting plants that don’t need to be in the ground, and finding a place to stay. That last one is a doozy and kind of paralyzed us.

We got spoiled of being so close to the city without having to actually deal with city traffic and other headaches, so we’d like to stay over here. Besides, the girl is in the middle of Kindergarten and we’re not sure that we’d be able to find another school with an open space in a Spanish dual-language program. Other options just get more suburban; South Pasadena, Alhambra, Pasadena, etc. To make it even more daunting, it’s near impossible to find a place to live in 3 months, let alone 3 weeks. Which leads us to our Plan G: Kansas City.

We may have a free place to stay, but our business is here in CA. Granted, if we find someone willing to take photos for us, we could move anywhere in the world and still keep the business. And it’s cold there. I don’t know that 3 weeks is enough time to mentally prepare myself to move halfway across the country into the cold. And then there’s the logistics of moving our stuff to consider. I don’t know that we can afford to pay a mover, but I do know that we can’t drive a semi-truck through snow-covered mountains.

Hopefully, we will find a working solution soon. Wish us luck!

Books / Entertainment / Environment / Green / Homewreckage / Internet / Seesmic / TV — Comments
25
Jun 08

I won!

That’s right, I won the Easy Green Living book by Renée Loux that was being given away on Seesmic. Want to watch the whole thing? Below is the video of the when Ms. Loux took our questions on what we viewed as important in living “green”:

Yes, that’s not Renée, but if you click on it, you’ll see here (yes, I’m laughing at a pretty frantic email I received).

About a week and some days later, the winner was announced:

I laughed. I cried. I want to thank the Academy…

Then today…the book arrived:

I’m kinda busy with work, but I’ve had a chance to flip through the book and it’s pretty interesting. There are a lot of items in the book that I already own/buy not because of any greenness on my part, but because of price, locality and prettiness/smells. The book is more a shopping guide than a lifestyle guide, IMO, but even flipping through it, it was struck by how many items in the book are things you don’t really need in life. Or the lack of actual greenness of them, i.e. paper towels/napkins. It’s much more green to use cloth towels, and thankfully, the author does point that out. Which brings me to the second cool thing about the book.

Everything is pretty accessible to anyone who can read and shows that you don’t have to drop big $$$ to be green which is stunning to me considering Loux hosts a show on Fine Living. The best part is that Loux does explain why certain things are better than others. Unlike other “green” books, there doesn’t seem to be those not-so-unsubtle judgment calls on your purchases. Take the section on cookware. It’s extremely detailed explaining why Teflon or non-stick cookware isn’t in your best interest vs. stainless steel or cast iron cookware.

Check out the book at your local library or you can find at Powell’s.

Gardening — Comments
6
Jun 08

A faboo mama garden

Homewreckage — Comments
25
Apr 08

Who’s a happy mama?

That would be me.

We just installed this bad boy today and let me tell ya, as much as I enjoy working my windows to get the perfect cross breeze going, this won’t let in bugs and we can use it at night. Life is sweet. And cool.

FABOO MAMAInside the mind of an opinionated mama…