Midsummer garden, a heatwave, and lessons in resilience

 I cannot believe it's already mid-July, but here we are. Still managing to trudge along.

A month or so ago, just before the infamous heatwave, I began reading Carole Deppe's "The Resilient Gardener". It's about growing food in the face of adversity, whether that be climate change with its variable weather, or family responsibilities (she mentions gardening while taking care of her mother through her final illness which yes, I can relate to that), or food allergies and intolerances. Mostly she focuses on five main crops that most home gardeners can grow (potatoes, squash, corn, eggs, and beans) but much of the book is applicable to most foods we grow.

One of my blueberries, which as you
can see got scorched in the heat.
I'm just happy that, unlike some
gardeners in OR, I didn't lose all
my berries, which in some cases were
cooked on the bushes by the heat.

I won't bore you with a full rundown of the book, and I don't agree with everything she says, but it has slightly changed the way I've been viewing my own garden. In particular, the heatwave threw a big curveball at everyone around here, and made the imperative for resilience feel a bit more urgent. Many of my plants were, naturally, quite heat stressed. Even trees around here were (and are) showing signs of heat stress. In June. So my poor annuals, and my berry bushes, and some of my flowers, were quite unhappy. I only have two rain barrels (so far), which is better than nothing. The last big rain we had got my garden through about 3 weeks, with nothing more than spot watering from the rain barrels. And it was hugely productive during that time. But then, the heatwave hit right at the end and I was irrigating every evening from city water, desperately trying to keep my plants alive.

But not all of my plants disliked the heat. While my potatoes almost universally laid down in their "kill me" pose, meaning they're about ready to be harvested (again, in June), my corn made it through without any signs of poor growth or heat stress.  Some of my garlic was ready to be picked early, but only a couple of weeks early so that wasn't so bad, and most of the garlic stayed in the ground until its usual time for harvest (about now, mid-July). The ones that died back early were universally the ones that were weakest anyway. The healthy garlic plants made it through the heatwave just fine, making them an excellent, albeit small, crop to grow here. Irrigated for free by the rain all winter, a pest deterrent, and harvestable just when the worst heat is generally starting. (Also, delicious. So delicious.)

My tomatoes, peppers, and sweet potatoes were the real standouts, naturally. They greeted the heat like a lover. While I babied my main garden, the peppers and sweet potatoes in their bags were back there like, "Nah, we got this. No worries." I hardly watered them and they thrived. I looked it up and found out that over-watering sweet potatoes is actually a bigger problem than under-watering them. Which also makes them an excellent plant to grow in our increasingly dry summers. Since the leaves are also edible, that adds yet another type of resilience. I can get two crops from one plant.

Which is not to say that I'll stop growing regular potatoes. The point of resilience is that my garden will be prepared to weather whatever nature throws at them. (Sorry, I had to pun.) Because while our summers are increasingly dry, that doesn't mean we won't still have wet, cool summers in the future. Sweet potatoes would hate those, and my regular potatoes would thrive.

Sweet potato vines growing in 
a bucket I found for free. The leaves
do not taste like anything special
but they would make a nice garnish
or addition to a salad.

One thing I've realized this year that I am still plagued by an Alaskan gardener's mindset. Up there, you get one shot for everything and one shot only. You plant everything as soon as you can in May and hope that it all thrives before August gets wet and chilly, and then the first frosts come soon after.

I can't do that here, because some things just don't grow well in all seasons. I thought I sucked at growing broccoli but, turns out, I don't. It just doesn't want to grow in the summers here. Summer grown broccoli develops small heads and goes to flower very quickly. Fall, winter, and spring broccoli, OTOH, do beautifully. It forms large heads and is basically no work, since it doesn't require irrigation in those seasons. Just plant it, then harvest when it's ready. Since the pests that plague brassicas aren't usually a problem in fall and winter, you don't even have to worry about them.

I tried my hand at winter gardening last year, but it was small and mild because I was uncertain of what I was doing. This year I'm going to expand, hopefully by quite a lot. Resilient gardening means having things I can harvest all year, not just relying on my food storage. Why should I, when I can grow fresh things in every season? And popping out to the garden for a head of cabbage or broccoli in winter is still a marvel to us, especially if the broccoli is then turned into broccoli cheddar potato soup. (All of those veggies and herbs are now available from my own garden!)

I'm still learning more about when to plant things to take advantage of the climate. Particularly, the free irrigation in the form of winter's rain. Garlic is a great crop for that, and surprisingly so are onions. If it was a bit colder here the onions wouldn't be a winter crop, but as it is last year I planted onion seeds in fall and these are the best onions I've grown in years, large and healthy. Now that I know the secret to growing onions here, it will be so much easier to grow a lot of them. They, like other plants in the allium family, are also a great pest deterrent, keeping even things like rabbits out of the garden.

Grapes on a trellis. It's still too young to
produce fruit, but next year it should.

Another way to gain garden resilience is to plant multiple varieties of your crops. We have four different types of raspberry now, since that's one of our favorite fruits. They fruit all summer and fall, so even if disease, heat, or unexpected cold kills off some of the berries (and the heatwave actually caused my berries to get sunscald) we'll have plenty more and won't be without raspberries. I've done the same with grapes, of which we now have three varieties, and blueberries.

I planted two types of corn this year, a "Tom Thumb" popcorn that only grows to be about 3 feet tall, and a bantam sweet corn. Corn is a drought tolerant (with some irrigation) plant so I'm not terribly worried about it failing, but having more than one variety covers multiple seasons. The sweet corn is going to be lovely and mostly eaten fresh, with perhaps some of it frozen for winter (if there's enough). The popcorn is going to be our main source of corn in winter, however. Last winter we ate so. much. popcorn, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's fun, it's easy, and it's a sociable thing. The kids love to watch the corn pop, and it's a reasonably healthy snack or dessert, depending on how you prepare it.

My peas, which prefer cold, 
got scorched and many died. I plan
to grow a fall crop, however, and
see if I can overwinter some in my
greenhouse.

I chose both varieties of corn in part because they're smaller, and thus better suited to a home garden, but also because they're short season varieties. I'm hoping that next year I can plant the popcorn early enough to get two crops of it. For this year, when some of it didn't come up, it was easy enough to replant and I knew it would still have time to grow corn. Having a few different short season or long season crops can help resilience because, again, you're prepared no matter what the weather does. If this year had been unexpectedly cold and rainy my corn would be irrigated for free and I still wouldn't have to worry about early frosts due to its early ripening.

The last way to gain garden resilience is to plant based on needs. I wouldn't plant nothing but slicing tomatoes, nor would I want to plant nothing but cherry tomatoes or paste tomatoes. Sure, they can do double duty in a pinch, with slicers being cooked down (way down) for sauce, but really you want the correct tomato for the job. Same thing with berries--some of mine are better for fresh eating, others for jam. When ordering seeds, good seed catalogs will list the pros and cons of each variety, including the best storage methods (canning, freezing, drying) and how it stores (will it root cellar or go off quickly?). They will also give information about what sort of climate (hot, dry, wet, cold tolerant?) and whether it's more suited to northern or southern latitudes, since some crops are better suited for longer days while others are for shorter days, longer seasons vs. shorter seasons. 

Things that "don't grow well in the north" often have varieties that do, in fact, grow well even in shorter seasons and colder climates. I'm growing King of the North bell peppers this year for that reason, and my sweet potatoes are a shorter season variety recommended for planting even in places with cold winters and early frosts. (Though they are in bags so I can drag at least some of them into the greenhouse to stretch out the growing season.) Since sweet potatoes need several months in storage before they reach their full flavor potential, it also stretches out your food storage. If you're getting sick of regular potatoes by Christmas, then after the New Year you can switch to sweet potatoes for a while and change things up. (Although, if you're getting sick of regular potatoes...who even are you?)

Post heatwave peas: deformed, with few actual
peas, and lots of worms. 

I know my pumpkins won't last all that long into the fall, so I'll need to cook and freeze them quickly, but I've had a butternut squash that lived on a windowsill for nine months before I cut it open and it was still perfect. With this, I can plan and prioritize what needs to get eaten, when, and in what order. It seems like a lot of work but now that I'm in a routine of doing this it's second nature. Just as I prioritize eating the frozen foods before the canned foods (so we can unplug the chest freezer), I know which of my vegetables will last until spring and which are best eaten fresh.

Seed Saving

I'm slowly narrowing my list of "forever plants" -- the varieties that I want to grow year after year. I'll still leave room in the garden for messing around with shiny new varieties that tempt me, but having a core of crops that I can reliably count on is so beneficial. Ideally, I would like to start saving seeds, which is its own form of resilience.

I've always thought that seed saving sounded difficult and intimidating. However, this year quite a lot of my garden ended up being self-seeded. I let a bunch of chard go to seed a couple of years ago and then, this spring, in that corner grew an abundant patch of self-seeded chard. I didn't intend that, thinking that I had collected all the seed I wanted and tossed the plants before they dropped any, but who am I to argue with crops that will plant themselves? 

A leek flower with a beneficial
wasp hanging off the bottom

Many of my potatoes also self-seeded. Unless you get every last teeny tiny little tuber, they will grow back. Well, it's hard to get all of them so I have two extra rows of potatoes this year.

I always try to let a few of my fall/winter carrots go to seed the next spring not to collect the seed (which I do need to start doing) but because they attract so many beneficial insects. I also let a few weeds grow up because they were attracting all the aphids (which didn't bother the surrounding plants), and the combo of aphids and carrot flowers attracted clouds of ladybugs.

My leeks are currently setting seed and they too have attracted large numbers of insects. So, letting a few plants go to seed both helps the current year's garden, by attracting pollinators and predator insects, as well as providing seed for future years.

Letting my garden seed itself is great for the lazy gardener. While it looks chaotic, messy, and as if I've just let the whole thing go, it's actually increasing the productiveness of the garden. And, it saves me time the following spring when plants start popping up on their own.

Spring in the Garden, 2021

 "Out here in the fields/ I fight for my meals./ Put my back into my living." - The Who, Baba O'Riley

View of the main garden and
greenhouse as of May 14th

That song has been looping in my head every day for the past week. My back is certainly feeling how much work I've been putting into my "fields". I've done more for the soil this week than I have since we put the garden in, 3 years ago. Mostly this is because I can see how degraded the soil has become in those years. From nutrients being pulled out to grow the food, to being swept away by our harsh winter rains, this is one of the problems of big fields of annuals. I'm not yet sure what the long term solution will be (I'm hesitant to have too many perennials with my annuals) but for now, regenerating the soil is something I know I need to be doing more regularly. This was entirely expected from how and when I put in the garden. If I dig down half a foot or so the soil is still a beautiful dark color and looks quite healthy, it's just the top layers that are exhausted.

When we made the garden we got a giant load of wood chips and woody debris dropped off through a free program called chipdrop.com. We had a lot of chips left so they got scattered in various garden beds, around trees, and what was left was stored in two places on the property for future use and to break down. Well, they've mostly done that. Even without making true compost out of them, adding greens and turning and watering, time alone has done much of the work of breaking them down. I have used some over time, mulching various areas of the garden and yard, and appreciating that they were already half broken down. Digging into the piles revealed a lot of mycelium, the fungal network that is crucial to plants. Adding some around the yard sprouted mushrooms of various types (inedible) all over that were certainly fun to look at.

This year I used the last of those chips. I mulched the garden paths with them, which helps to provide a visual of where walking is acceptable for my kids. It will also help retain water and add nutrients (and mycelium) to the soil as the chips continue to break down.

We also used a bunch of them to help create a small new perennial food bed. Last fall we did a lot of work removing the plants along one side of our house that we disliked, because they grew over the walkways and became a nuisance. They weren't particularly pretty or useful either. I transplanted my blueberries along most of that area, up to the fence for the back yard, where they're much, much happier.

The back of that little side area, beyond the fence, was left with the giant root ball from a nasty, thorny tree that we didn't have time to deal with before winter so it was pushed off as a spring project. Well, spring came and it showed signs of trying to grow back from the root ball. Our basement troll, my brother-in-law, decided that he'd take it out for us. It was no small project either, since the large rocks for the retaining wall needed to be moved around. When it was removed, however, we had an area approximately 2 feet by 6 feet ready to have new things planted. What was in there previously, aside from the root ball, were a bunch of bricks (?) and mostly sand. We spread the sand under our bike parking area to level it out. Then we filled in the trench with any and all kitchen compost we had, weeds that had been taken out of the main veg garden, any other green material we had, and the wood chips. We topped it off with a few inches of finished compost from our round yard waste bin, which was 2/3 full of soil after years of just adding plant material and living in a sunny spot. We planted a few strawberry plants, an artichoke, and calendula. We're going to get a trellis up and grow cucumbers there this year as well. We're hoping to get a perennial vining plant for that area but we need to decide what that plant will be so that we know what kind of trellis to put in. A kiwi, which is what we really want, (or really, two kiwis since you need a male and a female plant) can grow quite long. We need to take shading and pruning into account. But, it's looking likely that we'll get some kiwis in there soon.

I used the rest of the soil from the yard waste bin, and some more wood chips, to replenish some of the soil in the main garden. We had a bit of compost from our black tumbler that I used in the row where I'm planting sweet corn. It looks ridiculous because there are uncomposted (but otherwise fried and no longer viable) pumpkin seeds, as well as egg shells. I'm confident that those will eventually be covered up and break down to add nutrients to the soil, and in the meantime I hope they're attracting worms and their lovely poop to the garden.

I'm starting to focus more on creating as much of our own compost as possible on the property. This is the cheaper way to do things, naturally, but that's not actually my main motivation. It's completely impossible to keep plastic out of industrial compost. Particularly over the last two years, I've been increasingly finding bits of plastic all over my garden as they get pushed to the surface and cleaned by the rain. I could spend hours every day picking it all out and never come close to getting all of it. Yuck. Who wants that in their garden? I pick it out as I find it, both glass and plastic (though I'm less concerned about the glass, which is inert) but I'm also resigned to the fact that there will just be bits of plastic in my garden. Over time I hope to bury it all deep and cover it up with plastic-free home compost.

More Perennials

We added new perennial fruits this year. Last year I tried growing some annual vegetables in two raised beds along the side yard and it was an abysmal failure. Too shady. But it's sunny enough for raspberries, so that's what we did. I ordered two new varieties, an early red berry and a golden mid-summer berry. We should be getting heaps of fruit all summer and into the fall now. (We grabbed our last berries in late November/early December last year, although there were very few and some of them were half moldy/half unripe due to the rains.) Since raspberries like to spread, I also transplanted the ones that had escaped the beds back where they belong. Next year, if anyone wants raspberries...hit me up. I'm sure I'll have more escapees and nowhere to put them.

Under our fruit trees, in the area we've dubbed our "food forest" (mostly because it's delightfully, horribly funny and pretentious to call three fruit trees, some flowers, and some herbs a "food forest") I planted two black currant bushes. My grandmother always had currants when I was little and there's something about the jam that just makes me feel like a kid again. Plus, my mom's hot cross bun recipe calls for dried currants so having a few of those on hand is a necessity in my life.

In the front beds where there are no longer blueberries, the soil was tragic. It gets baked all summer long by sunlight all day. In winter, those beds don't really have any protection from the rain. It wasn't soil anymore, it was dirt. Lifeless. I did some trench composting but that didn't help very much so I added wood chips and some compost. In the far corners of each I planted table grapes, one red and one green. They'll grow along the fence and when they fill out they'll help create more of a visual barrier between us and the sidewalk/road.

Columbine flower

Since grapes won't fill out an entire raised bed I'm also growing a miniature popcorn, pole beans, butternut squash, and shelling peas. These beds are far enough away from the main garden that I'll be able to save seeds from all of these. I still need to figure out what to do for a trellis, another feature I'm adding to give the front yard more privacy (our street has become incredibly busy over the last year due to a variety of factors) and to increase my growing space by quite a lot. Growing up whenever possible can vastly increase the amount a small parcel produces, so I can grow more without removing more lawn.

I haven't focused on them in previous years so much, but this year I finally felt that I had time, money, and effort to spare for flowers. I have a few annuals that I love to plant, like nasturtiums, but as with food plants I love to have a lot of perennials that I can count on enjoying every year going forward. I now have columbines, a lupine, an English lavender, baby's breath, a yellow bearded iris, monkey flowers, "darkest of all" daisies, sweet peas, nodding onions... I won't bore you with the full list but it was fun to pick them all out and figure out where to put them.

Another good reason to focus on flowers was because we got...

Bee-Curious

For years I've toyed with the idea of getting honey bees. However, I had some major qualms. I was nervous about stings naturally, but mostly I didn't feel confident about taking on the lives of these creatures with no experience and no guide. They're incredible creatures and deserve really good care, the way I would treat any livestock or pets. Every animal deserves a good life.

Enter my brother-in-law, who lives with us. He kept bees in Alaska and loved it, and he's talked about getting more of them for a long time now but hasn't been settled enough to do so. He's got bee boxes (which he made), equipment like a bee hat, and experience. But it's not his property and the children who live here are not his, so he didn't want to get bees if we weren't interested. With my interest and his experience, and a shared property, we can make this work.

We got the bee boxes and his equipment from Alaska and I ordered a 3 lb. nuc. It's a crazy world we live in and you can actually order bees through the mail. I did not do that, however. Last spring, between supply chain issues due to the pandemic and more people growing and raising their own food, there were horrible stories about bees and baby chicks/geese/ducks arriving dead through the mail. How awful on a number of levels. With visions of opening a box of dead bees in front of my children flitting through my head, I opted instead to drive down to Rochester and back to get bees from Hive 5 Bees. It was pandemic efficient, with them loading the box of bees into my car and me driving away. (One note: they did not wear masks. Ugh. It was my only gripe.) It was a cardboard box with a mesh covered entrance on one side. Inside were five frames and approximately 10,000 bees. I paid an extra $5 to have a mesh bag over the box to ensure no escapees during the hour and a half drive home. (Worth it.)

Hiving the bees

Hiving them, or putting the frames from the nuc into the hive, ended up being mostly a non-issue. My younger brother and his roommate were here to watch, and everyone but my BIL (all suited up) kept a big distance. The bees didn't act aggressive however and mostly seemed curious. We watched them carefully for the first few weeks to make sure they were settling into their new home properly, rather than swarming and looking for a new one, but it quickly became apparent that they loved the box and the location from how quickly they began building out comb. 

You want to have a hive where it will start getting morning sun, since heat will help wake up the bees and get them out collecting pollen earlier. It will also help keep the hive slightly warmer in the winter, when much of their energy will go to keeping the hive at the proper temperature. (There are debates about whether or not to insulate a hive, especially in a wet and cool but not super cold climate like ours, and we've discussed insulating at least the top but haven't settled on anything yet.) We've had enough time for several groups of brood to be hatched and start filling out the hive, which we've seen by a general increase in activity and number of bees in and around the hive each day.

It can be rather unsettling to be close to the hive. It is right up against one part of the garden and when I'm working in that section I sometimes have to consciously relax because the constant hum of the bees activates the danger parts of the brain.  Other than having them bump into me a lot (they're really derpy fliers) it hasn't been a problem. If I spend too long close to the hive, my dog--who has never gotten particularly close to it himself--starts to whine. Smart dog.

My fears of all kinds of stinging happening has not come true. As of yesterday there have been three stings: one curious dog snoot that was pushed into the entrance to the hive earned a sting (my younger brother brought his housemates' corgi over), and two people (HusbandX and our toddler) have stepped on bees and been stung. The bees haven't acted aggressive when we've gotten into the hive to check on things, however. We suit up every time (at least with hats and gloves) but it almost feels like overkill at this point because a few come to check us out and the rest just carry on doing what they were doing. Some say that bees get to know their keepers and others that it's a load of crock because they die so quickly, but they communicate quite well about other things, including measuring the length of comb to make on the frames and where good pollen/nectar spots are. I say hi to the bees every morning when I go check on them, and I don't care if it helps them to know me or not. (I talk to my plants too.)

It's entirely unnecessary to check on them every day, I just enjoy watching them. This has become an area of the yard where adults will take their coffee and tea to just sit and watch the bees work. The kids will sit on the garden wall and watch the comings and goings of the bees. We see the different colors of pollen they bring back on their legs and discuss what could have red or orange pollen like that? Did you see the one girl just covered in pollen like she'd fallen into a flower?? My toddler keeps telling everyone that she wants to be "a beehiver" when she grows up.

Viewing panel into the beehive, when 
they were just about to start construction
on the third box.

It also hasn't been a lot of what I'd consider work, at least not so far. We've opened the hive up a few times to check on the bees and see what they're doing, but mostly we just let them do their thing. Really, we only wanted to know when it was time to put another box (called a super) on top. Now we don't even need to pop the top anymore to see what they're doing because my BIL built a super which has two viewing panels in it. For science! These bees are part of our homeschooling science, but it's fun for everyone to be able to check out what's going on inside the hive without disturbing the bees. We saw the day they started building out comb in the new box, and now we can see them starting to fill it with honey. The basement troll is taking a daily picture of what they're doing, just for fun and science. 

Probably the most surprising thing for me is that I did not expect the hive to have a smell. It does, though. It gives off a very strong scent of wax and honey. This shouldn't have surprised me if I stopped to think about it, but it does. It's such a pleasant smell, I love it.

We're not certain it's 100% necessary but we've ordered a queen separator to keep her out of the upper boxes. This will ensure that there's only honey, no brood, in anything above a certain point. Whatever honey we take--and we're going to be incredibly conservative this first year to ensure they'll survive the winter; we don't even want to feed them sugar water unless strictly necessary--won't destroy baby bees in the harvest. We want the honey of course, but even more we want to have a robust hive. My BIL is actually hoping that we can split it next year and have two hives.

I know I'm far from the only beekeeper in my area. There's a company at our farmer's market that sells hyper local honey from my neighborhood. It's a good area, with so many people having large gardens. Plenty of flowers abound. 

And since it's not an either/or, I am also consciously trying to make better habitat for native bees. Even more than my honey bees, it makes me super happy to see big bumbles, of which we have several types in the greater Seattle area, looping around my yard. There are also several very small types of bees, including an iridescent blue/green bee that's gorgeous to behold. Those are plentiful visitors to several areas of my garden each summer.

I love the bearded irises

The two biggest things we're doing to help bees, other than adding ornamentals and more flowers across both the color and season spectrums, is first to leave open sections of soil around. 70% of all bees are ground nesting. I was super confused what the holes in my garden were for a long time until I saw one of our giant bumble bees flying out one day. There are smaller holes to be found in open dirt for tinier species of ground nesting bees. I do my best to leave them undisturbed as often as possible.

The second thing is that we've set up an "insect hotel" on the side of our shed. It's pretty small but we're going to make more little houses for insects. It's not hard to set up a basic mason bee hotel out of a bit of lumber and a drill, and our shed has decent protection from the elements.

The other things we do are just basic good practices, particularly when there are young people around who do things like eat random stuff or throw dirt on each other: I never use pesticides on any part of my yard or garden, nor do I generally use fertilizers. (With one exception--I did put some organic fertilizer on my blueberries to acidify the soil when I transplanted them. Moving forward, I'm going to mulch them with pine needles instead.) 

With all my efforts we've noticed an explosion of both insect and bird life in and around our yard. It's been really fun to both see and hear. In summer we get a dozen dragonflies patrolling the yard, on the prowl for mosquitoes and other yummy insects. The number of birds we hear, and the types of birds we hear, have both gone up in the past few years. I love to take my morning tea out on the back porch and just listen to the birds (when the kids will let me). With all the bad news constantly bombarding us about how poorly birds and insects are doing, it feels really lovely to know that we can help them and it doesn't even take much effort. And really, I can't even take credit because a lot of it involves just not doing things. I don't use pesticides/fungicides/fertilizers. I don't remove the leaves that fall in my yard. I don't remove all dead branches and plant material instantly. Even the things that I actively do, like planting more flowers, tend to be of the "set it and forget it" variety that pay dividends forever more, both for the humans and every other living creature around here. This is one area where laziness pays off.

Waste not, want not

 As part of our pandemic homeschooling I read the American Girl Kit story collection to my older daughter. Kit is the character set during the Great Depression. They didn't have a Pandemic of 1918 character so I figured this would be the closest I would get to a fictionalized story that's relevant to current events. And it has been great, talking about history in an accessible way and tying it in with current events.

Naturally, one of the biggest themes of the book is waste not, want not. The family has fallen on hard times, and they end up doing many of the things that our family already does: gardening, canning, repairing things rather than buying new, taking in boarders. (We rent out the basement apartment in our house, with my brother-in-law currently living there, and my brother lived with us for the winter.)

At the same time, for my own reading I read a book about people who were consciously living in the waste stream, trying to buy nothing new, all while building a homestead in the desert of New Mexico. It's really inspiring to see what some people can do, and while not all of it is applicable to my life it certainly helps to inspire creativity and to think about what in my life I could fix or reuse.

I loosely think of the year in two main categories: inside chores and outside chores. There are, obviously, chores which span the year. Laundry. Sweeping. Cooking. But the unusual chores? Those fall into the two categories above and saved for their appropriate season. With the cool, rainy weather over the winter it was time for inside chores. These were a few of the inside chores which reused items that most people would have trashed.

Masking up

I figured that it was about time for a mask refresh, so I finally got my act together to make some new masks. First, you should know that I'm terrible at sewing. Really, this is not false modesty. I made microwavable rice bags for the family last year out of an old pillow case, and I couldn't even do that well. Its a rectangle that you stick rice into and sew up, but I managed to do it badly. Making masks was intimidating but becoming a better sewer has been on my to-do list for a long time so I decided to go for it. And once I'd done the first one, it was actually pretty easy after that.

I followed this pattern, and watched this video for help. For the main fabric I cut up an old curtain that I'd made when we lived in Alaska, which I've been carrying around because I like the fabric so I wanted to reuse it but not as a curtain because it doesn't go with any of our stuff. Ten years I've had that and I finally found its calling.

I went one step farther, too. I actually made our masks out of three pieces of fabric, with the middle piece being cut from an old sheet. One of my kids decided to take scissors to sheets belonging to my brother, and I stashed it for some reason instead of recycling it. But it came in handy now! The reason for using old sheets in masks is that they tend to have a much higher thread count than most fabrics, and are therefore denser. Fewer particles can make it through. And you can still add a coffee filter or shop rag to filter even more from the air. Having a third layer makes a noticeable difference but not so much that it's hard to breathe.

Finished masks with two styles
of ties

Since the pattern I followed doesn't have a nose piece I added one myself, to keep the masks tight to the face. I found among the sewing items I inherited from my mom a bunch of bias tape, and we've had pipe cleaners kicking around our house from various children's art projects for way too long now. The video shows how to add a nose piece using bias tape, and even how to make your own bias tape from fabric. However, the pipe cleaners were a bit of a bust. They'd work their way out the sides, which I'd left open so I could remove the pipe cleaners before laundering the masks, and then the metal would poke our faces. I ended up just buying specifically made metal strips with adhesive and those are working much better, though the adhesive isn't very durable.

I was able to make enough masks for the whole family, including the adult siblings living with us. Unfortunately I ran out of elastic (which came from other things, naturally) so I need to order more before some of them useable. I used some bias tape to make ties for one of my new masks, which I actually love. Putting it on is more of a hassle but it fits to my face much better so it's what I use if I'll be indoors for a bit, such as on the hospice visits with my mom. It's also easy enough to pull down and pop back up again if necessary, such as when walking or biking through areas that might have other people.

It was easy to customize the masks to fit a variety of faces, including the Munchkin's. I was not, however, able to make it small enough for my toddler. But she's still got such a little squish face that the flat masks work well for her.

Curtains

It's been just about four years since we bought our house and for the entire time we've been here I've said that we need to do something better than blinds in our bedroom. Our window faces south, and it's big. Eight feet across. For most of the year we get bright sunlight late into the night and early in the morning, which the blinds did basically nothing to stop. Having bright light streaming in while we were trying to sleep did not make for restful summer nights. But we pushed off the project, unable to agree on what we wanted to do instead.

We had old duvet cover, which was getting small holes in it and had lost most of its buttons. It served us well for over 10 years, but it was starting to fall apart. While it has lost its effectiveness as a duvet cover, I decided that the material would be perfect for curtains. It already matches everything in our bedroom, and it was plenty big enough for our window.

Remember, I'm terrible at sewing, but curtains don't need to be terribly complex. I managed to cut and sew two equal-sized rectangles (harder than it sounds!), to which I attached curtain clamps. No need to make holes for grommets, or try to sew a slot for the curtain rod, or even to make complicated pleats or decorative tucks. They're quite plain, but a busier fabric (rather than our solid single color) would change that. Since the duvet cover had enough material, both curtain panels are made of doubled fabric so they're extra dark. Just like with the masks, using former bedding means that it has a higher thread count and they're about as good as blackout curtains.

It's not perfect, they could have been hung slightly higher so that less light comes in at the top (and I need to add a few more of those curtain rings) but it's quite nice to wake up to a bedroom that doesn't have bright sunlight streaming in. The only cost to the project were the curtain clamps (roughly $10) and the curtain rod ($18), so it was a very affordable project. And yes, we did price out making our own curtain rod but decided that buying one was the better direction in this case. 

I might try to make a small, plain valance to be hung on the window side of the curtain to cover the gap at the top, but I haven't yet decided if the effort is worth it. Other than the light, it would likely mildly increase the insulative value of the curtains to have something there so that we lose less heat during the winter.

"The kitty's playground"

Another item we've talked about needing for a while was some sort of cat tower. If you're a cat owner, you understand why. Sure, we could get along just fine without one, but the poor cat had needs going unmet.

My brother moved in with us for the winter and, among the hundreds of projects he suggested doing or expressed interest in, the cat tower somehow made it to the top of the list. He checked around the house for materials leftover from other projects, such as some small pieces of plywood left from shelves made for the laundry room and some 2x4s. A trip up to our attic found carpet remnants from possibly the ugliest carpet ever. (Seriously--bright red, flat pile industrial style carpeting.) And he had an old airline blanket that was accidentally stolen to add to the rest. A cardboard box was placed around the main platform but that proved to be a bust, intimidating rather than inviting to our cat. We opened it up so now she just has a platform with cardboard on it, but she can look at the living room (and the birds out the front window) while she eats.

What was created from all of this was what my toddler calls "the kitty's playground". And it's a huge hit with our cat. She loves to scratch at the post, and will choose whether she wants to jump up or walk up the post. She occasionally gets onto the top platform to sit but more often uses it as a way to get up on the mantel so she can peer into the dining room and watch from above while we eat like the predator she really wants to be. (She is not.)

I still consider us pretty bad at reusing things. There have been plenty of times I've gotten an idea for a project in my head and then realized that I had just sent something to the landfill that would have been perfect. (I'm still kicking myself for not grabbing that blue foam board before my brother tossed it!) Sometimes it can be hard to judge what's useful and what isn't. I've hung onto some items for years (ahem, those former curtains that became masks) before finding a use for them. Other things I eventually get rid of because I realize that either it wouldn't be as useful as I thought it would be or because I will never, ever get around to the project it was earmarked for. It can be hard to find the line between "this will be useful" and "this is hoarding". But when it works out, it is so satisfying to find uses for things that would otherwise be garbage. Giving new life to something is a wholly underrated activity and feeling. Making something useful for nothing, or next to nothing, is just as good. Combining the two is bliss.