Weekly Meal Planning

I am so annoyed with myself this week. Before I really had to do the primary caretaking for my mom, I really sat down to meal plan and organize everything for the week. I was FABULOUS at being so organized and then chaos descended into my life and all the meal planning was thrown out the window because life became unpredictable.

This past week I decided to start planning and organizing at least 4 out of 5 of my lunches. On Sunday I made roasted veggies to portion out into my usual lunch containers, cut up portions of meat, and cous cous. Then I went downstairs to look for my old meal prep containers. As it turns out, I gave them away on Buy Nothing because I just had no time. I should have kept them. Oh, well.

So on Sunday I just tossed all the veggies in a large container and yesterday I got my new lunch containers in the mail. Lunch prep is saved for the next few months. LOL. 

This week's lunches include: leftover pizza, salads, steak with roasted veggies and potatoes, and my last one is just a salad with roasted veggies. So I'm jumping back into this as easy and slowly as possible.

 

Out With 2025 In With 2026

Our tree is a little lopsided this year. It makes me chuckle every time I walk into the living room.

It's snowing. Again. It's not as relentless as a few years ago but it definitely comes more often than the last two years! Luckily the kids are ok with shoveling and I will happily pay them a few dollars to get outside and earn some money. Q has been shoveling for our neighbor and she is giving him money too!

Phil. He's 6. Still looks like a baby.

I use plain notebooks to keep track of everything I need to do or want to do. It's like I journal for daily life. I can't seem to throw them away when they're full. I bought an actual journal for my garden this year and realized that I probably won't use it. I end up putting everything in one spot and then go back and add in tags and arrows for all the important things. It helps with my mental organization and it also helps me NOT forget things.

Will I do a New Year's Resolution this year? Maybe! I think it might have to do more with physical activity - like get out to a different park for a walk once per month. I have to make it realistic and specific. I have to choose something that I've always wanted to do and make it a priority. This year I'll have more time and so I want to do things that make me happy. 

Happy New Year!

Garden Planning for 2026

 

When I think of the next year and what to plant, I think of everything that did well in previous years and what we actually ate. As it turns out - I only need about 3 VERY SPICY pepper plants, 3 - 4 jalepenos, and more like 5 - 6 sweet peppers. I don't have enough space for all the pepper plants that I want, unfortunately - but since I added the two beds in the front, I'm planning on using one for peppers next year. 

And I LOVE the look of beets but I'm the only person in my house that eats them so I will probably just do a couple in the spring for lunches and a couple in the fall for more lunches. 

Carrots can be notoriously hard to grow - my problem is that I have a hard time thinning them out so next year I'm going to have to cross that bridge and just THIN THEM OUT. I think that too many carrots result in taking nutrients from each other in the soil and there's just enough nutrients in the concentrated spots where carrots grow (this is my theory, maybe I'll test it out next year and do a few over crowded rows and a few properly spaced rows).

These Armenian cucumbers were DELICIOUS. Will be growing these again.

I love having cut flowers and I will do them again. Especially any and all types of zinnias.

Miniature pumpkins were fabulous growers and producers, I will definitely grow these again. They made for great fall and Halloween decor. I think each vine produced 10+ mini pumpkins.

The Jack O'Lanterns were not as large this year but I also didn't plant them in quite the right spots. I left them to defend themselves from bunnies in the front yard. I think next year I'll buy some type of cages to shield the pumpkins from the bunnies. And set up proper irrigation.

AAAHHHHH. One of my favorite soups is Potato Leek Soup. I desperately tried to keep 5 leeks growing and they just didn't get enough sunshine because my green beans grew enormous. I've already made a plan to grow more leeks and in a different, more sandy location for better drainage and more hours of sunlight.

Strawflowers surprised me this year. I thought I bought lighter shades of them but I bought a deep crimson instead. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily they grew and how TALL they ended up. Will definitely grow them again!

Perfect amount of zucchini this year - two plants and only one plant produced. I'll do the same next year. And for once in my life the bunnies didn't get to the snap pease because I fenced off my bed. THEY WERE SO GOOD. I will repeat the experiment next year!

Dahlias. Gorgeous. I treat these like annuals and just buy new ones every year. Yes, you can dig them up - I would save them in saw dust or sand to dry them out completely so they will return when you plant them again in the spring. I love a variety though and it gets kinda old seeing the same colors year after year so I'm excited to get some new colors and varieties next year. VERY EASY to grow!

Tuscan kale - the bunnies did not eat this when I had it in an un-fenced location. It's delicious and easy to grow. I ordered from Johnny's Seeds.

Self-seeding Snapdragons. Yes, please! Look at how cute they are!

Jalepenos. I loved a really good bacon-wrapped jalepeno popper and if I have enough jalepenos I will make them in batches to pull them out a few at a time to eat for snacks.

Lastly, green beans. I plant bush beans instead of vining beans. Vining beans drive me nuts because I can never find the right plants that have enough room and don't steal sunshine to grow at the bases of the bean plants. Instead I like the bush beans - they produce so much and you definitely get enough beans for 4 people for a meal instead of just supplementing store bought food. I like the stringless French beans because, like their description, they're not string-y and my kids will eat these!

As I get more into planning for next year, I'll share my varieties that I already have and where I like to purchase seeds. I'm not a seed snob, I happily buy what I can afford and at local box stores too. Sometimes you can only find the varieties that you eat in certain locations anyway.

Anyone else starting to think about their gardens next year??

December Highlights

I learned how to make focaccia bread. It was so much easier than I though it would be. And honestly - I cheated and used my bread machine for the dough so it was EASY. But then I overbaked by two minutes - for the first time making it, it was pretty good! I literally used a Pillsbury Bread Machine cookbook that was published back in the early 2000s. I don't trust recipes anymore from Pinterest because of AI so I'm going back to my tried and true cookbooks!

The snow here has been lovely since before Thanksgiving. It snowed again last night and it's currently FREEZING but the snow puts me in a really festive mood for Christmas and New Year's.

One storm just didn't stop. It snowed for HOURS and we shoveled multiple times. My darling teenager said she did her share and was finished shoveling for winter. My dear girl, that's not how winter works in Minnesota. It made me chuckle. HA! 

Same storm - we unlocked a core memory by snowshoeing to school. I think maybe we had 9 inches of snow and minimal people had shoveled so I got out the snowshoes. Q had so much fun! 

Downhill skiing has begun. We've been to Hyland a few times and this year Q decided to swap over to doing park stuff instead of racing. We got him a new pair of twin tip skiis (I'm next! It's on my list of things to buy in January!). So far he LOVES it - he even learned how to go on the big tow rope with all the teens earlier this week.

All the winter sports Q and I have done in the past few weeks... 

 

Book Review: Night Magic by Leigh Ann Henion

Every year the University of Minnesota Extension Master Gardener Program does a winter book club. This year the first selection is Night Magic by Leigh Ann Henion. My first thoughts on this book were pretty positive and her descriptions of all the life that happens in the dark are pretty magical. The chapters are sorted by animal and she lives in Appalachia - Boone, North Carolina - so we get a different viewpoint of the area than I feel like what is portrayed in the daily media. Plus, I didn't realize how many awesome creatures there are in her area of the world - I think I was expecting larger animals, maybe?

She starts off with fireflies and all the light that you don't know is there and starts to explain why light pollution is such a terrible thing. And yes, light pollution is not good for all the creatures at night. I found her descriptions to be pretty ethereal and magical in a fictional literature sort of way - she uses lots and lots of descriptions to take you along on her journeys through each chapter. The fireflies started off amazing and I actually researched how to find the fireflies in Appalachia, ironically enough there was an advertisement for a lightening bug tour in Appalachia in one of my travel magazines. I thought it might be a sign for some spring travel. LOL.

As the book goes on though, I'm less interested in her ethereal descriptions and more interested in the actual science of the animals in the dark. I think if you were to take out her descriptions of the shadows created by lightposts and how the dark makes her feel, it might only be a 100 page book. So just an FYI, I did end up skipping plenty of pages because I just wasn't interested in how a puddle made her feel. I also wasn't interested in her describing how she became friends with neighbors, so there's also personal stories that are mixed within (which is fine, it's her book that she wrote!), I just read the description thinking it was going to be more animal, plant, and night specific. I suppose I was disappointed in a way? To me, this book became too "new age-y" and there wasn't enough of what's going on in the dark.

She does have lots and lots of little nuggets of information about all the creatures she encounters too. I was absolutely impressed with the depth of knowledge each of the people she met had. Most of the science-y things in the book come from all the people that she met and they were incredibly interesting. It really did make me want to book a camping trip in Tennessee to see fireflies and also book a moth tour. What she writes about is extremely interesting and inspiring to learn more about what goes on in the dark. I suppose I was more interested in all the creatures and facts about the creatures than the stories about herself that she included. 

I would recommend this as light reading if you're curious about night creatures. Growing up, I was afraid of the dark (and rightly so, there's big scary things out there!), this actually helps to describe all the things that go bump in the night around you when you walk outside in your yard - insects, bugs, owls, salamanders, etc... it does take the "scary" out of the dark world outside. Her way of telling what is happening when you look into the dark shadows around the light posts helps you understand that without lights, there are creatures that thrive and survive better in the dark than the light. She does inspire people to turn off their porch lights and let the animals do their animal things at night. 

I think overall, between my disappoint and her way of inspiring people to actually go outside to see what's happening in the dark - I'm at a 3.5/5 stars - definitely put yourself on the waiting list for this book from the library.

Winter Grays

OOOOhhhhhh. It's the time in December when the sun tries to break through clouds but it just can't quite make it! It's a great reminder to take my Vitamin D. LOL. 

We had our first snow this past weekend and I'm feeling in the holiday spirit... a little bit! HA. I've been enjoying everyone's lights and I put up several strings in our backyard. Our tree is up and I think we're ready for the season.

 

My Mom's House is SOLD

Today I did some last cleaning for the new owners. Over the weekend we grabbed the last items and my plan was to sweep and vacuum today.

I took selfies in the new spaces - they truly look nothing like they did when my mom was alive. 

Everything has been cleaned, painted, and updated to the best of our abilities in the last few months.

And there's my buffet. LOL That furniture piece was definitely not there when my mom was alive. I have to say, I'm not really sad at all, it's more bittersweet maybe? Like the house hasn't looked like her house since I called 9-1-1 back in February. Once the firefighters started moving furniture at the time of the emergency, there was no way in hell that house felt like my mom's anymore. And truthfully, I've never been in love with it like my oldest sister. I'm so happy that a family with young children has bought it. I was tempted to write a letter with a few parental hints but my children wouldn't appreciate already knowing the secrets if we had bought the house. We slid down the stairs so much, I remember getting rug burns. Once I even did the stairs Home Alone style in a sled out the door. My mom would get so mad at the running - she would slam the doors shut and tell me to go outside. The yard is huge, the rooms are many, and I'm so excited for this house to bring so many fun memories to another family.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkeys made their way across fresh cement last summer! This always makes me chuckle. You can't mess with nature.

Phil just napping.

Apple crisp. I actually like a berry crisp better but Simone sort of insisted on apple and so I couldn't say no. I used an Ina Garten recipe. Hers have not once failed me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Late Season Garden Photos

 

I think my new favorite flowers are Strawflowers. This was my first year growing them from seed and I wasn't sure how they would do. I planted single plants as pot stuffers but in one larger pot near my veggies, I stuck 3 plants in because I had zero inspiration. LOL. As it turns out, strawflowers get quite tall, and they keep re-blooming if you deadhead them or trim for a cut flower bouquet.

I can't believe that some were still colorful even now at the end of November.

They're soft and spiky all at the same time and remind me of zinnias in how they grow.

For next year I bought this same color along with three other colors to plant in my flower beds in my front yard. I have 3 areas of flowers that need overhauls and I think I'm going to put in annuals next year while I decide exactly how I want to approach my flower beds, especially ones that have some nasty weeds. 

Sweet Alyssum is still going - this is another annual that I am always pleasantly surprised with. It continuously blooms and attracts pollinators so I've been tucking it in with my veggies after my veggies have had a couple weeks to establish and I can take a guess at how wide they will spread. I really like to tuck Alyssum into my brassicas - the deep greens matched with a purple, pink, or white is so pretty to see in the summer with the bees buzzing around.

This thing is actually a Minnesota native plant - this is a native liatris - I leave the stems and stalks so that native bees can bore holes and overwinter in the old growth. I do not cut this one down because it provides a home to so many native pollinators!

Quick Colorado Weekend

The kids are fantastic travelers now. When Q was a baby and we flew he screamed for HOURS inside the airport and I said no to air travel until he was old enough to entertain himself and not scream for hours. Since he's grown, he's been a FANTASTIC travel buddy and he can even carry his own luggage.

We usually stay in rental homes when we go because we do travel with quite a few people - it's much easier to coordinate schedules, lunches, and activities. This house was situated on a street with super easy access to an open space. There's gravel trails and we walked almost daily. There's so many holes for the prairie dogs that you can hardly go two steps without seeing them pop up from their holes. They're super cute and they sound like one of Phil's squeaky toys.

This is Eldorado Canyon State Park. If you look along the closest rock ridge line you'll see mountain climbers. There were 4 that we could see (though without my glasses I could just see their bright color shirts so I was useless at spotting them. LOL). 

The canyon is a pretty walk. 

Eventually you come around and out of the canyon so you can see down into the valley and out of the foothills - Eldorado looks down on Superior, Louisville, and Broomfield.

A soccer field. LOL. I had to take a photo because here in Minnesota, our soccer field views are most definitely not mountains.

Mesa Trail with family. The trailhead for this is actually located on the same road as Eldorado Canyon state park and this gets BUSY. When we were walking back down I think maybe 25 people had passed us. Colorado is no longer a place where you are all alone when you hike, you are always either passing someone else or are being passed on trails. I have found that people are not polite either. I always say hi or good morning or good afternoon and there were definite assholes on the trail! One woman left the bathroom door open, the seat up and didn't understand how the compost toilets work (she also didn't say excuse me or runner ahead or thank you when we moved off the trail and I hope she's having the life that she deserves, sorry, I'm petty today! LOL). 

Overall, our trip was great, we got to see my husband's 96 year old grandma and we had a fabulous time seeing family. I hope we get to see everyone again soon!