To Market To Market To Buy A Fat Pig

....home again, home again ... jiggity jig!

Our recent family vacation is fading into the photo album and memory bank.  It was so nice to visit a warm weather destination, but the comfort of home was calling to me all the while.  Traveling with a special needs child is EXHAUSTING!  Today will bring the challenge of getting Nathan back into the school routine.  My day will begin in about ten minutes when I have to wake him up to catch the school bus. 

The morning will be spent unpacking, sorting laundry, putting away various travel items, and making out the grocery list .... then heading out to the market. 

A good basic turkey soup will be on the menu for dinner ... pulled from the freezer will be deliciously prepared turkey frozen in stock.  It will be a easy-frugal dinner.  Soup, green salad, home baked rolls. 

Afternoon chores should include inspecting the garden grounds, taking stock of the compost pile, turning over some bare soil that I hope is thawed. 

It's so good to be home.

Recycling for the garden. I've been collecting odds and ends to use for the garden. Empty toilet/paper towel tubes, plastic take home salad containers, paper egg cartons, yogurt cups, and dryer lint to name a few. Also the compost bin is filling up with veggie and fruit scraps, along with said lint, and strips of newspaper. In another day, this bin will be finding a dumping off spot in the back forty under a tree that has some dirt poking through the snow. The top two pictures show my tomato, petunia, and marigold seeds that I've planted using household 'trash'. I also discovered that my oven's lowest setting for proofing yeast bread makes to perfect temperature for germinating seeds (75-85 F) ... so don't be alarmed seeing my starter trays in the oven :). Let's just hope I don't forget about them and accidentally turn the oven on ;) After they sprout and get a bit bigger, the plan is to make little biodegradable pots from newspaper to plant them in while they continue to grow indoors.

Bottom photo: indoor compost bin. this gets dumped in a old kitchen waste basket mixed with newspapers just out the back door and later dumped again onto bare soil.

My compost pile is still creating rich black soil even with much lower temps. I add to it about two gallons of green waste twice a week. Once the ground freezes, I plan on putting a large outdoor plastic trash can with a tight fitting lid near my kitchen door for winter use. This will be the first time I'll experiment with collecting green waste to hold over until spring.