trying to turn my thumb green

I am trying to grow things.  I have had some successes and some failures.  If we were keeping score the deer would probably have 50 points, the voles 10, and the slugs 5.  I haven't given up despite losing some plants to animals, the lack of water two summers ago, and my ignorance.  I am getting better.  This summer I wanted to experiment with rooting hormone.  I love hydrangeas and I am determined to grow some.  I have lost countless ones to the deer since they are like crack for deer, and the one day I forget to spray they get devoured.  I have had some luck with two plants, or I should say I did, until I moved around the plants and put the butterfly bush where the hydrangea was, which gave the deer much better access to the plant and they mowed it down to the ground, we will have to wait and see if comes back this spring.  Anyways, I would love to have lots hydrangea plants so I started experimenting with the rooting hormone because replacing eaten ones can get expensive.  My mom has a large hydrangea at her house and I always pick some blooms for decoration.  When the blooms had wilted I cut off the flower, dipped the stem in rooting hormone, and stuck it in a pot of soil.  I didn't think that it would work since I had seen a pin on Pinterest that suggested you cut the leave in half and cover it with plastic and on and on.  I was amazed when a couple of weeks later I had new leaves growing and that I now had a whole new plant, well actually 4 plants. 

I immediately went out to my current hydrangea and made to more cuttings so I could have even more plants.  I also cut part of my butterfly bush, some lavender, and some rosemary.  The butterfly bush also grew more leaves, but the herbs rotted or just died, so 2 wins and 2 losses.  By the beginning of October, two of my hydrangeas were pretty large in size so I transplanted them into my flowerbed. 

Unfortunately the deer mowed them down immediately, but I still had four plants that I took them inside to winter indoors.  I was afraid that after all my hard work of cutting and watering and taking great care this summer that during the  winter I would kill them, but they are holding their own.  They aren't growing a lot which makes sense, there isn't that much sun in the winter, but they are still alive and hopefully I will be able to transplant them this spring, behind a deer fence of course.  I can't wait for warm weather to begin more rooting experiments, I don't have a lot of room to experiment inside so I need to wait for spring.  So maybe this summer will be my year, just maybe.

recycle already

Today was a very challenging day.  It was a snow day for the kids and since it was Wednesday it was  my clean and do laundry day.  Clean and kids don't really mix well so it was very limited cleaning, bathrooms really.  But that is not the point, the point is recycling.
It is 2014 people why are you recycling?
We go for walks a lot, especially in the evening.  The night before trash day is not always the best night to walk especially in the summer when things can kind of get stinky, but I digress.  I hate seeing cardboard boxes sitting out by the curb to be picked up by the trash men. 
In our fair city, the government is too cheap to pay for curbside recycling service so you have to have pay for the service from a private company or take your recycling to a drop-off center.  I should note there is a drop off center about 1 mile away from our neighborhood, no turns other than turning in the parking lot, and it is next to the grocery store so it is not totally inconvenient.
It just saddens me to see how much paper and sometimes plastic gets thrown away when it can be recycled.  People are obsessed with their health and the food they put in their bodies, why don't they care about what they put in the Earth or at least under its soil.  Why throw something away when we are recycle it and not have to cut down as many trees?  What good is it to care about your health if you won't care about the planet, you could live to 100, but if the Earth is overrun with garbage what good is it to last that long?  It's 2014, how can reduce, reuse, recycle still not be commonplace?  It also upsets me not only to see recyclable paper, but stuff that could be donated that someone else could use.  Yes, I have picked through garbage and found good finds in some one's trash, a plastic little tikes slide and Lily's princess bicycle just off the top of my head. 
I guess the bottom line is that some people are selfish and lazy.  They don't care about the environment and what it will be like for our children and it is too much effort to do good that might not necessarily benefit you.
I am turning into a hippie everyday, it is kind of scary, but at the same time good, I am making the world a better place, every mile walked instead of driven, every bottle recycled, and every light switched turned off.

Green thumb

I would love to have a green thumb, but despite lots of effort, my thumb tends to be more brown, I can kill hardy plants quite easily.  Despite my numerous failures, I have had some success and every spring I try again. 
My successes to date:

My rose bush, despite being cut down to nothing the first year or two by the deer, it has survived and looks like a real rose bush, though a "real" gardener might say it needs to be pruned, I love it, it produces roses and is ALIVE. 

I planted this forsythia five years ago and it now finally looks like a bush and not just a few sparse sticks, FINALLY!

butterfly bush I planted last summer which is still alive and looking good, I almost lost it last August when we had no rain, but somehow it survived and I am so excited that something I planted is still thriving and looks like something after just one year, i should have tried one of these years ago.

This is my fifth attempt at growing a hydrangea, they are favorite of mine as well as the deer who have eaten attempts 1-4 to death.  I religiously sprayed to keep deer repellent on this plant last summer and I am overjoyed to see that it has grown back and I hopefully will have flowers this summer though I don't know what color.

I have learned that growing flowers can be an exercise in delayed gratification as well as patience and persistence. The rewards sometimes take years to receive and for some of my plants I am finally reaping the rewards that I sowed years ago.  My few successes have given me the hope that my ultimate green attempts will be successful.
  I am trying this year to grow some fruits and vegetables, last year I just fed the deer.  This year I am in it to win it.  A couple of weeks ago we built this:

a raised vegetable bed

I also planted along the fence:

we have planted strawberries, lots of sunflowers, pumpkins, and our blackberry bush and so far so good (the Rose of Sharon that are at the fence posts are another success story)

pumpkin seedlings that have sprouted by the fence

the start of a salad in our raised garden

Our blackberry bush, it has already been chopped down once by the deer when the net slipped off but it is still good size and hopefully will give us some fruit this summer it is by the fence

Cantaloupe seedlings, we spend a small fortune every summer on cantaloupe and hopefully this summer we will have some of our own in our own backyard they are in our raised bed

our strawberry bushes, we have six, and fingers crossed we can get some berries they are along the fence

we also have peppers, carrots, and beans in our raised bed

The garden will hopefully also be a great lesson for the kids and hopefully will encourage them to eat more vegetables.  So, so far, so good, fingers crossed we will actually have something to harvest and all my hard work will pay off, only time will tell.  Our next project is a rain barrel to keep the garden growing this summer.

crunchy

I have been so tired of paying a ridiculous amount of money for laundry detergent. I have also been irritated at how hard it is to measure the proper amount of detergent to use, I think they do it on purpose so you use more and have to buy more of it.  I am also tired of getting holes in my t-shirts and after a google search I found that a culprit might be an anti-pilling agent in detergents.   Then there is the whole environmentally friendly aspect, detergent goes down the drain then into the watershed, I don't really know how good my detergent is.  So after a session on Pinterest, I found a recipe for homemade detergent and it seemed easy enough.  So yesterday afternoon I grated some ivory soap and stirred and stirred the shavings with some washing soda and borax and wallah! I have my own laundry detergent that uses a very small amount, costs next to nothing, is relatively smell neutral (I don't like strong smelling products), and I think is relatively earth friendly.  So far I have done 5 loads of laundry and though most of the laundry hasn't been super dirty, it seems to be working and I am happy with it, especially since total cost was about $8 and it seems like it is going to last A LOT longer than regular detergent.

my dirty little secret

To try and save:
my hair color,
money spent on water,
money on hair products,
electricity,
time in the morning,
my skin from getting too dry,
the environment,
I have been only showering every other day and it has been a hard. I am currently on week 3 of the every other shower experiment and I don't know whether it has made much of difference yet, but I hope so.
There is nothing like a nice hot shower in the morning, but with two kids I don't always have time or the energy. I also would like to save my hair color since I did get low lights with more red in them then usual and I don't want them turning brassy by washing them too frequently especially since I bought inexpensive shampoo this time around, though it is for color treated hair ( I am also trying to figure out whether there really is a difference between the expensive and inexpensive shampoos and conditioners).
So my dirty little secret is out, I never would have thought years ago I would be able to make the transition, but so far I have survived, I don't know if I can keep it up in the summer, but in the winter it isn't a problem. I read somewhere that your hair will adjust to being only washed every other day, but so far it really hasn't. By the end of the non-shower day it is a bit greasier then I would like which is bothersome because I can't really pull it back right now, it is too short.
So not showering every day is one step I am taking to cut back on spending and going green, more like greasy, but every little bit helps, especially when you are like me and love long, hot showers. I must say, I now relish my morning showers now that they are half as often.

2-for-1

Right now I am into 2 meals with basically one set of ingredients. I love being able to buy one main ingredient and making two meals from it, it is my new favorite thing. It saves money and waste. Also, with swimming taking up a lot of my time I have needed to have easy meals and 2-for1 meals have come in handy. Some examples:
Sunday night: rotisserie chicken with mashed potatoes, stuffing, vegetables then I took the leftover chicken and made Chicken tetrazzini with it which is now in my freezer waiting for a night when I don't feel like cooking
Christmas Day: ham with typical holiday casseroles then a few days later cut up the ham and made a quiche
Baked Ziti and Stuffed Shells, I make a whole batch, but put half in the freezer.
I need to find some more recipes to broaden my frozen food selection, but I am so happy that we aren't being as wasteful because we are not always the best at eating leftovers.