An Easy Way to Cut Your Power Bill & Inexpensive Garden Fencing

Another pretty summer morning at my house. I'm enjoying it while it lasts!

Here's a little video story about how I thought I had a problem with my solar system, but it was actually caused my a careless oversight on my part. Even if you are not off grid with limited power, it's the kind of thing that might save you some cash! One of my followers told me that when she started unplugging everything that was not in use a few years ago, her power bill went down by 25%! That's pretty amazing unless you prefer to just donate extra money to your local power company. :) 

My friend Beth came over and we went current picking together. Despite being at the tail end of the season for currents this year, we found a pretty good pile as you can see. Enough to juice into a little over a quart of wonderful citrusy fresh current juice!

Since a lot of you have inquired, here's a video on how I keep the big critters out of the garden. Most of the time anyway. Including possibly a relatively cheap way to fence your own garden if you live in an area where that is necessary!

In other news, I am still battling my little underground munchers in the garden that are not stopped by any fencing, but the things they have not gotten to are looking good!

More Veggies, Flowers, Birds, and an Off Grid Hair Washing Tip!

I have more veggies out of the garden every day! 4 quarts of sweet pickles are now fermenting on the counter, and everything else was roasted in the oven to go over tacos for dinner.

While the weather is remaining warm for now, you are starting to be able to feel fall in the air around here. Hopefully I'll have a few more weeks of being able to eat loads of fresh things before hard frosts kill all but the very hardy greens like kale, chard, and brussel sprouts.

Since how I manage hygiene in my off grid situation is a question I get a lot, here's an idea for a quick and water saving wash if you have long hair that tends to get greasy right at your scalp line but you don't want to be too hard on the rest of your hair. I'm not a hair professional, but this has been working for me for a long time.

After a brief but heavy rainfall that knocked some of my taller flowers over, I just cut them and made a pretty bouquet that I've been enjoying inside for a few days.

While I love flowers, the food is my main goal when gardening. Take a look at all the pretty kinds of summer squashes I'm getting right now!

And as always, I enjoy watching the birds and bees around my place. Above is one of the hummingbirds that grew up near my house this summer. When this baby was leaving the nest, it sat on the branch protesting it's new independence for a while. Seeming to prefer the idea of it's parents feeding it to venturing out on it's own. :) They swung by every now and then, but it seemed only to tell it to grow up. It must have finally accepted it's new role in life because it did fly off, and I would imagine is now one the the indistinguishable speedy flashes of color I see feeding from my flowers. It was pretty special to get to witness this much more stationary than normal little part of it's life!

Recipe, Look Back, and an Eclipse!

Summer is continuing to be full and busy around my house. Things are staying green this year! Probably in part due to a lack of frosts this summer. Last year for instance, we had a pretty hard frost about every other week. That was pretty hard on all the growing green stuff, but they seem much happier this summer. So things like my cucumbers are actually producing! And I made a cucumber salad.

I also finally uploaded a quick time lapse of rebuilding my woodshed after the record snowpack last year caved it in. Obviously, this was shot a few months ago!

My carrots started off very slow, but now I am picking quite a few. In lots of fun colors!

Yes those are all carrots! I think growing different colors than the norm is just fun.

My zucchini's and summer squash are also really enjoying the lack of frosts, so I'm eating a lot of squashes as well. In dark greens, speckled greens, yellow crook necked, yellow worty, and pale green globes.

The flowers around the base of the house are also looking wonderfully full. The only fertilizer they get is the diluted contents of the liquids bucket from my toilet!

And then a few days ago, the Great American Eclipse came to visit me! A few friends joined me to watch something we'd never seen before.

I've never had the opportunity to watch a solar eclipse before and was unsure of what I would be able to capture, but I did get a few shots that I was pretty happy with!

The corona when the sun went full dark, was a truly amazing thing to witness!

With the sun back to normal, all the flowers around my place are attracting all the small nectar seekers which are always fun to watch!

And there's still some spotty fawns running around the area as well. 

Where were you for the eclipse and had you ever seen one before? I love to hear everyone's stories!