“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
– Mother Teresa
It’s time to start cleaning up my container garden. Bunches of violas have been cropping up around my container garden again.
In 2022, I planted some Johnny Jump Up viola seeds in a small dollar store plastic container:
Here we are in 2025 and these violas do literally “jump up” around my patio and container garden. It amazes me each Spring now, how a few seeds planted in a cheap plastic container could continue to spread and multiply each year..
Living in a highly partisan America leaves me sad sometimes. Things aren’t hopeless, but our politics might be. Tonight the stage is set for a presidential debate, before either party has officially held their convention and selected a candidate. That alone seems surreal and it’s going to ramp up the partisan craziness before we even get to the party conventions.
I don’t expect anything to be fair or honest about a debate hosted by CNN and my distrust stems from CNN’s record, going back to 2012, when CNN’s Candy Crowley, the debate moderator “fact-checked” GOP candidate Mitt Romney, and her fact-check was wrong. Nothing has improved with presidential debates since then.
A presidential debate this early will likely only solidify partisan support, while the small number of independent and uncommitted voters remain soft on support up until closer to election time, when more Americans are really dialed into the election. This debate could prove disastrous if Biden fumbles, since prominent Dems have voiced concern about Biden’s abilities, not just Republicans.
Trump’s support among his base and among Republicans distressed by Biden policies, likely wouldn’t be rattled by whatever Trump says or how he acts. Bombastic Trump or more presidential Trump matter less than Trump’s commitment to border security, tough on crime, changing economic policy direction for Trump supporters, I think. Even many people not enamored of Trump are alarmed by the direction our country’s taken with Biden policies. So, I think Biden has more on the line and apparently his handlers do too and that’s why they’ve sequestered Biden for a week to try to get him prepared for a debate, while Trump has been out and about doing rallies and meeting with all sorts of people. This past week has showcased that Trump is the one acting presidential, while Biden needed to go into hiding for a week to prepare for a debate.
Many other things besides the candidates could impact this election – like civil unrest, disastrous results from the open border policies (like a terrorist attack), more economic turmoil, etc. For that reason, despite the media drama about how important this debate is, I’m not wasting any emotional energy on it.
I’ve been working on my small container garden and since cucumbers are coming in and piling up fast, I’ve been making pickles this past week and yesterday I decided to try a cucumber relish recipe from my Ball canning cookbook.
It might be tempting to bury our heads in the sand and tune out the news, but we should pay attention to wars breaking out, escalating foreign situations, political events, weather happenings and other local news, so it’s not good to try to retreat from the world. Add to that we’re in another contentious presidential election year, so more crazy happenings can be expected. Just yesterday there was a NBC news report of some got-aways coming across the US southern border, who might have ties to ISIS.
Working on putting some boundaries on news and social media consumption is a challenge for me, but I’m getting much better at not getting emotionally invested in news or political drama.
Finding balance between paying attention and paying too much attention can be hard and that’s why I realized that I also need to work on growing more hope and gratitude, because it’s too easy to get sucked into news media and social media drama. What I don’t think many people understand when they use social media is influencers aren’t the biggest concern. Social media platforms are set up to make you the product. Those platforms are designed to collect data on you every second you’re on them and then figure out ways to use algorithms to modify your behavior.
Your social media feed is all about algorithmic behavior modification, as social media algorithms fill your feed with information, analyze your behavior, then adjust your feed to keep you clicking/scrolling and watching. Your social media feed fills with things geared toward your previous searches and viewing habits. If you click on a particular topic, the algorithms will adjust and fill up your feed with more of that topic. It’s easy to assume other people are seeing the same things you are, but truly you’re allowing yourself to be guided down partisan rabbit holes and into a very narrow bubble. Many people talk about their online community, but these aren’t real communities – they’re echo chambers you’ve been guided into by algorithms you’re not even aware of. Millions of people get their news from social media sites too, so it’s important to be aware that the news that fills up your social media feed is all about algorithmic behavior modificationtoo.
We all have to pick and choose what news and information we consume and react to. I live in an area that can be impacted by Atlantic hurricanes and the experts are predicting a more active hurricane season. Likewise, there’s escalating far-left protesting happening around the country, reminiscent of the 2020 BLM “mostly peaceful” protest chaos. I don’t live in a big city, but 2020 shook my faith in never having to worry about shortages or civil unrest disruptions in America. So, I’m reassessing my emergency preparedness.
I’m checking my pantry and other basic supplies and stocking up a bit more, although I continually stock up extra stuff as part of my normal routine. I’ve decided to up my efforts some, just in case. If you aren’t prepared at all, well, all I can say is you don’t have to go all in and become a hardcore prepper, but certainly having some basic items stocked up doesn’t take that much effort. Having extra food, water, medication/first-aid items, etc. ahead of time can mean the difference between an unusual event being a crisis or just an inconvenience. Sure, everything is more expensive, but stocking up a little at a time is still doable for most people.
This beautiful zinnia grew on it’s own in one of my squash containers. The squash plant bit the dust, but this zinnia has thrived. I love squash, but this zinnia softened the blow of losing the squash and it sure brightens my day. I will definitely be saving seeds from this zinnia.
Along with those preparedness efforts, I’m working on trying to become a better listener, especially with people I don’t agree with, and I’m trying to limit my time spent on political drama or people getting worked up about everything in the news. Stocking up hope is much harder than stocking up material items, but it’s the most vital thing to stockpile, no matter what happens.
Big dreams vs. harsh realities hit me again as the summer heat… and pest pressure increased in my vegetable garden here in southeast GA. Being a Yankee at heart, GA summers wilt my spirits. Yes, I know summer hasn’t officially begun, but it sure feels like it has.
Some things grow well here, especially the bugs, so along with bug spray for my plants, I keep a can of deep woods bug spray for me handy too. Flowers and herbs are much easier to grow in my backyard, so this year I’ve planted more flowers, which will provide much needed boosts to my spirit as tomato and squash plant deaths inevitably increase. I’ve got cucumbers forming and so far every single one has small holes in them with worms. I’ve sprayed them several times with BT spray and since I’m not invested in the hoopla about all organic, I’m going to use Sevin spray next. I’m the same about fertilizers and I can guarantee I will not ever use the fish oil emulsion that I see mentioned online frequently, because I avoid all fish products after having an anaphylactic reaction to fish.
I’ve read gardening books and watched many online gardening experts trying to learn more. I learned about the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes and I found a determinate type hybrid cherry tomato variety that does produce a lot of cherry tomatoes before eventually succumbing to the GA heat and plant diseases. I’m still trying to successfully grow larger tomatoes too. The same thing happens with summer squash. I picked a few yellow squash and one zucchini, but I’ve already lost a couple squash plants. I’ll try again in my fall garden effort.
The practical side of me realizes that if I kept track of how much I’ve spent on this container gardening effort I started three years ago, when I decided I wanted to get back to vegetable gardening, that this isn’t saving me any money. However, I am getting better at this container gardening and I love being out in my backyard garden.
Reality checks are important and unfortunately it’s easy to get carried away buying more and more supplies and gadgets or trying to imitate some picture perfect garden set-up you’ve seen in a magazine or online. I’ve seen amazing raised bed set-ups and beautiful greenhouses. I’ve seen all sorts of amazing trellis systems. irrigation systems and even sunshade systems. This year I purchased a better ground cover fabric and put together 4 small metal raised beds that I bought last year. It would take a lot of vegetable production to off-set the cost of even these purchases.
My gardening effort is mainly because I enjoy it. Embarking on backyard gardening with too high of expectations left me sadly disappointed many times over the years, so I’m working on learning to enjoy even the smallest wins. With the wormy cucumbers, I picked them and cut off the bad parts and found that a good bit of each cucumber was fine. I have a container of sliced cucumber in the fridge, ready for salads or snacking. I froze several gallons of blackberries from my blackberry bushes and dried a lot of herbs already, so those are wins. I’ve picked green beans several times. Peppers are producing. And this Burpee hybrid veranda tomato seed has come through again and I’ve got lots of cherry tomatoes ripening every day. The big tomatoes, well, out of ten plants, I’m down to two plants and I’m highly skeptical these will survive long enough to produce any usable tomatoes. There are a few tomatoes forming, but they don’t look promising.
Learning to be grateful for the small wins rather than fixating on the unfulfilled big expectations takes a conscious mind shift. All those big expectations are usually influenced by images I’ve seen online or seen someone else have and it’s really a form of coveting what other people have.
Gardening is like other hobbies. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing if we buy all the right gadgets and gizmos, we’ll end up with picture perfect outcomes. Learning from the failures and gaining more experience usually leads to more success, but learning gratitude for even the small wins helps grow more resilience of my spirit, I think. No matter what garden tragedy occurs, I am deeply grateful I can come inside, sit in my kitchen where the AC keeps it cool and sip on a glass of iced tea. From my kitchen windows I can see my entire container garden, which wasn’t there until three years ago and that puts it into perspective – I’m making progress.
Growing my gratitude matters more than any of the vegetables I planted.
The news is still filled with loads of doom and gloom. Had to go pick up a few things at the grocery store today – the cost of food is alarming. I’m glad I have a lot of food stocked up already, but I plan to continue stocking up.
Small things can help you weather all of these trials and challenges, that’s what I believe.
With spending so much time working on my garden and yard, I’ve spent a lot less time perusing social media. That has had a very beneficial effect on my attitude. Sure, I am still following the news, still aware of the political and cultural chaos swirling, but despite that I feel more positive and upbeat. Over the years, as my late husband’s health declined, I stopped sitting outside and being outside regularly. Besides the gardening effort, I decided to spend some time sitting outside each day, weather permitting. I carry my coffee to a small table on my patio in the morning and some days eat meals outside too. It seems such a small thing, but it uplifts my spirit.
Each day I try to learn something new. Today I learned about florida betony and I realized that this weed grows profusely in my backyard. When I was getting my containers for my container garden ready, I dumped the soil from my containers into the wheelbarrow and pulled out the weeds, added some compost and refilled my containers. I had a big pile of weeds with loads of these tuberous roots. Today, I learned that weed is florida betony, it’s edible, including all those roots I threw away. This weed also has medicinal uses. Right in front of me was a “weed” that I was working hard to get rid of, that is probably as beneficial as the vegetables I’ve been planting. Learning about this weed gave me pause, as I thought about how hard I worked to get rid of it.
All around us there are likely hidden treasures, that with a bit of information and know-how could become a blessing. Along with learning about this prolific weed, I learned that sharing information can help people too. I gave extra tomato plants and other veggies, that I had too many started, to a friend. She was happy to have these plants, but she was not set-up or prepared for a vegetable gardening effort. I tried to offer her advice on how to go about this in the most economical way, because any way you go with buying bagged soil can add up quickly, not to mention other supplies. I’m still learning as I go along with this container gardening effort and for me it’s working. I don’t want to try to go back to planting an in-ground garden and all the effort that went into tilling and composting (which my late husband turned into his effort). I added four small metal raised beds this spring.
You’ve got to grow a lot of food consistently to recoup the cost of supplies. I garden mainly because I love it, but with the cost of food at the grocery store showing no sign of easing, being able to produce some of my own food feels like a tiny bit of extra security. Realizing how many weeds and things growing around me are edible has been an eye-opener, as I’ve been trying to learn more about foraging and wild plants. As I googled florida betony, I even found recipes for pickling it and how to incorporate it into curries and stir-fries. This information seemed like it might be more important to know than all the latest details of our partisan political soap operas.
The photo at the top is a handbook I found at my local Goodwill long ago. It’s a 2004 copyright and a local person whited out their name and address inside the front cover. I am not a master gardener, nor have I taken a master gardener’s course, although I’ve thought about applying many times. That said, this handbook is one of my most valuable resources for gardening information for my area. UGA has loads of online information for GA gardeners and farmers too.
I’m beginning to think that knowing all the latest happenings that people on social media blab about won’t matter at all in a real crisis, but knowing more about my own area and especially my own backyard definitely might be vital.
I gave extra vegetable plants to two other people and that’s a personal goal I’m focusing on in my life- to pass on extra things to help others. I always start more seeds than I need. I keep a few to have as replacements, in case some meet an untimely end, but I try to give away the others.
It’s been a bit since I wrote a blog post, but I’ve been busy getting my backyard garden set up and working in my front yard too. I’ve continued with the container gardening, but I added two metal raised beds and I have two more metal raised beds to put together. I bought these raised beds last year, but never got them put together. Each one has 40 nuts and bolts and my fingers were worn out after getting these two together. I have some diabetic neuropathy in my fingertips and I’m giving my fingers a rest before attempting to put the other two together. Filling them was easier than putting them together. And yes, my patio needs pressure washing desperately – I’m always potting and messing with plants on it.
The dog is Marius, my late husband’s dog and he’s 16 years old. I put down a different ground cover fabric that I ordered online from Grower’s Solution. After watching a Living Traditions Homestead video, where Kevin and Sarah offered tips on using ground cover fabric, I’m skipping putting woodchips on top of this, like I did with the cheaper ground cover fabric I used the past two years. This better quality ground cover fabric is working much better and by skipping the woodchips, I’m noticing a lot less bugs bothering my plants so far. The only issue with this ground cover fabric is it gets very hot on hot days and I’ve had to keep the dogs off of it, even though Marius loves to walk on it and lay out in the sun on it in the mornings. Marius walked onto it when it was hot and he got in a panic.
The green beans are getting ready to bloom.
These are the same Burpee Veranda hybrid tomatoes I’ve grown the past few years – it’s a patio tomato, gets 18″ to 24″ tall and produces loads of cherry tomatoes that grow in tight clusters. I started my seeds inside in early March. I have some bigger tomato plants too – think I started Better Boy this year.
This is a yellow squash. I planted a few zucchinis and patty pan squash too. There are two types of peppers and cucumbers growing. I have some grow bags with celery and I’ve never tried growing celery before.
Zinnias from seed I saved a couple years ago.
Cosmos from seed I saved.
Marigolds from seed I saved.
This tarragon plant I started from seed last year and it’s growing back.
This oregano I started from seed in 2022 and it keeps growing. I also have dill, lemon balm, parsley, stevia and thyme that just grew back too.
I bought a small pot of rosemary at Walmart in 2022 and it just keeps growing.
When I decided to get back to gardening in 2022, I ordered some fruit bushes from Stark Bros. I got 6 blackberry bushes that spring, but didn’t plant them in the ground until fall. I didn’t build a trellis, just let them ramble. They are loaded with huge blackberries this year.
I had gotten 4 blueberry bushes at Lowe’s in 2022 and this year I added four more blueberry bushes.
I’ve got other assorted flowers and herbs growing too.
I started some balloon flower seeds in a small square Dollar Tree container in 2022. They grew and grew and I gave some plants away. This spring I’ve given more away and I filled this raised bed with them, plus have some other large flower pots with them. Apparently, in Korea the roots of this flower are eaten and it has medicinal uses. I just think the flowers are beautiful, but I’m containing it to this raised bed from now on.
I’ll be back to politics when I have time, but for now it’s pretty busy in my own backyard.
Well, it’s stormy weather today, so what better time to sit at the kitchen table and do an elementary school science project. I sorted through my shoebox of old seeds and decided that it would be easier to do some simple seed viability testing before planting a bunch of old seeds. The oldest pack I’m testing is a 1996 unopened pack of onion seeds.
There are a lot of unopened flower seed packs. I googled to refresh my memory on seed viability testing, because it’s been many years since I did this. It’s basically the old ziploc bag method with a dampened paper towel inside. I watched a video by Gardener Scott, whose YT channel I enjoy, and he had some useful tips. He recommended that instead of wrapping the seeds inside a damp paper towel and sticking it in the bag (how I used to do it), he suggested placing the paper towel inside the bag, then misting the paper towel inside the bag, and finally put the seeds on one side of the paper towel. That way you can see if the seeds germinated without opening the bag and fiddling with unwrapping the paper towel to find the seeds.
A lot of gardeners keep a garden journal, but I’m not organized enough to stick with jotting down notes regularly and keeping track of data. And the thing about any journal or recordkeeping is it’s only useful if you analyze the notes and data, to gain some information and insights. Know thyself is always a good bit of data to seriously analyze before starting projects. I know I won’t keep up with jotting down notes in a journal, then reading them later, plus I’m likely to misplace the journal (like I did with this shoebox of old seeds). Since it’s winter time, I figure I can easily keep track of some baggies with seeds in them for a few weeks and check if any germinate. Using that information will make it easier to decide which of these old seeds to plant.
I have a few packs of cactus and succulent seeds, like these 2010 Park Seed succulents and I remember those were not cheap. I’m not doing seed viability testing for those, because there aren’t many seeds in these packs. I’ll just plant them and hope for the best.
Apologies for the terrible photography. I am really awful at taking pictures. Now, it’s back to laundry for me.
Note: Yeah, yeah I looked at the succulent seed packs again and noticed there are 300 seeds with that sempervivum pack, but the other packs of cactus and succulent seed packs don’t have many seeds in them.
“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
– Mother Teresa
It’s a gloomy overcast day here this morning and we’re expected to get storms tomorrow. When I took the dogs out I was admiring this pretty little viola that popped up in the yard, right at the edge of my patio. I planted viola seeds in a plastic container in 2022:
Last winter and now this winter, I’ve got violas popping up here and there near my patio. I spotted a few more viola plants growing on the other side of my patio a few days ago, but they haven’t bloomed yet.
This past summer I was sick several times and after a bout of COVID I had lingering fatigue and got winded very easily. I talked to my cardiologist about this and he ran some tests and his advice was to walk and move as much as I can. While spending too much time sitting around last summer, I didn’t work enough in my summer garden and although I did plant a few things for a winter garden, I neglected them.
The bigger thing was I was neglecting my health by not forcing myself to move more. I’ve been pushing myself to do more moving and stretching and a few daily exercises, but most of all I’ve been trying to work on my mindset and attitude.
With the three cherry tomato plants I stuck on my back porch/sun room for the winter, well two look pretty sad despite regular watering and plant food, but one is growing and producing bigger cherry tomatoes now.
Small steps matter, but often we focus on big and lofty dreams or compare ourselves to what other people do or have rather than appreciate or utilize what we have or can do. Picking a few cherry tomatoes to toss on my salad in January feels good and while, like that little viola blooming, it’s just a small thing, well, it makes me feel hopeful. A small 10 oz. container of cherry tomatoes at my local Walmart Neighborhood Market is $2.98. I keep leaf lettuce growing year-round now, in an Aerogarden that was a Mother’s Day gift a couple years ago.
Last month, my son, came across this shoe box in one of my closets. I have been trying to sift through closets and get rid of some things. I hadn’t seen this shoe box in many years, despite looking for it many times. Some of the seeds are from the late 90s, while most are from the early 2000s. I noticed many are unopened seed packets from 2004. A lot of life happened between 2004 and 2022. I had uterine cancer and an uncommon type of ovarian cancer in 2003 and after surgery and radiation treatments, I wanted to get back to planting a garden. I was working fulI-time and although I planted a few things over the years, it wasn’t until 2022, that I made up my mind to attempt a small container garden effort. It turned into a bit more than I had planned.
Rather than just toss out all these old seeds, I decided that I’m going to pick out a few packs of seeds and sow them heavily and see if any grow. Of course, I am also planting fresh seeds and browsing through seed catalogs too. If even one plant from those old seeds grows and produces well, I can save seeds from that for next year. I think that small effort is better than tossing all these old seeds in the trash.
Burpee seeds definitely aren’t 97 cents now, like in 2004… This shoe box of seeds is sort of like a time capsule.
Pansies are part of the Viola genus, but what I planted a couple years ago are a smaller viola hybrid. Back in 2013, I wrote, The pansies smiling at you, about a feisty old German woman, who worked in lawn and garden at our local Walmart. Renate despised me when I first went to lawn and garden as the department manager, but I made it a goal that I was going to find common ground with her somehow and work with her. It was a challenge, but eventually we became friends and she started calling me, “My Sue.” It’s taken me a long time, but this dreary morning when I stood on my patio and admired this tiny viola, I finally saw pansies smiling at me.
Last night I watched a YouTube video by MIgardener, who has a very popular organic gardening channel. He also runs a seed business and I have ordered seeds from him. I feel what he said should be shared. He’s not a fearmonger or someone who puts out alarmist content. In this video he’s urging gardeners to plant more food now and he stated that the heavy smoke from the large number of Canadian forest fires is impacting plant growth for crops and in home gardens in a large portion of the US.
We can add this looming problem to the drought situation in parts of the country too and it’s obvious our food supply system will be challenged in coming months.
“The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 triggered a change in the global climate. The heavier material fell to the ground and the ocean’s surface. However, when lighter particulates reached the stratosphere, they spread out and created an aerosol cloud the size of Australia.The cloud blocked sunlight from reaching the earth and changed the global climate by 2-7 degrees Fahrenheit, the effects of which devastated much of the world in what should have been the summer of 1816. Crops failed across Europe and the U.S. due to the cold or lack of sunshine causing grain and oat prices to soar, torrential rains flooded crops in Ireland, novel strains of cholera killed millions in India, crime became rampant, and people starved in many countries.”
There are rumors galore about the cause of these Canadian forest fires, with the far-right media ecosystem putting forth that these fires were deliberately set by the infamous “THEY,” to starve “us” to death, but I don’t have the time or energy to invest in the constant conspiracy theory hot takes.
Heck, I even saw some conspiracy theory on Twitter, after reports of NYC was dealing with heavy smoke a few weeks ago, that the Canadian forest fires aren’t real, but it’s some evil US government plot that’s creating all this smoke in the US. I believe the Canadian forest fires are real and it’s neither here nor there about what caused these Canadian forest fires. The issue is these fires are burning and the smoke situation is impacting the US in many ways, including food production. There are drought conditions and crazy weather events galore in the US this year too.
So what can we do to lessen the impact on our families?
The video above is not alarmist. He’s urging people to grow more in your garden now and to keep planting. Trying to find ways to encourage people to take steps to be prepared for more potential shortage situations and more food inflation seems common sense at this point. You don’t need to get hysterical or jump into panic mode, but even small efforts to work on building up some extra food supplies in your pantry and trying to learn to grow some vegetables and herbs are better than sitting there doing nothing.
I know plenty of people who are resistant to “prepping” and have a million and one excuses for why they don’t do things that could lessen their worries and bring them more sense of control in rapidly changing times. However, calmly urging people you care about to take steps to be able to feed their family – no matter what crisis comes our way – matters.
Since the 4th of July is right around the corner here in America, perhaps explaining that working toward personal food security really is an integral part of personal freedom might work better than warning about doom and gloom events. Every little bit you do to learn more skills and work at becoming more self-reliant really means you’re on the path to personal freedom. I’ve got some of my family agreeing with me on basic preparedness now, so I feel like that’s progress.
Where I live in southeast Georgia, we’ve had unseasonably warm weather in the past week or so – up in the mid-80s and it’s felt like spring. Of course, since we’re only at the end of February, it’s a safe bet we’ll still have some colder weather, but the warm weather sure stirred this deep desire to rush about and get my container garden planted. Common sense asserted itself, so I’ve put the brakes on most of that and focused mostly on indoor seed starting.
It’s not just me that’s got spring fever, I’ve got cosmos seeds sprouting around my garden area and a lot of these dainty Johnny-jump ups (photo above) popping up around my backyard and in the woodchips where I had set up my container garden last year.
I had planted one pack of Johnny jump-up seeds in some containers last spring. A few plants have reemerged in the containers, but there are certainly a lot more from stray seeds peeking through the grass and wood chips. Along with working on growing vegetables this spring, I’m going to plant more flower seeds.
“Volunteer” plants that pop up unexpectedly feel like a gift. I’ve got little yellow flowers and purple “weed” flowers blooming in my back yard and I’ve been admiring those too. Of course, the real showstoppers at this time of year here are the azaleas and they’ve started blooming too. I suspect most people don’t even notice the delicate little “weed” flowers.
When I listen to people, it’s often very interesting what things they notice and what things they don’t. It’s even harder to really gain some awareness of what I am not noticing and usually it’s something someone says to me that prods me to take a step back and remove the plank from my own eye first or I read something and realize that I was completely unaware of that or I know nothing about that topic that seems very important.
Yesterday, as I was watering a few things still growing in my container garden, I spent some time just looking around and thinking about how a year ago, I was still finding excuses to talk myself out of attempting a gardening effort on my own and now I’m thinking of ways to improve my gardening space. I already have seeds started indoors and some gardening plans.
Sometimes starting on a new path begins with just a change of attitude.
Along with the gardening, I want to get back to working on my needlework and crafting again. Here’s the reality though, I am still stocking up food and basic supplies regularly, because there are so many major problems still swirling – war in Ukraine, China flexing its muscles, global economic problems, political rot in Washington, and plenty of unusual climate and weather events, let alone all the social and cultural problems here at home in America.
Along with my gardening effort and hobbies, the reality is we are living in very uncertain times. I’ve heard a lot of talk online about being prepared for an EMP attack in the past year or so and frankly, I don’t even understand basic technology, let alone an EMP attack. This morning I ordered a book by Ted Koppel, I saw recommended on a video titled, The Worst Risk You Face, by a YouTube channel, Jim’sWay. I had seen this man, Jim Phillips, on The Provident Prepper YouTube channel and he’s been teaching survival skills and preparedness for 40 years. There’s nothing flashy or savvy about his video quality and it does feel like sitting in a lecture, but he provides a lot of useful information I had not seen elsewhere. He said people often make comments about Ted Koppel being a liberal when he recommends this book, but he said Koppel’s 2015 book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, is excellent. I found the book on amazon and there were lots of used copies that are cheap. I found a used copy in very good condition for $5.59. Some people only want new books, but since I grew up with hand-me-down books, I’m fine with used books. I opt for “very good” or “like new” condition, due to getting some used books online in very sad condition that were listed in “good” condition.
Phillips talked about how it’s not just man-caused events like terrorism that could take down the grid. He mentioned the Carrington Event of 1859, which I knew nothing about. Trusty Wikipedia states:
The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking from 1 to 2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were reported globally[1] and caused sparking and even fires in multiple telegraph stations. The geomagnetic storm was most likely the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun colliding with Earth’s magnetosphere.[2]
That 1859 geomagnetic storm was before there even was an electric power grid, but there were reports of telegraph failures across America and in Europe and with telegraph pylons throwing off sparks.
We are all very dependent on our modern systems that all rely on the energy grids. The power went out for a few hours the other day in the afternoon and while it caused no major disruption in my life, I did check the Georgia Power outage map site on my cell phone frequently to see if there were updates on when power was expected to be restored. I’ve been without power for several days after a big storm before and daily life changes instantly. Even simple things take more thought and effort without power readily available.
There are still some places around the world where people do live without electricity in their homes, but most of the world is like me – totally clueless about all of the difficulties an extended power outage would create and not even able to fully grasp the myriad of challenges. I’m still working on basic preparedness goals and trying to think through whether to purchase many pricier preparedness items or embark on new projects I’ve seen people talking about online or read about. However, there are dozens upon dozens of little things to do that are within just about everyone’s reach and one of those is being willing to invest some time to learn more. I’m also working on staying focused on being grateful for the many blessings in my life and trying to curb my judgmental habits. Those don’t cost anything, except giving myself a few jolts of self-awareness each day.
So, basically, I still have no idea what documents Trump had, that were so urgent a raid on his home was necessary. Furthermore, I have no idea what classification any of the documents seized are. Yes, I mock the Dem/liberal media spin attacks on Twitter, in hopes of “defusing” some of them, lol.
Now, on to the other topics. I’ve continued to dehydrate herbs and pressure can meat. I also pressure canned 16 pints of chili, 12 quarts of potatoes and 13 pints of carrots recently. This morning I am pressure canning 8 more pints of ground beef. I used store-bought potatoes and carrots, so I’m not waiting until I grow enough fresh vegetables to can. While I am wanting to continue stocking up food and supplies, in case the economy gets worse and a lot of things are either in short supply or very hard to afford, another goal is I want to build my skills with home canning. I could have purchased cans of potatoes and carrots at the store at a reasonable price, but I opted for buying fresh, then pressure canning them, to get more experience with canning. I already have dehydrated potatoes, both potatoes I dehydrated and ones I bought at the store. I keep working on learning more about dehydrating food too.
I planted some more cucumbers for my fall garden and so far they’re looking okay.
I have some plastic totes with cabbage and red beets started.
This red cabbage is supposed to be a compact type, suitable for containers, so we’ll see how it does.
In previous post I posted photos of the five pieces of succulents in this pot, so here you can see the babies growing at the base.
These are mascotte beans. I have 10 containers planted to try these.
In the spring I planted a pack of balloon flower seeds, which are a perennial. I have a lot of plants to figure out where to plant. I used to have one in the flower bed in front of my house for years, until it stopped coming up in the spring. I plan to take some to give to the nice lady, who gave me the succulent pieces.
libertybelle diaries 