Gardening ~ Cooking ~ Frugality
Live from Zone 7b in New Jersey
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Summer?
From heat wave to four days of rain, chill and wind (and counting). The plants are confused and so am I. I’m very glad to get the rain since we are short on it, but this Memorial Day Weekend weather punctured my happy bubble of summer excitement. Yesterday (Saturday) I sort of enjoyed the rain.…
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Desperately Seeking Shade
In my last post I said I would get the painting done this weekend even if meant no gardening. Ha! Nope. I didn’t even think about picking up a paintbrush, when there were plant swaps to go to and cars to buy. Yes, T and I found a car that works, and spent most of…
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Lettuce Celebrate Moms
Happy Mother’s Day. My goal was to actually do very little today, and I succeeded. I slept quite late, and after that I just puttered in the garden and did a little bit of downtown shopping with my daughter, at the newest consignment shop (bought nothing). We ordered pizza for dinner. I did stop by…
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Kicking Off May
Two big events down, two more to go. The Boston trip is complete and today we hosted the softball team for dinner. Next up I have a wedding on 5/23 and my parents’ 50th anniversary party on 5/30. Yesterday was also my birthday but I’m happy for that to not be a big event, thank…
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Blame It on Boston
I missed my usual weekend post because I was getting ready for a work trip to Boston. I fly home tomorrow after 2.5 days of training and socializing. Got some cool pictures from our rooftop venue tonight: This is my fourth trip to Boston, but the last time was more than 20 years ago. Definitely…
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Works in Progress
A lot of things are half-finished right now, but that’s OK (I tell myself): My mosaic flowerpot: My living room walls: The garden, of course, is the ultimate forever work in progress. So there’s supplies and drop cloths and crap everywhere, but at least things are happening! Soooo exciting to paint over the mauve walls.…
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On a Rampage
This might be the spring break that broke me. Physically, that is. The kids were off this past week and so I took off on Friday, as well as today (had to pick a parent up from a procedure). These were my lists on Friday morning: As my husband said about an hour later, “I…
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One Mode After Another
I’ve been thinking about how I seem to pass from mode to mode. Picture a Venn diagram with circles that overlap to some degree. One of the circles, perhaps the largest, is “survival mode.” In survival mode, the cheapest option wins. Eat at home, hobbies can’t cost money, entertainment needs to be free or cheap.…
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Growing Tomatoes (Indeterminate) in Zone 7b
Republishing for spring 2026. It’s not too late to start tomato seeds! Tomatoes! Nearly every year, I grow more tomatoes than anything else. Enough to make gallons of sauce and to give them away in free piles outside my house. Indeterminate tomatoes are those that vine and sprawl all over. Determinate ones have neat and…
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Cracking Good Time
As so often happens, because I had a “bad” week last week in terms of spending too much on takeout and work lunches, I was motivated to do better this week. We “only” had takeout one night, and I bought lunch just once (and stretched it to be my dinner also). And I haven’t bought…
Garden State of Mind 