apartment

please excuse my terrible canva skills.

Interlude: Strawberry Stain, Part 2

Erica, Free

I have an idea. Caitlyn asked our landlord if we could install cameras on the front and back door to keep an eye on Todd. She thinks he was messing with our back door the other night, or at least someone was. 

I’m glad for this new development. First of all, because whether it was Todd or some other person running around testing doors at night, we should have a camera. Second, because I’ve been pushing for this since Todd started messing with me. Third, because it gives me an in. 

A few months ago, I bought a book of scrapbook paper for a crafting project. I didn’t need the whole book, but I had a coupon and figured it would come in handy. When I saw the cameras on my way home the other day, I thought a thank you note would be the perfect opportunity. 

There is a strawberry-printed sheet of paper, but I thought that was a little on the nose. I selected one with a nice, subtle floral print on one side and an almost wallpaper-y polka dot print on the other and set about making the card.

Here’s how I make homemade cards out of scrapbook paper:

  1. Select the appropriate paper: would I have liked to use the strawberry paper? Yes. But, the more I think about it, the absence of strawberries is kind of the point. 
  2. Draw/write out the design for the front of the card on plain, white paper: I just use printer paper, but you can use thicker paper if you don’t want the scrapbook paper showing through. This really helps the design pop on a busy print.
  3. Cut out the design: I used an xacto blade to get as close to the design as I could. Sometimes, I just use scissors and then add scrapbooking stickers to the edges where the white paper shows through.
  4. Glue or tape your design to the front of the card: I have some double-sided tape from my previous endeavor that works great. 
  5. Cut out a rectangle of white (or another solid color) paper that fits nicely on the inside of your card. Write your message on it.
  6. Glue or tape your message to the inside of your card: If you’re using glue, make sure you leave the card open so the glue can dry without gluing the card together!
  7. Send your elevated homemade card to your recipient!

Easy enough!

Stay tuned for next time when I teach you how to put a simple curse in your homemade card! (only works for beings already born with magical powers.) (And no, I’m not going to curse my landlord’s firstborn child or anything like that. I’m pretty sure his kids are my age. And that’s just not how I roll.

-Erica

please excuse my terrible canva skills.

Interlude: Strawberry Stain, Part 1

Erica, Free

In all the years I’ve lived at this apartment, my landlord has never once done anything to the little patch of dirt where I keep my garden. I’ve ripped up the groundcover where I want to put my plants and done my best to eradicate the poison ivy, but there’s not much I can do about the honeysuckle besides cut it down when I remember to. 

Well someone came out and sprayed it last week. I didn’t realize it until a couple days later when the leaves of my garden plants started bleaching and turning papery. 

I thought it was my own neglect until I saw the honeysuckle on the other side of the driveway had also been sprayed.

Some of my plants, the kale and basil, will die. Some, like the strawberries, I don’t feel comfortable eating anymore since I don’t know what they were sprayed with. 

The kicker is that, while pretty much my entire garden got sprayed, in areas where it is just the groundcover and honeysuckle, only the honeysuckle got sprayed. And I was really looking forward to eating those strawberries. 

It’s not like they were great strawberries. They were little and tart, but they were mine. I tended to them and watched them grow and they were perfect over vanilla ice cream. I still can, but they will be tainted with glyphosate or whatever chemical they used. 

There has to be some way I can get back at them without raising too much suspicion. I do like this apartment and don’t want to have to move. But Ella is out of town, which means I have a little more leeway in how I exercise my powers. 

It’s one of the first rules of fairy tales: Don’t mess with a witch’s garden. 

-Erica

The Second Harvest: At Least Someone’s Eating

Ella, Free

Erica’s reaction to her meager first harvest was commendable. I had hoped her second harvest would be even more bountiful to buoy her spirits, but that hasn’t been the case. There are many reasons for this, some environmental and some personal

On the environmental side, the light there isn’t great. It’s partially blocked by her neighbors garage, her own building, and the trash cans. There’s also the fact that squirrels and opossums have found the garden and have fewer compunctions about eating unripe fruit. We’ve also had a drought earlier this summer which certainly hampered growth. 

Erica and I aren’t completely without responsibility either, though. She’s had a lot going on lately. Between work, her health, and just living her life, she’s had a lot to deal with. Standing outside for 20 minutes on a 90 degree night and watering her garden. She also was a little overzealous in her planting and now the garden is difficult to move around in and some plants are crowding each other out. 

She seems okay with it, though. Despite a relatively high start up cost compared to her other projects. Some of it is just a learning experience, certain things just don’t grow well in her yard, maybe a bush tomato would be better next year, fresh kale is great, but it’s hard to keep the caterpillars off it. Plus, the strawberries are in the ground now. They’ll be there forever no matter what she does. 

It can be hard to see a new project fall into neglect, especially one you were so excited about. But sometimes that’s necessary in order to attend to more important needs. Erica dreams of growing her own food. She’s at least trying a little. But she also doesn’t have adequate time or ideal space. She also needs to take care of her mind and body first.

I also haven’t been as helpful as I could have been. I’ve been more focused on helping Erica with things like cleaning and meal prep than gardening. She’s in a good place with all that now. And Jane is helping her. So now it’s my turn to tend to something I’ve been neglecting. 

-Ella

Strawberries in a bowl

The First Harvest: An Exercise in Reframing

Ella, Free

Another post that I meant to publish a lot sooner when it would have been much more relevant.

Planting a garden often leads to visions of abundance and self-sufficiency. For every container of strawberries Erica buys at the grocery store while her own very small strawberries are ripening, I know she envisions herself filling one of these containers with her own strawberries. 

This is almost never the case with a garden of that size. There’s not enough sun, the soil is not fertile, no matter how much she does to improve it, and the space allotted to her is fairly small. In her head, she knows this, but that does not stop the dreams of harvests abundant enough to put a dent in her grocery bills. 

Nevertheless, Erica was delighted by her first harvest of eight tiny strawberries. I had braced myself for the disappointed meltdown. It is so easy, when everything else is letting you down, to prop all your hopes and dreams on one aspect of your life. But instead, Erica found the joy in her eight little strawberries that together probably weigh as much as one grocery store strawberry. Instead of trying to replace her groceries with her garden food, she chose to see these little ones as a bonus. An extra treat in her day that made her look forward to coming home from work every night.

-Ella

dead plants :(

In Memoriam: The Plants We Lost Along the Way

Ella, Free

It is that time of year to remember those that were lost in the creation of the garden. Starting from seeds always carries the risk of great losses, many through no fault of the seeds themselves. 

After her middling success at gardening last year, Erica decided to expand her garden this year. She wanted to start plants from seeds to help defer the cost of expansion. This was a great idea. Seeds are cheap and starting them early helped her through the home stretch of late-winter depression. 

The problem with using the tiny sprouts to help with her depression was twofold. Sprouts need consistent attention and when she was too depressed, she tended to forget them and when she started to emerge from her depression and be more active, she also tended to forget. The hardiest of plants survived this and made it out into the garden. For now, we must take a moment to remember those that did not. 

Rainbow Carrots: She was so excited to have rainbow carrots this year. Erica is always looking to add variety to her diet, but rainbow carrots aren’t always available at her grocery store. These plucky seeds were some of the first to sprout, but unfortunately after thinning they were moved to the birdcage in the living room where they were forgotten 

Swiss Chard: they were the very first seeds to sprout, and she was so looking forward to adding these to her greens rotation. Sadly, they also ended up in the birdcage, etiolated, then forgotten. The ones that did make it outside weren’t able to withstand the shock and the early spring rain.

Chamomile: these tiny seeds were planted last and sprouted almost immediately. So many sprouted. but almost none made it to thinning. Erica was just too busy with the plants that had already made it outside that they dried out in their little egg carton.

Luckily, Erica is not deterred. It’s still early in the season and she has started new chamomile and rainbow carrot seeds outside. Hopefully since they are in the same location as the rest of the plants, they stand a better chance of survival. Here’s hoping those early losses were not in vain.

-Ella

This isn't a picture of the garden, it's just a picture that I have.

Hindsight is 20/20: Gardening Tips that aren’t useful anymore

Ella, Free

Last year, Erica started a garden by the driveway at her apartment. It was small and she didn’t end up getting a ton of food from it. Her most plentiful harvested were cherry tomatoes and herbs. Her potatoes and garlic turned out small. Her raspberry bush, blueberry bush, and strawberry plants didn’t provide any fruit at all. Still, she seemed to enjoy the experience. 

This year, I wanted to help her make her garden more prosperous. I had her institute a few simple changes to help offset the costs and hopefully lead to a more prosperous garden. 

  1. Planning ahead: at the end of last year, Erica took all her strawberries out of their containers, planted them in the ground, and covered them with leaf litter. They survived the winter along with some garlic bulbs from last year!
  2. Lessons learned: last year, Erica planted root vegetables in the ground and everything else in containers. Harvesting her root veggies from the clay soil was extremely taxing. This year she will do the opposite 
  3. Starting with seeds: this takes the most work, but hopefully will pay off. By starting with seeds, Erica can grow a wider variety of veggies, especially greens. 
  4. Choosing new plants: Erica thought a lot about what kinds of vegetables and herbs she actually wants to eat/use. New additions are coneflower and chamomile for homemade herbal tea.

Hopefully these changes will help Erica’s garden thrive this year. As always, I will be here to help her out whenever it gets to be too much for her.

-Ella

Oat Milk is Surprisingly Simple and Cheap

Ella, Free

It took some time for me to jump on this bandwagon. For most of my life, there wasn’t an efficient way to make milk from grains or nuts. It took Erica’s consistent use of small amounts of dairy and the current insane prices for me to try it out. 

I must say, making oat milk is surprisingly easy and extremely cheap. I highly recommend it for those who like just a little milk in their coffee, tea, or hot cocoa, but don’t consume much milk otherwise. Erica would always buy the smallest amount of milk she could, and even that might go bad before she used it all. 

Now that milk is so much more expensive, I looked into making oat milk. It worked out perfectly since she had an old drum of oatmeal in her kitchen. 

I used this recipe from Love and Lemons. It was quick, cheap, and did the trick.

The reviews are in and Erica says there is a little bit of an oat aftertaste in her tea, but she likes it. And better yet she likes that it’s so cheap! One note she had was that, when making hot cocoa, it tends to thicken up like pudding if you leave it on the heat too long. Other than that, I consider us both converts!

-Ella