I love Oregon

Oregon is just amazing to me.  Almost every day is a new experience that I am left in awe of.  How the weather changes so dramatically from day to day and just the pure beauty of the world around me.  The day before yesterday it was kinda cold and windy, yesterday is was muggy and a little damp.  Today it was warm but raining like cats and dogs for a good few hours while I was at work.  I love the rain.  It smells wonderful, the sound is always so soothing to me and it makes EVERYTHING GREEN!  Everywhere I have been here is so green and lush.  The grass, the plants, the trees.  And there are SO MANY trees, like everywhere!  When new housing goes up, it looks like they make an effort to keep as many old growth trees as they can in place and then replace the ones that they had to get rid of with new trees.  A few in every yard.  Not just one.  The city is filled with them, the roads are lined with them.  It is hard to put into words just how many of the beautiful things that there are.  For those people that have been living here their whole lives, I think they kind of take it for granted.  They don't recognize the beauty that surrounds them.  Coming from southern California, I can see it.  Where I used to live, everything was so dry and bland.  You see what people have PUT there, not what would naturally grow.  It is a desert and to me it just isn't very pretty.  Coming here, it just makes me feel happy in my heart.  Seeing all the lush, bountiful LIFE here.  It is absolutely amazing.  I don't think I will ever get tired of taking a drive and taking in all of the scenery, or even just stepping out of my house, breathing in a lungful of fresh Oregon air and looking at what surrounds me every day.  Like I said, it makes me happy.

On a depressing note, I don't think I am allowed to take time off of work to go back to California for Christmas to visit my family.... and I was really REALLY looking forward to seeing them.  I mean I just moved away from them.  I have never been away from my family for more that two weeks in my entire life.  And now here I am, living a thousand miles away from them for the past about three months and to find out that I can't go home to see them when everyone was planning on it and looking forward to it just as much as I was, is depressing.  And it sucks.....  I hope I can work something out.  I really want to see my family.

Tea and spinning!

I discovered this really cool tea company that let's you design your own tea. They offer you free samples of what you create so you can try it before you are stuck with something you might not like. I loved the idea and went ahead. I made a blend with rooibos tea, apple and plum. It was delicious! I also made one with oolong, mango and strawberry which was amazing. Seriously. When I opened these thongs up, even before brewing them they smelled SO good. The oolong smelled strongly of sweet ripe strawberries and the rooibos was just.... I have no words! Lol brewing them was an adventure because I wanted it NOW but I had to wait for the water to boil and the tea to steep. I checked on that water just about every five seconds which honestly didn't help and then waited anxiously for them to finish. The rooibos was just the perfect blend of fruits and they all hit you at once when you tasted it. Delicious medley of flavors. The oolong was a little more complicated. Like I said, when I opened that one, you got strawberry straight away. Once it was brewed, you tastes the slightly bitter flavor of the oolong along side the sweet mango. There isn't too much strawberry flavor until the last second of your sip when you get this sort if burst of strawberry sweetness! Very very good and I am so pleased with how they turned out that I went and bought a full order of each one. I highly suggest that you go visit this site for yourself to see what it is all about. Www.designatea.com

And then there is spinning. I have been drooling over getting a spinning wheel for well over a year. It is honestly killing me that I can't have one right this second.I just want to be able to sit down, relax and spin away, creating my own personal yarns to use on projects later. It just looks and sounds like the perfect past time. Alas, I do not yet have the funds to go after this new facet to my fibery obsessions. But one if these days I will. In the mean time, I think I will snag a pair of hand carders and get to practicing on blending fibers to see what I can create. Should be fun :)

Homesteading Update

Homesteading Update  August 6th 2010

So, it has been a week since I planted my little plants and they seem to be doing quite well. They look happy and healthy and like they are enjoying the spot on the porch that I gave them. I gave them a little more plant food because the bottle said to do so about every week to ten days. I planted them in pretty basic, cheap top soil which I was told things don’t grow well in, but like I said, they look very happy. They have gotten a bit bigger since I planted them and they look like they are filling into their pots. The goji berry plant is also filling out, though a little slower. No surprise there since it will take tears for it to reach it’s potential and start giving me fruit. Over all I am very pleased with how things are looking. I even bought a couple more plants. Some of those Buzzy Starter Kits. Curious how those will grow. It is some Cayenne peppers,bell peppers, regular tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

Topsy turvy and Alcohol

Topsy turvy and Alcohol  August 3rd 2010

So I finally got the strawberry topsy turvy planter that I have been eyeing for weeks. I would love to have a whole mess of strawberries and seeing as I am pretty much only allowed to have plants in containers, this was a good idea. It was the last one sitting on the shelf and I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else getting it and then not being able to find one again at such a good price. I am excited now to start growing one of my all time favorite fruits. I do realize that it is late in the year for strawberries but i might be able to do it anyways. Depends… Just going to have to do a little research.

Went to a local pub the other night which was something new for me. Never even had much to drink before either. I mean I had a margarita once and I have sipped a few things, but this was the first time I had a real drink. I told the barista that I liked jäger so she suggested a Red Headed Slut. I thought it was hilarious and it sounded good too. Jäger, cranberry juice and something else. Tasted good but I think it needed less of the fluff and more of the drink. Not because I wanted to get drunk or anything, just because I think it would have tasted better. MyDearest had two beers. Don’t remember what they were bit he did have me taste them. The second one, a local beer, was pretty tasty, if a little watery in texture. I like stuff thicker like juice, which jäger is. I was what I guess was buzzed after my drink. Had a kind of light headedness and my tummy felt a little swirly, but nothing else. It was actually kind of unpleasant and i don’t really see why people want to achieve that feeling so much. When we got home the rest of the family was drinking wine. It was a Chardonnay, which was different than what they had before. Their last wine was nit very good at all. This one however was decent so I had a small glass. Now I would think that that would end up increasing the “buzz” that I had, but it didn’t. By the time I had finished the glass, the feeling was almost gone and i felt almost normal. Very strange. I was always so against drinking, and still am for the most part, so this is all very new to me. On the other hand, I do want to try to make some wine or mead sometime in the future. Something to do with all of those extra strawberries that I will have laying around uneaten. Lol. I wanna make strawberry mint wine or mead. Just can’t fine a recipe for it. It is either one or the other, not both lol. I will also be growing a plum tree so plum wine or mead is on the roster too.

Hope my rambles weren’t too rambly. Night world!

It’s a Start!

It’s a Start! July 30th 2010

So today I walked over to Wilco and went through the garden section.  Took me FOREVER to decide what I wanted, but I finally settled on a few things.  I bought Sage, Spearmint, and a Goji berry plant as well as the supplies needed to make them grow.  All things that I can eat as well as looking nice.  I bought some seeds as well, California Peppers, Cucumbers, Spinich, and Carrots.  Eventually I will plant them, but at the moment, I’ve no where to place them. 

See my dream is to be somewhat self sufficient.  Growing my own vegetables and fruits, as well as raising a few livestock.  I am currently living at my boyfriend’s parents house, so I can not plant anything permanent here that they might not want.  Thus I have to put things in containers.  Which is why I don’t have room for much of anything yet.  I think all the seeds I just bought would do well in containers except perhaps the carrots.  Wouldn’t they need more space than a container could provide?

I’ve got a few books that are very helpful and informative for my goals.  I am excited about the possibilities, even if I always have to plant things in containers.  Growing my own food is something that I desperately want to do.  And this is my start!

A little About Me

Just moved up to Oregon from Southern California.  Moved up here for my boyfriend.  We met while working together at my first job.  He moved away about a month and a half later and we made it a long distance relationship for two years.  We had our rough times, but we made it and here I am!  We are currently living in his parents house and it is a bit of an adjustment for me, but I am managing.  I am Pagan, but as part of the rules of living here, not practicing.  I love to crochet and do embrodery, I am learning to spin my own yarn with a drop spindle, but my dream is to own a spinning wheel one day.  I aspire to be a stay at home mom taking care of her kids and her own personal farm.  I dont want to be completely off the grid, but I want to be fairly close.  Here are all of my babbles.

New Blog

So, I am starting a new blog here on Blogger.  I loved Tumblr, but I really wanted to get a little more traffic on my blog.  And get comments because I love comments so much.  I will actually copy over a few of my blog posts so that you can catch up with me, also so I dont have to rewrite it all.  If you do, however, want to make the extra effort because you are THAT interested in me, you can visit my Tumblr site.

autumnwitch.tumblr.com

Here goes nothing!