Saving Impatiens Seeds: The Importance of Delayed Rewards

Do you know what this is? It doesn't look all that exciting, right? To us, this is excitement of the highest order--a tiny sprout from one of last-year's impatiens seeds: Last year, for the first time, we tried harvesting seeds and saving them to plant the next year. There's nothing monumental about this, obviously, except to us. We're attempting various other kinds of seed-saving this year, but we started with impatiens because they are so easy and satisfying to harvest. I highly suggest trying this with kids if you haven't already.

At some point in the late summer (or maybe early fall? I forgot) the plants have these twisty, shiny green seed pods. You can carefully remove them and "pop" them into a jar. They're really, really satisfying to pop open, kind of like one of those super-artificial tubes of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls you find in the refrigerator section at the grocery store. They pop very easily, so you have to be careful not to hold them too tightly before you get them home or indoors. Then you can just save them in a dry place until the next year.

I obviously planted our seeds far too late, but we have a few tiny seedlings now, so we just have to see if they will flower.

I love activities like this for their slow, long-term investment. We're so used to having and doing everything immediately, and it's nice to have activities that simply can't be done that way. You harvest the seeds, and they sit. And wait. And you wait. And maybe you even forget about them, but then many, many months later, you can plant them. And even then, you have to wait weeks to see if they sprout.

There is so much our children can learn not only from seeing us dedicate ourselves to activities with delayed rewards, but also to participating in them themselves. My little chickies are a bit young to fully grasp this, and they will be for a while, but I still firmly believe they benefit from a life in which not everything comes quickly and easily.

Preschool Paleontology

Ninna is a paleontologist this week, or so she will tell you. We received a bag of hand-me-downs last week, and one of the items was an unopened "dinosaur egg." It's made of pretend dirt (gray plaster), and it comes with a double-ended pick and a brush. You use the pick to dig for dinosaur bones, and the brush to clean them. There are about 8-10 dinosaur bone pieces inside, and when you've found them all, you assemble the complete skeleton.

Well. This was apparently MADE for my daughter. She has worked very hard and very seriously at this paleontology project for days now. She sits down and intently picks away (making a HUGE plaster dust mess, I might add), looking for dinosaur bones. Because I can never leave well enough alone and have to turn everything into a theme, I added in a book and a song to this activity.

Since day one of the dig, we've been listening to They Might Be Giants' "I am a Paleontologist" many, many times. If you've never heard their kids'/science songs, RUN to YouTube immediately. They are so, so amazing. And each one has a well-made cartoon video. One of the few things that Ninna does watch on a screen is some of their videos every so often. She loves science topics, and the music and videos are really high quality (and entertaining enough for mamas, too, unlike a lot of what is termed "kids' music.")

So while she is picking away, Ninna is tickled pink to be listening to them sing "I love digging in the dirt, with just a pick and brush."

For the book part of this theme, we have The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs. We have a couple of the Magic Schoolbus books, and Ninna loves them (actually, she is obsessed with one of them, but that's another theme in itself.) I don't usually read all the "asides" in these books (if you've seen one, you know what I'm talking about) because a lot of them aren't age-appropriate and frankly, they're kind of annoying to read, but the adventure part is always fun. The first time I read this, I was appalled when I turned the page and saw one dinosaur eating another bloody dinosaur, but Ninna didn't mind at all--though she does say that the book has "a sad part."

I can't express how deeply this has engaged her. If you have a preschooler and you ever see one of those eggs, buy it! Ninna walks around saying things like "when we go to the playgroup, do you think they're going to know I'm a paleontologist?"

I'm happy that while she's deeply engaged in a scientific activity, I can still see a little girl's imagination filtering the experience.

Self Portrait Saturday #5, May 29nd, 2010

I'm impressed with the fact that I've posted these for five uninterrupted weeks. I'm less impressed with the fact that not only do my self-portraits end up blurry half the time, but they're also almost identical in pose. Booooring. So my next goal is to start creating some more fun and interesting self portraits.

In the meantime, here's this week's shot of the three ladies relaxing on the couch before the chickies leave for their dad's:

The Happenings around our Urban Homestead this Week

Haaaahahahahaha! OK, it's not even remotely an urban homestead, but it is a home, and it is urban. Being a single mom of a toddler and preschooler, I don't have as much time as I would like to turn us into urban homesteaders, but we'll take it one step at a time. The "official" frost danger period for Montreal has passed, and I'm frantically transplanting our seedlings during my little open windows of time. I'm ready to get them off the kitchen counter and move on to bigger and better things, so to speak.

Remember the beans we grew in jars? Here they are now, enjoying their new life after I almost killed them by allowing them to become too root-bound:
I'm really hoping these Jack Be Little pumpkin seedlings will produce something:
Here's one of our tomato seedlings in a homemade topsy-turvy planter, hanging from our fire escape. I'd love to hang several more, but I need more milk bottles:
One of the Sigg water bottles already has a sprout:
My essential tools--the baby monitor and the obligatory cup of (iced, today) coffee:
I've got so much planted, but so much work ahead of me. I'm hoping to have everything transplanted (or planted, in the case of new seeds like lettuce) within the next day or two. I'm so excited for late summer when I can post photos of happy crops.

Painted Glass Jars, Part One

One of the 305 blog posts I have starred in my Google Reader is this post from Apartment Therapy. I'd been wanting to try it myself, so I decided to make something for Ninna from some of my favorite tomato jars (of which I have an obscene number.) We'll be storing something inside of these, which I'll reveal in my follow-up post showing what we did next. Instead of following their directions, I changed them to suit my needs. In order to replicate this, you would do the following:

1. Pour blobs of two (or more) different colors of paint in each jar. To make these coordinating, I chose pink and white, purple and white, and blue and white. I poured a couple of streams of each down the sides.

2. Replace the lid and shake, relatively vigorously, until they're fully coated. If you have a hard time getting a spot covered, pour in a little more paint.

3. Allow them to dry. This took a long time. Days, at least--maybe a week. I can't remember.

4. Pour in a large blob of Mod Podge. Replace the lid, and again, shake vigorously until the entire interior is coated. I added this step because I don't want the paint to get scratched when we fill the jars when we begin using them for their intended purpose.

5. Allow them to dry. Again, this took FOREVER. Maybe a week and a half. Every time I checked, the Mod Podge was still damp in the bottom, and finally, after what felt like twenty years to my impatient self, they were dry.

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. I have a minor obsession with saving glass jars, but I always seem to find something else to do with them just as the last speck of space on the jar shelf disappears.

Yay for repurposing!

How to Repurpose your Old BPA-Filled Sigg Water Bottle

After getting over my anger at the news last year that the liners in Sigg water bottles contained BPA, I was conflicted about what to do next. The company offered some kind of replacement program, but I wasn't sure I wanted ours replaced. Their dishonesty about something so central to their reputation was so disheartening to me that I found it difficult to trust them again. So instead of jumping through the necessary hoops to have ours replaced, I just got us different water bottles.

In the meantime, we've had the old ones sitting around on a shelf. I didn't want to throw them into a landfill, but I didn't want to drink out of them. I knew I'd eventually find a purpose for them, and inspiration struck early this spring when Ninna and I were planting the first seedlings: planters! We'd use them to plant a single flower as sort of our own little private eco-protest to Sigg's use of such dangerous materials.

Here's what we did:

1. Drilled two holes in the bottom of the bottle:

2. Filled with dirt and added a couple of seeds: 3. Watered and waited: We're still in the "waiting" stage as we just planted the seeds today. We actually planted two bottles, each with a different flower. I'm really hopeful that they'll grow and do OK in there. We seem to have somewhat green thumbs in this home, so at least one of them should work. Hopefully I'll be posting photos again later this summer with pretty blooms coming out the neck!

OOPS! Self Portrait Saturday #3, May 15, 2010 --A DAY LATE!

I can't believe I forgot to post a photo yesterday. I'm still calling this "Self Portrait Saturday" instead of changing it. Here we are as today presents us: tired mama, sick child, napping (and absent) toddler. It's not a great photo of us, but I'm doing this to preserve real-life moments--not staged portraits. And to make it a little less of a lame photo, I applied some totally amateur effects in a photo program. Happy Sunday!

The Kindness of Bloggers

One of the unexpected bonuses of my so-far five month journey of public blogging has been the other bloggers I've "met" online. Everyone has been so nice and helpful, be it with blogging advice, praise--you name it.

Still--despite the fact that all my interactions with other bloggers have been positive, I was surprised when Melissa, another mom-blogger, commented on my discussion for the One Small Change project with an extremely generous offer. I had written about how I wanted to stop using disposable sleeping diapers for my girls (and the cloth ones we had weren't cutting it for long periods of sleep) but felt conflicted about buying more cloth diapers when my youngest is already a toddler. Melissa said she could spare some diapers because she didn't need as many as she had for her daughter.

A couple of weeks later, a package arrived at our door containing a huge stack of Fuzzibunz and other pocket diapers, along with a huge stack of various types of liners (stuffers? not even sure what they're called). We were thrilled! I'm happy to say that I haven't bought Bojey a single disposable sleeping diaper since the last package ran out (literally the day the box arrived at our door.) Here are some of the darling diapers hanging on the line:And here's the darling Bojey wearing one of them:This is my first experience with pocket diapers, and I LOVE them. I've always used cotton prefolds with covers because I used a diaper service in California when I was teaching, and that's what they used. When we moved, I still had all my covers, so I just bought (and inherited) cotton prefolds. If I were to recommend diapers to a new mom, I now think I might recommend pocket diapers, or perhaps a combination of pockets and prefolds. They are so soft, and they keep Bojey so dry and comfy for sleeping. I have to admit that the cuteness factor comes into play as well...

So thank you, Melissa! Melissa blogs at Until Wednesday Calls, where she shares sewing projects, crafting, recipes, and more. She's also blogging from Canada, like me. Go over there and visit for some creative inspiration!

DIY: Changing Table Pad to Doll Bunk Beds

I'd had Bojey's old (but hardly used) changing pad sitting in the pile of stuff to sell on Craigslist, and the chicks kept driving me nuts by pulling it out and playing with it. One day, as Bojey was laying on it with her arms and legs dangling over the side, the inspiration hit me: it would, if cut in half, make the perfect doll bunk beds.

So I kept it sitting around, for a long, long, annoying time, and finally, over this past week for Ninna's birthday, I made it into doll bunk beds. I did NOT, in the interest of full disclosure, make the adorable quilts and pillows. The chicks' grandma made those for them last year. The final product does not look exactly like the vision I had in my head, but it's close enough to work. I never remember to take in-progress photos for a tutorial, but I can tell you what I did:

1. I sawed the changing pad in half with the little saw that I use for everything and which is good for almost nothing. If you've ever wondered what's inside one of those changing pads, I can tell you--it's a piece of cheap foam supported by a piece of cardboard. If you ever needed one in a custom size, you could totally make it yourself.

2. I went to Home Depot and bought a wooden dowel and had it cut into four equal pieces. I'm going to guess it's about a 1/2 inch in diameter, and if I were to do this over, I'd probably get it at least 3/4 of an inch in diameter to provide better support.

3. I painted the dowels with leftover yellow paint that I used to paint the rocking horse I got them for Christmas from Craigslist. My theory on paint is that I will use up what I have and buy another color when we run out. This means we're ending up with a lot of yellow things. I realize this is absurd and not how normal people do things, and since Ninna recently told me she doesn't like yellow, I hope it runs out soon...

4. I decided where the rods would go, and, with an exacto knife, cut four holes into the top of one mattress, and then I cut four holes into the bottom of the other. I then poked the exacto knife in and turned it to make the holes big enough.

5. I took some soft, fleecy fabric from my stash and glued it all over the "mattresses" with tacky glue. This was the most time consuming part because I glued each section separately and allowed it to dry before moving on. I had to do some special trimming around the corners that I can't really explain.

6. I snipped the fabric over the dowel holes on the bottom mattress with fabric scissors and squeezed a bunch of tacky glue in the holes. Then I inserted the dowels into the holes.

7. I squeezed a blob of tacky glue on the top of each of the four dowels that were now sticking up, and I inserted them into the bottom of the top bunk.

8. I let it dry and then showed it to the chicks.

The grand total for the project was $3.18--just the price of the wood dowel. Everything else I had on hand.

So far they seem to be enjoying it. It's pretty sturdy but, as I mentioned, would be sturdier with thicker dowels. For some reason Bojey has decided it is something to carry around the house. Every couple of hours I hear her say something like "Baby bed. Bathroom." And I walk over and see that she has dragged it in front of the toilet. If it withstands her insistence on using it as a wagon, I suspect it will see a lot of use!

**This post is linked to:

Self Portrait Saturday #2--May 8th, 2010

Here we are, camera resting on the radiator, a whole lot of mess in the background, chicks watching pigeons on the telephone wires, and me trying my best to keep Bojey still enough for the photo:

Thoughts On the Eve of my Four Year Old's Birthday

Tomorrow is Ninna's birthday. In eleven hours (fourteen, if we go by California time, where she was born), my sweet girl will be four.

I'm finding tonight to be one of the most bittersweet moments in my career as a mother so far. I dawdled putting her to bed for much longer than I should have because I wanted just a few more minutes of Ninna as a three year old. Four just seems so old! I really can't believe it.

As with many parenting episodes, I'm feeling conflicted about so many things. I'm so amazed at all that she can do by herself, and at the same time, with each new skill and each stroke of independence, there's a little sting when I realize she will never need me to do that thing again.

But then, of course, she does. She learns to do something herself, but her independence ebbs and flows as she enters new stages. Sometimes she still wants her mama to do something even when she knows how to do it. When I'm annoyed that she's calling me in to do something that I know she can do, I try to remember the times when I feel like this, and I remind myself that it all really does go by so quickly!

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

Indoor Gym

They did this for an hour yesterday. Nonstop. I watched to make sure no one was going to end up with a spine injury, but they were fine--not a single bump or bruise, and not a tear was shed. By the end, they were panting and sweating. And it was awesome.

Ninna on The Guerrilla Gardening Homepage!

Wow. I'm such a proud mama :). If you go to The Guerrilla Gardening Homepage and scroll down on the left where they've selected a few photos from International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day, there's one of our photos of Ninna labeled "Montreal, Canada."

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day

I know yesterday was May Day, but that really means nothing to me. I saw lots of bloggers doing really cool May Day craft projects with their kids, some of which we will definitely try here, but I just couldn't drum up excitement for the holiday when I had to read the Wikipedia article just to get the most basic sense of what it is.

On the other hand, I was very excited that yesterday was also International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. Guerrilla gardening, for the uninitiated, is essentially a practice in which you covertly plant flowers in ugly, untended-to urban spots that need beautification, usually in your own neighborhood. I first learned of it last year and was immediately smitten with the idea.

The chicks and I set off on Saturday morning for our project with all of the following:

**A package of sunflower seeds

**A very sharp trowel capable of digging into tough, well-packed-down soil

**A plastic bag full of compost from the backyard composter

**A couple of bottles of water

**The chicks' child-sized watering cans

We left and walked down the main street that intersects with our side street. This particular street is in need of some serious beautification, so we found several appropriate squares of dirt next to the sidewalk, all right around the corner from our home, and all within two blocks of each other. Ninna helped me scope out a patch of soil, and then we quickly got to work. The soil, having been unworked for ages, was tough. I dug and "tilled" a spot the best I could. Ninna then took handfuls of compost and threw them on, and we mixed it up a little. After she planted the seeds, I poured water into her watering can from the water bottle, and she got to work. We planted a total of three patches, and we evenly split the 25 seeds (well, almost evenly...) among them. We could have spread them out among more patches, but my thinking was that the chances of any of them growing aren't all that high, and we should increase that by planting more seeds per area.

In order to further increase their chances of survival, the chicks and I will return every other day or so for the next several weeks to water them, thin them if they do actually sprout, and take care of them until they're strong enough to survive on their own. If we have another frost, they're doomed, but I'm going to just hope that we don't.

Given that this was the first time I'd ever actually done guerrilla gardening, I was a little unsure of how it was going to play out. Honestly, I don't think a single person even batted an eye. I had envisioned strangers coming up and asking us what we were doing or why we were on the sidewalk digging, but no one said a word. The only person who even glanced at us was a crabby woman who glared at the chicks before we even started gardening. Perhaps the sunflowers will lift her spirits one day.

If you're interested in guerrilla gardening, head on over to this website. There's another campaign they're promoting right now called "pimp your pavement," which might be one of the cutest things I've ever heard.