Surprise Garden

Well, spring is here and this past weekend brought 80 degree weather to SE Washington! 

It also lured me into my garden. 

Look what was there to greet me:

Last year's Parsley wintered over!

 Along with the chives and a few perennials.

There were also many, many bugs. Some were unwanted, like the aphids and wasps. 

Ugh!
While the tulips are certainly bright and sunny,
the aphid infestation makes me want to gag and leaves my skin crawling!
They were all over my roses too. Pruning was a nightmare. 

The ladybugs have been ordered and should arrive this week. 

(Lady bugs will be a first for me, wish me luck)

 Some bugs are VERY wanted. 

Can you see the Praying Mantis egg on the fence? 

I get one every year, and it is always fun to discover each year's nest.  

This year, it didn't take too long to put in the garden. I'm trying to go a bit more low-maintenance (i.e.: cheaper!) by using more perennials. More up front cost, but lasting results. So I dug up bulbs last fall, added a few additional ones to my collection this spring, and put them all in the ground. Along with moving a few herb shrubs and planting a few veggie seeds the garden is already in good shape. I even have salad greens sprouting! Mmm, mmm, good.

I do have a few more things to get, but I am thrilled with how easy it was to get the garden set this year. Still to come: I'm going to try ordering a Bay Leaf tree and try it in my garden (anyone have any suggestions on how to help it winter over?). I'll be picking up some chamomile and echinacea for some planters and I'm still debating a tomato plant this year. The growing tomatoes for canning didn't go as I expected last year, but the idea of fresh summer salsa is sure appealing (any suggestions on varieties?).

Oh, and BIG bonus share. I found a cheap, eco-friendly weed killer! In the past I have just gone the old fashioned route and pulled them out by hand...but with my sensitive skin and grass allergies, this has always been a challenge for me (I'm talking rash-city--yukka!). I recently read that plain ol' white vinegar will safely kill the weeds. I tried it out this weekend and am quite pleased with the results. The weeds are drying up. However, I do have some "burn" marks in my lawn, apparently the vinegar will kill all plant life. But hey, grass comes back with a vengeance this time of year!

Any surprises in your garden?

Revisiting Soap

This liquid soap has a better consistency!

A while back I posted about an attempt to "make" soap. It worked well enough. However, the soap was very thin and watery.

So I thought I'd give it another go with a different recipe.

This time I tried to reformulate bar soap into liquid soap from two body bars. I love Burt's Bees. It is a relatively "safe" product (more on this to come...I am still researching...) and smelled fantastic!

Ingredients: 2 bars of soap, 2 T vegetable glycerine, 1 gallon water
Tools: cheese grater and large cooking pot.

I bought cheap tools to designate for soap making as I didn't want to mess with my good cooking tools. Unfortunately, I did run into some trouble with my cheap stock pot...it leaked!!!

I grated the two bars of soap into the pot:

 Then added 2 T glycerin and 1 gallon of water:

I set the pot on the stove and turned the temp to medium and left it be until all the soap dissolved. It took about 20 minutes. After that, I removed it from the heat, put a lid on it and left it be until the next day (it's when I had time again....they say it's good to go after 10-12 hours, but I had no trouble 24 hours later).

My pot leaked at the handle fasteners. I put a plastic dish pan underneath and it was no big deal.
That's what cheap kitchenware gets you. Oh well.

 On first appearance, the now liquid soap looked rather solid and I was worried I was going to have to remelt and thin the concoction. My husband suggested that it didn't look that solid and why don't I just try mixing it up? So I stuck my hands in and did just that. Worked like a charm. It was the perfect consistency and I just funneled it into my hand soap containers.

By the way, I am keeping one of these hand soap containers in my shower as body wash. It's more that I'm using body wash as hand soap, instead of the other way around (for those of you who are concerned about those kinds of things).

"Homemade" liquid hand soap!

Remember that milk gallon from the top of the post?...that's my storage container. The two body soap bars yielded 1 gallon of liquid body soap!

PS...I think I used this recipe...but I've been perusing soap recipes so long I'm not sure anymore. They're all really similar.