Jumble

This photo really illustrates my thoughts right now. I have so many things I want to be doing, and such limited time. For example, I've been thinking about how to conserve money. I don't really think I'm extravagant, but there have to be ways to cut back. In many ways I have always been one of those reuse, repurpose, do without people which is good for the environment. Because I believe we are to be good stewards of the environment.

Most of my family was of the reuse, repurpose, make do or do without philosophy. My grandmother saved tin foil and washed out ziploc bags to reuse. And she had this wonderful muffin recipe that used mayonnaise because it already had eggs and oil in it, but can I recall it now? No. And there was some batter mix that you made up and put into the buttered/floured pan and then poured in canned fruit. Again, can't quite remember the particulars. And my granddad saved everything for it's potential future use. Our storage house was so fun to poke around in.

And we had a compost pile. And it had worms. Yep, folks way back there in the 70's we were doing all the things that are currently experiencing a revival on the "internets". The upside of composting with worms? Great source of fish bait. This I know from countless trips to our fishing pond.

Then there's the photography. There's learning to take better pictures, which is to say have the result be what I saw in my head. Then there's Photoshop and Lightroom, and all the myriad things to learn there.

Laundry. There's a place to save money. I stumbled onto sites that explained how to make your own laundry soap that is also environmentally friendly. SCORE. I purchased a book that explained how with lemon juice, distilled vinegar, olive oil, baking soda, water and little else, one can keep their house clean and put fewer toxins into your personal environment and our larger environment. My grandmother always made a paste of lemon juice and salt to remove rust stains, swore that you could whiten your linens by drying them in the sun on the lawn, and stripped furniture with a mixture of 1 part lime and 4 parts baking powder and water to make a paste (if you want to use this, look it up, we've already covered I can't recall all the recipes).

And I must be pretty suggestible, because this person talking about making her own laundry detergent was going to go thrift store shopping to select glass and enamel containers and buckets to use to avoid plastic containers. Again, sound thinking, from the reuse, repurpose, etc. school of thought. Anyway, I went to Scott's today looking for just those things.

Oooh, and I almost forgot. I have the itch to sew. And I want to progress with my knitting. And then there's crochet.

And I'm going to take out some flowers and add some vegetables and herbs in my front yard - the only part of the yard that consistently gets sunlight.

And, I want to go to the Atlanta farmer's market to shop AND to photograph.

Of course, Monday through Friday, there's work.

So you can see that if those beautiful coral flowers represent all the notions I have going on in my head and the vines and leaves are the tenuous connections between all those things, that's how this photo is an illustration of my thoughts these days.

I think these are native azaleas. I'm hoping my friend Candi can tell me. When the blossoms first appear, there are no leaves. There's just the pop of color and the bronze of the limb. Then as time moves along, leaves appear and fill in the gaps and the flowers aren't so distinct. But in the beginning they are really something.

I'll let you know how the laundry detergent thing goes. I'm most excited about the dishwasher detergent. It's so easy I'm going to have to do it to believe it.

Have a great week.