Photos and stories of an ordinary life.
Happy Friday, y’all! What are you up to this weekend? We’re going to the Detroit Jazz Festival, and I am so excited because it’s going to be our first time attending the festival!
We’ve lived here for over a decade, and I can’t believe I’ve never been to the Jazz Festival. I’m a BIG jazz lover, so I’m looking forward to hearing live jazz music and taking photographs of our experience.
Here are four fun things for your Friday…
We have an unexpected visitor living in our patio garden—a Robin chick! 🐣
Apparently, the baby Robin landed on our herb shelf after a storm knocked it’s nest out of the tree onto our patio. 🥺
Every morning, I open the curtains to my patio door, and I scan the back garden to make sure all is well with the plants and no critters (i.e. pesky squirrels) got into the grow bags.
The squirrels love to tear up my marigolds sometimes. 😏 Just the other day, a squirrel dug into one of my strawberry bags and pulled out the entire plant. 🍓😭
As I was looking over the patio garden, I noticed on the herb shelf a little head peeking out of my petunia flower pot.
“Well, you weren’t there last night!” I said aloud to the baby bird through the screen door. 🐣☺️
That’s when I noticed the nest tipped over on its side on the shelf, and I immediately understood what had happened.
What I didn’t know, though, was how the chick got into the flower pot. Did it by chance literally fall into the pot, or did the mama bird gently move it to the flower pot?
My next question was, does the mama bird know the chick is here? Did she abandon it?
So, I stood back from the patio door and waited patiently to see if a Robin would show up. Within about 20 minutes, the mama bird swooped into the garden and landed onto the petunia flower pot.
Excitedly, the chick perked up and started chirping. It stretched it’s neck up and opened it’s beak wide.
Mama bird plopped a wiggly worm into the chick’s beak, and then flew off.
Whew! Well, that’s a relief, I thought to myself.
I really didn’t want to become an adopted bird mom 😅🐣, but I would have definitely figured something out if the chick needed help.
We did check the ground to see if there were any other chicks. Unfortunately, there was a second baby bird, and it didn’t survive the fall. 😥
So, now we have a baby Robin living in my petunia flower pot on the herb shelf! Hopefully, the bird does okay in the pot. 🐣
💜 XO
One of the things I love about growing food in a small space is I can walk out onto my front porch and harvest foods we need for the next meal.
This morning, we harvested from our front garden a green bell pepper (first one of the season!), two jalapeños, a banana pepper, and black seeded simpson lettuce.
And from our back patio garden we harvested romaine lettuce, cilantro, oregano, and sage.
It wasn’t a big harvest, but it was the perfect amount we needed to make tacos for dinner! 😊
It makes me happy to grow a simple kitchen garden. At first, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference because we don’t have a regular sized yard.
But this gardening season has taught me it doesn’t matter if you have acres of land, a big back yard, or just a small patio, you can grow something!
If you have a small space, you can focus on growing kitchen ingredients like peppers, lettuce, herbs, and carrots for home cooking. You can even grow these plants on your front porch (like I do)!
Every little bit helps, and it will bring you so much joy! 😊
💜 XO
📸 feature image taken by Zaya 🥹
I discovered cabbage caterpillars in two of my broccoli grow bags. 🐛😫
I can only blame myself because I literally saw those white butterflies flying around my brassica plants, and I didn’t even bother to cover the plants with protective netting until a couple of weeks later. 🤦🏽♀️🙃
Lesson learned! Cover the plants right after you plant them!
The caterpillars ate up the broccoli leaves good, too! Wow!
So, I put on my gardening gloves and handpicked all of the caterpillars out of the grow bags
It was hard to find some of the cabbage caterpillars because their green bodies blended in with the broccoli leaves.
I think my broccoli plants can be salvaged. I immediately covered the plants with tulle for protection.
I used the kids’ construction straws to make hoops for the taller plants. Hey, sometimes you just gotta use what you have on hand! Lol 😅
Saved me about $15 so I didn’t have to buy a box of garden hoops on Amazon. 🙌🏾
Thankfully, only five out of the twelve broccoli plants we have in the garden were affected by these ravenous cabbage caterpillars.
💜 XO
I never thought I’d be so happy to see a bumblebee buzzing beside me, but I suppose that’s where I’m at now in my gardening journey! 🐝😆
About a week ago, it occurred to me I hadn’t seen any bees in the garden, even though I have plenty of pollinator flowers.
This morning, I was again thinking about the bees because I have a lot of flowers on the cucumbers now.
I started worrying what if the fruit and veggie plants don’t get pollinated (I know we can manually do this, but I’ve been waiting for nature to take its course 😉).
And then later this evening, Zaya (5) came running through the front door into the kitchen.
She excitedly yelled, “Mommy! Mommy! I saw a bumblebee! There’s a bumblebee on a white flower in the garden!”
So, everyone rushed out to the garden, and the six of us (me, Travis + 4 children) huddled together to watch this little, fuzzy bumblebee wiggle its tiny behind from flower to flower. 🐝😄
💜 XO
American traditional tattoos—I love the classic, vintage imagery and bold colors and lines.
Our cucumbers have flowers now! 😍🥒🌼 I noticed the bright, yellow flowers this past Saturday.
Travis and I were geeking out about it. Lol! 😂This is the first time we have grown cucumbers, so we are very excited!
We’re growing eight pickle cucumber plants. I plan on making dill pickles with our cucumber harvest, so I’m also growing dill in the same grow bags.
The cucumber plants are also showing signs they’re ready to start climbing. Thin tendrils have emerged and started curling around the trellis. 🥹🌿
I think it’s just amazing how the plants know to reach out and wrap itself around nearby objects. They’re like little hands searching for something to embrace. 😄😍
Over the weekend, Travis installed a simple homemade trellis behind the cucumbers. He just used nails and twine. Super easy!
We also ended up transplanting a few of the plants into separate grow bags so they don’t crowd each other and have enough root space to grow.
I can’t wait to see the cucumbers start growing! Shouldn’t be too much longer now. 😊🥒🌼
💜 XO
P.S.—here’s my midsummer seed order and a few new blooms in the garden.
A quiet day at home with waffles, Little House on the Prairie, and junk journaling.
The day started with a cozy brunch at home. I’ve mentioned before on Fridays we have Pizza Friday.
I always order my pizza from a local Italian market. They always use fresh ingredients and cook the pizza using a wood-burning oven. It’s the best fresh pizza I’ve ever had! 😋
You get an 11″ pizza with unlimited toppings for just $12! Great deal! I always order the meat lovers pizza with artichoke as an extra topping.
For brunch on the weekends, I like to have my favorite tea with a slice of my leftover pizza with a fried egg and honey drizzle on top. I put on my jazz playlist and just enjoy the vibes.
Last Saturday, I introduced my pizza brunch recreation to Travis and he was amazed at how delicious the leftover pizza tasted with fried egg.
“Yo! This is REALLY good!” he exclaimed. “How did you come up with this?” 😲🍕
We did a little work in the garden. I planted another sugar baby watermelon start, and Zaya (5) wanted to plant a cosmos flower seed in her little baby pot. 🥹🌸
This makes two sugar baby watermelon starts we are growing in the garden.
Zhen (13) chose the mini watermelon to grow because she LOVES watermelon. 🍉
I’m a little nervous about having enough space for the watermelon to vine, but I’ve been researching ways to grow vertically, so I think we can make it work! 🤞🏾😁
And while I was tending to the patio garden, my little toad friend was hopping behind me. 😄🐸 It’s so cute because I often see this toad pop out when I am working in the garden.
It seems he was on his way to the garden section of our peppers and tomatoes. Lol 😅 That was perfect because some bugs have been hanging around the plants. 🪲
Later in the afternoon, we went to the Saturday vigil Mass.
Since Travis works six days a week, we have found going to Saturday Mass is a little easier on him. That way he can sleep in and fully rest on Sundays.
After Mass, we stopped by H-Mart to get lo mein noodles and a few other ingredients. I had a craving for homemade chicken lo mein and I wanted to cook it for dinner.
The kids LOVE H-Mart! 😍 Every time we go, they always want to get ramyun and snacks. This time, they found K-Pop Demon Hunters snacks, so of course, we had to get it! 😂🫶🏾
I love H-Mart because they sell so many varieties of noodles, rice, kimchi, and other unique foods that you can’t find at American supermarkets.
The kids wanted to check out the toy section (obviously lol), and they wanted us to buy something.
I told them to save up their allowance money so we can come back and they can buy the toy they really want to get. 🤓💡
Before leaving H-Mart, we played a game of Toy House—the claw machine game.
We didn’t win anything (does anyone ever win these games? 😏 lol), but it was still fun trying. 😊
💜 XO
Photos of the children enjoying a morning of “front porch sitting.”
I went to the library to drop off my returns, and I discovered they offer a seed catalog! 😲🥳
So naturally, I grabbed a few seed packets to add to my midsummer seed order. 😆🌿
The seed packets I chose were Chinese giant sweet pepper, okra, cilantro, and parsley.
I know it might be a little too late to start the Chinese giant sweet peppers, but I’m going to try planting a couple of seeds.
The other day, I accidentally spilled some of my cilantro seeds, so that’s why I grabbed another pack.
I went ahead and planted the pepper and okra seeds in seed trays. Then, I added some cilantro and parsley seeds to the herb pots I currently have growing.
Just making the most of this growing season! 😁🌿
💜 XO
My midsummer seed order has arrived, and I am excited! I took advantage of MIGardener’s 20% off sale because the deals were really good. I was impressed with how quickly I received my order, too! 😁🌿
I love watching their YouTube channel. I have learned so much about gardening and growing food within a year’s time all thanks to Luke, owner of MIGardener!
Parisian carrots, purple carrots, midori soybeans, painted pony beans, flor de mayo beans, light red kidney beans, midnight black turtle beans, Charleston Wakefield cabbage, gold rush wax bush beans, sugar beets, peach melba nasturium, and Tom Thumb dwarf pea.
This time I focused on foods we can grow in our grow bags and get started end of June.
We also wanted to try crops we haven’t grown before such as sugar beets, painted pony bush beans, and midori bush soybeans.
Last year, when I did a late summer seed order, I bought fall crops such as lettuce, green onions, spinach, carrots, bok choy, and collard greens.
The problem with that was I planted the seeds too late in the growing season, so we didn’t have a fall harvest. 😕
It was a learning experience for me, though, so I wasn’t mad about it. It taught me how and when to plant seeds for a fall harvest.
And I still have a bunch of seeds from last year’s order, so I am ready to plant our fall crops on time this year! 😁
💜 XO
P.S.—here are our new garden blooms so far and the new herb shelves Travis built for me. 😊
Despite being broken, the sunflowers still served a great purpose. 🌻😊
Every summer, we get quite a few toads in our garden beds.
In the middle of summer, if you go on a night walk in my neighborhood, you can find a bunch of toads hopping about the sidewalks and in the grass.
You actually have to watch where you step sometimes because you could accidentally step on a toad! 🐸
I always love it when I find toads in the garden because they help keep some of the pests away.
So far, I’ve counted five toads living in our garden—three in the front garden and two in the back patio garden.
Sometimes I will find a toad hiding near one of my fairy houses with its body halfway snug in a little mound of dirt.
We keep a five-gallon bucket in the garden to collect rainwater. I like to water the garden with the stored rainwater, especially on really hot days.
It’s not much, but at least it’s a little something for the plants when it’s time to water them again.
Mj (24) found one of the toads swimming in our rainwater bucket.
It was such a funny surprise. At first, we thought the toad was in distress, but he was perfectly fine. 🐸😆
Although I do think maybe it was hard for the toad to hop out since the bucket was a little deep for him.
But then again, I don’t know if toads can jump that high. 🤷🏽♀️
I gently scooped the toad out of the rain bucket and safely placed him back in the garden.
So, Zaya (5) had an idea to make the toads a toad pool in the garden.
We repurposed a small, clear storage box, and Zaya collected rocks, sticks, and leaves to put in the box. Then, she filled it up with a little water.
We haven’t seen any toads chilling in the toad pool yet 😂, but I did see a couple of Sparrows take some sips of water from the box. 🐦
I like to imagine maybe at night when we’re sleeping, a toad hops in the pool for a quick dip. 🐸😄
Next week, we’re supposed to have excessive heat in the high 90s. 🥵 Perhaps Zaya’s little toad pool can be helpful for our garden toads…and the birds.
💜 XO
