March Playlist

Hello again.

I hope everyone has been enjoying their spring breaks. I am thoroughly happy that spring is here because I really miss the greenery and of course the gardening that comes with it.

I am so sorry for never posting about our third garden, but I think I have a way to incorporate it with whatever we do this year. We have a little nursery in my nephew’s playroom. There is a dresser in there that has enough space to like five containers of various veggies to grow indoors, and my dad put a couple of his LED lights on top of them in the daytime, and they’ve been growing like weeds! It’s absolutely insane on the progress our green beans, lettuce and radishes have been making in the last few days.

Here are some of the early photos my mom took earlier in the month.

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I’m definitely looking forward to going outside and hang out with my cats for longer than five to ten minutes top, I’d like to get down and scoot out onto the deck again, I need to get as much exercise as possible–I’m not interested in getting my body into shape. It’s already a shape and I’m okay with it at the moment. All jokes aside, I enjoy being at the cats level. They seem to enjoy it a lot too. Some of them know if I am on the ground, they can get more pets, however, they have yet to figure out I also like to read while on the ground too, and there’s one that usually does not like to see my books. All of us (the cats and myself) are very spoiled but we can’t deny we don’t enjoy it though.

Besides all of the pretty things growing in our house, I’ve been listening to a lot of great music lately.

I have listened to quite a few albums this past month, and with promising results. I started with VÉRITÉ and her new release, “Love You Forever” and I loved this album so much. I absolutely love VÉRITÉ’s moody music, she reminds me of a poppier BANKS. The next album was Pop Evil’s “Skeletons” and that is a really good record. I enjoyed it a lot. And the final “new” releases, Ava McMahon, who was a member of Celtic Woman (I refer her as Eabha as that is her real name in Irish Gaelic) released a new EP called Scéalta this past week and she has a beautiful voice, and even though I don’t know the Gaelic language, it obviously doesn’t stop me from listening to her music.

For some odd reason I get into these spurts where I will focus all of my musical attention on a single artist or band and this month, I was hooked on Asking Alexandria. I was a late bloomer–honestly, I remember hearing about them in 2005-06 with Bring Me The Horizon but I was nowhere near ready for metalcore at that point in my life, so I stayed as far away as possible. And then all of a sudden, Danny left the band and I weirdly got into them with Denis as lead vocalist and I did like him but you can’t replace Danny’s voice though. Nowadays, the whole “metalcore” vibe they had in their days has disappeared, but I love this transformation into hard rock, and it fits with Danny’s voice now and honestly the music they’re creating now is much better, but of course that’s my opinion.

Before I leave you be for the rest of the day (or night), here is my Top 20 for March. If you’d like to check out the rest of the Spotify playlist, click here.

Black Out Days by Phantogram
Grand by Kane Brown
Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus
Evil by Hollywood Undead
Temporary by VÉRITÉ
Fukk Sleep by A$AP Rocky featuring FKA Twigs
Inside Out by The Chainsmokers featuring Charlee
Let Down by Palisandes
Feel The Waters by Sarah Reeves
Animals – Orchestral Version by Architects
Empire by Beth Crowley
Until the Levee by Joy Williams
Sound of Glory by Pop Evil
See What’s On The Inside by Asking Alexandria
1985 by Bowling For Soup
Already Damned by Crimson Adored featuring Lauren Babic
I’d Do Anything by Simple Plan
What Could Have Been by Sting featuring Ray Chen
I’m Dangerous by The EverLove
Lullaby of Woe by Ashley Serena

What were you listening to this March? Drop your top three favorite tracks in the comments below.

The Garden Tour | The Beginning

Hello!

I am finally ready to give you the story of our garden. I say “our” because even though I didn’t do the actual tilling, planting and pull vegetables off the stocks, I am still very much a part of the whole thing. I haven’t had much say on the entire thing, but I thought talking about it on here will bring me closer to each of the sections.

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Since we’ve been in this house and after getting our dog Rumer’s fenced yard earlier this year, my folks have been itching to make the front as pretty as possible. We’ve been in this house four years and my mom has had array of hanging flowers on the side deck and eventually the front entrance, but they took the landscaping up a notch once we started to experience spring weather. There were a few times in those early days where the majority of the plants had to go into my dad’s garage for a night or two, so they didn’t develop any frost on their leaves.

The very first thing my parents bought for the garden was a nod to me, as I had found them on Facebook one day and shared it to my mom and she seemed to like them as they arrived a week later. They are sunflower solar lights. They do not need any batteries nor water but just straight sun to shine bright over the space. Originally, they were going to be in the back deck where I love to spend time hanging out with the cats and reading one of my books, but then my mom wanted some as well. I tried to split them up evenly since it came with 8 sunflowers, but dad ended up scarping that idea as a whole and now we have the majority in the front yard and three are in the back yard.

The sunflowers are in great company to the real flowers along the fence. As you can see from this photo, we have the lights on the inside of the fence while we have a row of plants on the other side, this is actually an almond bush, it was a small section trimmed off the other bush at my nana and papaw’s house. My nana has a section up north and now we have one for our yard.

All of the plants are non-toxic to Rumer so if she does decide to tear into them, she shouldn’t get too sick by them. We’ve had the front part done for five months and she ignores them so that’s great! For the most part, all of our flowers and vegetables are non-toxic to both Rumer and the cats; the cats have hardly made a dent in our gardens. We’ve caught Grumpy, Midge, and Nelson asleep in the big garden in the backyard but they don’t really care about any of the new landscaping, which has really surprised us in the last month or so!

In the front, we have had array of various flowers line up along the fence like the tulips. My parents were really into the tulips, but they were the first to die once we got started with everything. We had orange, pink, and purple tulips and they were so beautiful, but they didn’t really flourish like we thought they would, but by the time we got them it was the end of March, and we were experiencing frosts in the mornings, but we were able to save the hostas and rose bushes they bought throughout March to late April. It was not a good idea to allow my dad to go to Wal-Mart or Menards because he would come home with more plants, especially rose bushes and peppers!

There is a ruse bush closest to the sunflower patch, I will talk more about them in my next post, which was looking really bad at the store and my dad felt kind of sorry for it like Charlie Brown does at the little real tree in Charlie Brown Christmas special. According to them, they left Menards and went around Wal-Mart, but he kept thinking about that sad bush and they literally went back to grab and take it home. Thankfully they did this because it’s been flourishing since the start of April. It is huge! I can see perfectly from the front door and it’s a nice reddish-pink color too! We’re all happy he was able to save it from its humble beginnings and see it evolve over time in the rich soil. If you are really curious, this rose bush is on the left side on the first collage.

While my dad worked mainly in the fence line, my mom focused her attention to the porch. She has had some type of flowers either hanging from the rails of the side deck or on the front steps. We love to make that space in the front somewhat decorated for all seasons!

And since we’ve had a proper porch, she seemed to step up her game with arranging even more flowers around every surface, and we’ve had petunias of various colors like pinks and purples, but she added a couple of different daisies this year, and one of which has become a sort of favorite for me as it has a yellow hue on the outside with a deep purple in the middle; none of us had ever seen this one before but I hope it’ll become a seasonal stable for us.

We also have two cubes at the bottom of the stairs, and there are a bunch of zinnias and another flower we haven’t had before, but they’re called purple waves and whenever I go up next to the screen door I can’t quite see them because of how dad and our family friend built the actual steps and small patio last year, but I’ve learned to live with it as long as they add pretty elements to this part of our home.

Unfortunately, a lot of flowers we planted in the spring are dead, but my parents really enjoy their flowers so as the weather turns, we grabbed others that would relish in the sunlight. The rose bushes are still going strong, but we did replace the tulips with yellow marigolds. The best way to describe what they look like are dandelions when they become bright yellow, but they have more petals, they look like those 80’s or 90’s toy balls with those silky-soft hairs. I hope you understand what I’m saying, because that’s all I have at the moment.

We have a group of marigolds next to the legendary rose bush and it wasn’t supposed to be, but I think of it as a nice nod to my great-great-great Aunt Mary and her husband Gen, short for General in fact! I’ve talked about them a few years ago, my nana and I found a file of letters and photos that were supposed to be put with Mary when she died, but they never were, and everybody has always talked about their love of roses. Apparently, Gen was obsessed with them, they had all kinds and bred different ones, and in one of the letters we found, his pet name for his wife was Marigold, which is so, so sweet! It does make me sad we weren’t able to give her back the file in the end, but it is a nice memory to have for newer generations.

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I’ve been reading the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder on Spotify, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about how they did back on the wild frontier, and even my mom has said things that would make Charles Ingalls very happy too! We had a storm back in early June that was semi violent and shook our tomato and cucumber plants to the point they were bent a little and she said, “I now understand what Pa Ingalls went through when it hailed and destroyed their field.” Thankfully, we didn’t lose anything, and they felt a lot better than while they watched the wind mess with the larger plants.

So, that’s all I can say about the front part of our house and when I come back with my second post, it will be about the side yard and I’ll be talking about how my folks decided to dig further on the eastern side of our property and tell you more about the process of our sunflowers, and if you know me well enough, you know how excited I am to chat about them. And if you’re wondering if they have names like my indoor plants, they do! I also share our first experience of canning the large cucumber harvests we’ve had lately! So, I really hope you have enjoyed reading this first section and continue learning about little homesteading journey.

What kind of landscaping have you done to your home? For those who live in apartments, what are some of your future ideas to create your own garden? What are your favorite flowers/plants?

July Playlist

Hello!

This month has been an odd one.

It had so much promise at first, but then the second week came in, and my body decided to throw us a curve ball and it’s been a slow but steady ride back to normal since then.

I was up late at night on the 10th, and I was busy doing some of stuff but I was very hot, I had sweat everywhere and I was sitting straight in front of my fan and I wasn’t feeling like it was making a difference to how my body was reacting, and then suddenly I started to feel really sickly, like I could throw up on my laptop and I knew something weird was going on, so I called for my mom and she realized some of the same things I had but when she took me to the bathroom, and we quickly found out I had some kind of stomach bug, and it ruled my body for four and a half days.

Originally, we couldn’t figure out how I could have gotten this because nobody has had this bug, my parents never came down with it either! The one thing we did agree with was my intake with store-bought brownies–I had a strong craving for anything to do with brownies!–and I had them throughout three days prior. I have had issues with brownies in the past but never this serve! So, we all made the decision to throw them out because nobody was going to eat them to test out our logic, and I was pretty sad about it, but I wasn’t going to continue eating them if this was going to be the end result everytime.

Last month, I was so happy to know I read for thirty days, and I had wanted to do the same thing with July but then this sickness came around and I ended up missing out on five days and I’ve been trying to get back on track with both Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and Shield-Maiden: Under the Dark Moon, the final books of their series, and a part of me was fine with going slow with them but I want to finish these stories just as much. I’m still reading the fourth book of the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I’m currently at a crossroads with it, so I hope I can get back into it soon!

I have started working on my Garden Tour posts. I began writing up the first daft at the very beginning of July, but then I have been sadly avoiding it these last few weeks, but I think I’ll be back to it once August rolls around. I would like to release the first part before the end of summer, but I don’t know yet.

Let’s get into the July playlist now. Here are my Top 20 songs and like always, if you want to check out the entire playlist, click here to be transported to the Spotify playlist.

Chocolate & Ice Cream by Plumb
Love On The Brain by Cold War Kids featuring Bishop Briggs
You’re The One I Want by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (Grease)
Run With Me by Watt White featuring Loch
In Another Life by Crown The Empire featuring Courtney LaPlante
My Head & My Heart by Ava Max
Don’t Pray For Me by Within Temptation
Snakes and Ladders by Power-Haus featuring Sohodolls (Tom Evans Remix)
Trap God by Hollywood Undead
Wild One by Malinda
Stay by Lauren Babic
Her Body Is Bible by Fletcher
Mr. Crow by Andrew Higgins
Yes Girl by Bea Miller
From Today by Coldtrain
Karma by Alicia Keys
All Star by Smash Mouth
Write On Me by Fifth Harmony
300 Violin Orchestra by Ender Guney
Heartbreaker by Pat Benater

I have one more thing to mention; while I was recovering, I allowed myself to watch more movies like my ultimate favorite Shrek and I finally got a chance to check out “Last Night In Soho” (2021) on HBOMax, it stars Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Davis, and Diana Rigg. It was an amazing film! I knew it would be somewhat suspenseful, but it went over my own assumptions, and I just loved it! The most recent was Into The Forest. It came out in 2015 and has Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood as the main characters. I thought this would equally by as interesting as far as being thriller-y, but it wasn’t – although it wasn’t too cheesy (considering it is like when we were in lockdown for COVID!) but the ending was very weird, even my dad had some words about how the whole thing! I think we thought we were getting a totally different movie to what was delivered but it wasn’t too awful though. This film was on “The Movie Channel” or Showtime!

I truly hope you’re doing well out there and enjoying the summer weather too!

What were you listening to in July?

June Playlist

Hello! 🌈

June was a long month full of interesting things, some bittersweet and others were wonderful!

During the first week, we had birthdays to celebrate, and you saw the last of the DIY projects I had done in late March; the dotted sea turtle! It was such a fun and somewhat abstract kind of experiment for me, and I do hope to share more artsy stuff soon! The other birthday was my papaw’s. As some of you know, my papaw on my mom’s side died in 2016 and it’s still as fresh as it was then to all of us, and I don’t tend to share a lot of my personal life on my social media, much less on here, but I had shared a photo I had found a few months ago and wrote something special about him for the special day.

Two weeks later, we had another birthday, which was my nephew’s and he turned FOUR years old already! It doesn’t seem like he should be that old yet, you know?! I mean, he definitely seems older because of the way he talks, figures out things, and the fact he’s so excited to go to preschool in the fall! He’s become a little human now and its crazy how time files with him. I hope his sister grows somewhat slower for us, or we need to take more photos/videos…

Besides these celebrations, I’ve had a really good early summer, despite the scorching weather; it’s been in the upper 80’s and 90’s since the second week and my mom and I keep saying, “we’re only in June! It’s going to be even worse by the time we get into July and August!” Apparently, we’re not alone in that assumption as I saw somewhere, cattle have died in Wisconsin and Kansas, which sounds more like they were neglected, because isn’t the farmers responsibility to provide shelter and water to their animals? I mean, that sounds really shady but I’m not animal farmer.

Speaking of farming, my family have really upgraded our landscaping as I’ve talked about in last month’s post, but my parents have wanted to grow our own food on our property and this year seemed like we could do it, so I have decided on doing a garden tour for July or August, depending on what I have time for next month. I am pumped to get it out to you because I know a lot of people have been curious about it and even though I don’t have any role in the creation of the garden, I thought this could be my way of contributing to the whole thing.

All right now let’s turn our focus to music as that is what this post was supposed to be about, but you know, I kind of enjoy summarizing the last 20 or so days for you, so I hope you like this new feature because it might stay as part of this post.

Here are my Top 20 songs I loved in June 2022. If you want to check out the entire Spotify playlist, click here.

Before I Ever Met You by BANKS
Dark Star by Tarja
SOLO by Jennie
Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson
I Don’t Want To Be by Gavin DeGraw
God Is A Woman by Danielle Bradbury
Everybody’s Fool by Evanescence
Die4u by Rain Paris
7 Rings by Ariana Grande
Boyfriend by Dove Cameron
All In by 2WEi featuring Marvin Brooks
My Heart’s Grave by Faouzia
I Want My Tears Back by Nightwish
Anything But Ordinary by Avril Lavigne
Boston by Augustana
Let’s Go by Trick Daddy featuring Big D & Twista
Heels by Hysterica
Shake It Off by Taylor Swift
Angel by Sarah Brightman
Simmer by Hayley Williams

What were you loving this past month?