Katiebird's Garden & Wildcraft

If I seem happy about it, no but I've never had one!  If you don't know, an occlusion is a blockage in the tubing or flexible catheter (needle part) of your insulin pump.  Doesn't happen often for most people, but the pumps are so sensitive they will let you know if it does!  I woke at 4:00 am as usual to feed the cat and test my blood (it's become an agreed upon habit between us)  but the inset was in my thigh and the adhesive was lifted up on one side and it felt like it was popped out a little so I pushed it back in and put a piece of tape over it-not really thinking that clearly at this time in the morning  and my BG was 103, good.   So back to bed I went.  Woke up for real and BG was 193-not normal, I bolused for that number and the warning bells went off!  Occlusion!  Occlusion!  Hmm, not so smart to have shoved it back in earlier...after taking it out to put a new site in, here's what I saw: Ouch!

Has anyone noticed that it's damn hot in Minnesota?  My cat Stickee, hogging the fan this morning I've been fighting with my One-Touch Ping meter remote for the past 2 mos.  It had "Ping-ed" out.  The thing didn't seem to read or sense the strips when inserted or when blood was added.  I finally got fed up with swearing and throwing strips around and called One-Touch and they promptly sent me a new one!  Awesome customer service they have.  How nice it is not to waste 3-4 strips per test!  Back on track with my awesome testing schedule.  As for the home front: Too hot to paint right now... The garden is going insane with this humidity and heat!  I have to take pictures this week.  We've been eating snow peas regularly for a couple weeks and I've already harvested my first 1 1/2 cups of garden peas.  I really enjoyed sitting on the stoop shelling them :)  I quick-blanched and froze them.  I'm hopin...

My rhubarb recipe blog from a couple weeks ago is featured on Chickens in the Road Blog today!  If you haven't checked out this hilarious and informative website about Susan McMinn's independently-woman-owned and worked farm and animal friends, please do so.  You can check out my recipe feature and see tons of other delicious ideas,  HERE .

Here's an almost-done shot of the dresser...don't mind the sawdust...my hubby was sanding the other cabinet in the garage.  I'm thinking we won't antique the edges...it looks so nice and clean as it is.  We'll see after the hardware gets put on.  We might re-sand the top and repaint it, as I didn't like how the third coat looks.  Maybe I was just too picky that day!  Any opinions on whether to antique the edges with Briwax or not? 

I started cleaning up my little Hoosier cabinet last summer.  I discovered under gobs and gobs of paint, a nicely-made piece of furniture with beautiful etched glass cabinet doors (under horrid red paint.)  Worth the work so far and the near two gallons of stripper!  My husband has taken over the finishing of the project this summer, as my wonky elbows/wrists can't handle the scraping and the sander for too long.   We have been hemming and hawing about what color to paint it.  Neither of us really wanted to do it in "just" white, so a white-ish green or blue were going to be the finalists.  But then he finished cleaning up the front of the drawers and we saw these... Gorgeous drawer fronts! So we have decided to TOTALLY strip every little bit of paint off and stain it!!!  EEK!  The wood is just too pretty to cover up.  I think it's going to be a beautiful, crazy mix of colors.  But, something you can't replicate.   Here are ...

My momma, sister and I went to our local pick your own strawberry-blueberry-raspberry-corn farm on Saturday.  Bright and early, 8:30 it was already in the mid-eighties.  We parked our vehicle and walked right into the field. They take great care at this field and do not use any pesticides.  The ground is also covered in straw, so that you can just sit or crawl on your hands and knees to pick.  This also keeps the berries clean, so very little if any, washing is needed.  I didn't wash any of them.  These were giant, delicious and prolific!        My sister said the weigh/pay booth looked like an international border crossing... We each picked near 10 lbs. of berries!  My mom made a pie and some jam, my sister froze a ton for smoothies and daiquiris, and I used most of mine to make 6 half-pints of no-sugar strawberry jam, 3 half-pints of no-sugar strawberry-peach jam, and then had leftover peaches so I made peach-lemon ...

I successfully made a pelmet box!  Finally after my second purchase of fabric-the first was a little "loud" and my husband said it looked like an apron.  So that is EXACTLY what I'm making out of it!  He's always right about things... So, my second purchase of fabric turned up a lovely turquoise Moroccan-Ikat print.  He liked this one.  The first box was for the window over the kitchen sink, which was 40 inches.  Here's a picture-don't mind the icky blinds, I hope to find something to replace them... I learned how to make this HERE   I'll be showing a step-by-step story with the big, 64" box that is just started.  I ran out of steam this weekend!  It was hot, hot hot!  Hopefully I'll work on it this week.  I guess I have to, as I've taken over 1/2 of the kitchen floor and the kitchen table.  JB has declared that he's building me a little counter/worktable someday in there to do my "projects."  He's so nice. ...