Katiebird's Garden & Wildcraft

       I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   We had our first frost this week and the garden called it quits on most things. I covered our peppers, as they have a ton of fruit on them but aren’t quite ripe yet. It was very cold that night, my husband even saw some frozen water in places! The green beans, tender herbs, and most of the flowers died. My sheets weren’t quite as protective as I had hoped and the tops of some of the peppers were killed off.      Since the nights are just plain cold now in the 40s and 50s, I think we’re going to pick all the hot peppers-many green still-and try to ripen them a bit inside and then will either dry them in the food dehydrator or chop them up and freeze. We have Trinidad Scorpions, Carolina Reapers, Habanero, and Ghost Peppers. All of which grew sur...

      I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com     I've been foraging, growing and drying herbs and flowers all summer so I could have a nice variety of herbal tea blends. Well, now that its the third week of school, we all are a bit sniffly with a cold and its the perfect time to try some out!  Today I'm stuffy and sneezy, so I've blended up a cup of chamomile, mullein and anise hyssop. it tastes amazing! I love anise flavoring, or black licorice flavor as some people may reference, so this cup is quite enjoyable.  Mullein leaves are known to have respiratory-supporting and anti-inflammatory traits, so I've included them along with chamomile for its soothing effects, and some anise hyssop, which has cough suppressing properties, and as mentioned, great flavor!  I filled a paper teabag with the ...

     I'm sharing a video of my garden as it moves into the end of a great season of peppers, green beans, of course kale, but a lack-luster tomato season. This could partly be because I chose smaller tomato varieties and they just didn't get very big! The Valencia Orange were very productive, meaty and had a nice, sweet flavor. My Romas were not the best producers this year and seemed to have a leaf issue most of the summer. The Five-Star Grape tomatoes were and still are VERY prolific. The Green Zebra were just a bit meh.       I'd appreciate it if you could also subscribe to my YouTube channel if you feel so inclined! My first goal is to get 100 subscribers so I can have a real name on my channel instead of a random number and letter stream. Thank you in advance! 

  I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com        Recent events have encouraged—and maybe forced—many people to grow their own food. This isn’t new to humans, but since people started living in cities, residential lots became smaller, time has become sparse, not many people were growing their own food. Grocery stores are abundant in most places, home delivery enables us to order things and receive them almost instantly. But people seem to be feeling the need to come back to the “roots” of supporting themselves, at least a little bit.      So, you feel the need to garden.   Before going out and buying all the seeds, you should think about why you actually want or need to do it. Some things that pop into mind could be, wanting to eat fresh (or maybe clean/more organic) food, reducing gro...

 Well Hello! I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   I think its been years...yes it has. We've done a lot of things: our son is 9, I've had a couple different jobs, we own a home. But I still feel the need to create and write about it.  This blog started with the garden and I'm going to continue with the garden!  I now have a raised bed garden in our back yard, made up of 12, 3x4' steel beds. It looks really nice and produces well also. I started them last year with 8 beds. This year I added 4 more and also surrounded the garden with a flower garden! Its so beautiful, so full of pollinators and also the rogue critters.  Since it was a lot of cubic feet to fill, I chose to follow the hügelkultur route. I filled the bottoms with 6" of dead tree logs, sticks and bits. Topped that with tons of decomposing lea...

I created a new website! It has my blog and the herbal products that I'm creating from the home grown herbs and flowers that I grow. Please come on over and follow me at: www.katiebirdsgarden.com   My husband loves loaded baked and mashed potatoes.  I decided to create a soup based on his slight obsession.  He loves this too.   Loaded Baked Potato Soup 2 Yukon Gold potatoes, diced 1 rib of celery, diced 2 small carrots, finely diced (adds a bit of sweetness, but aren't totally necessary) Small yellow onion, diced 1/3-1/2 c. bacon bits/pieces (REAL bacon, not the fake kind) 2-3 green onions/scallions, chopped 2 T butter 1 c.-1 1/2 c. (more or less) chicken broth  1/2 quart cream (skim milk if you want to make this sorta healthy, but it's just not the same) 1 can cheddar cheese soup Pepper Melt the butter at med-high heat, add yellow onions and cook until almost translucent, then toss in the bacon during this to warm up the flav...

I've been a little busy since my last post!  Only 6 days after my last post, we welcomed our son into this world!  He arrived 12/11/12 at 4:37 in the morning.  He's a true joy and is a wonderful baby.  I will be working on some better posts soon, but as most of you know babies keep you busy!  

So after the scary appointment and hours in the L&D triage on Tuesday, I had my normally scheduled BPP appt on Thursday.  My hubby met me at the front of my office building as usual at 2-ish and we went to my appt.  Well, my blood pressure was in the 150s...which is bad.  So they let me sit and rest a bit and did the other normal appt. things like measure my belly, etc.  and then at the end it was even higher.   My OB was not smiling or sugar-coating anything when she said we need to go to the hospital ASAP and get monitored for 24 hours and I am in no way going back to work.  Bedrest for sure.  We were a little freaked out, as she said if my BP didn't go down and stayed around 160 as it was, they may have to induce!  Eek, I was only at 34 weeks!  We went quickly back to my office so I could grab my laptop, cords and clean my space up a bit, since I probably wouldn't be back until April!  Also told everyone that I wouldn't be back ...

As I read over my last post back in mid-November...I was happy to have no BP issues or protein in the urine...blah blah blah.  Well, the shit hit the fan, starting on my birthday (the 27th) of all days!  I was 33w5d. I had a regularly scheduled endo appointment and my blood pressure was elevated, which it had been just a couple random times at previous appts.  But never continuous.  I thought it was from the longer hike from the parking garage to the office, but guess not.  We then were looking at my insulin dosages and told my Dr. that the total daily dosage had gone waaay down the past couple days.  That worried her.  Other than that, my BG numbers had been pretty darn perfect the past months.  A1c was still at a 6.  She said she'll send an IM to my OB doc to discuss me.  I went on my merry way to head home around 4:00 pm.   Then, I had a thought to check my work voicemail   just in case  I had any messages.  I ...

Sorry I've been gone!  We've been working on getting lots of projects done around the house and my pregnancy brain is trying to stay focused on working, house stuff and cooking a healthy baby!   The diabetes has been terrific still, the A1c was a 6 at my last appt and my BG averages for 7-14-30 days have been in the 120s.  I am poofing up though and my cankles are disgusting!  No BP issues  or protein, just poof!  I will start my NSTs (non-stress tests) twice a week with an u/s thrown in each week for good measure, on the 15th.  So things will really start moving along!  Baby is doing wonderfully and at our growth scan he was at the 60th percentile.  I'm happy with that!   The nursery is getting gorgeous, the crib was put together the other night.  I will be posting pictures when we are done with the room.  Shouldn't be too long!  My Hoosier cabinet is also finally in the kitchen!  We're using it without the doors...

I'm 26 weeks today!  Baby boy is a kicking fool. After about a month and 1/2 of wrangling my boluses and basals I FINALLY have them working for me!  My averages, courtesy of the Ping meter are a doctor's dream, or at least not a nightmare.   7 Day: 122 14 Day: 128 30 Day: 135 60 Day: 146 I'm happy with these as they're pretty REAL, with hardly any highs or lows to skew the numbers.  But, as everyone says...don't expect to rest on my diabetic laurels when pregnant, I'll probably have to change everything again next week.   My Thyroid TSH levels are also in perfect order.   ***Fun braggy note, my wonderful husband bought a Cuisinart Food Processor today!  I'm slightly geeked up about that :)  I'm hoping it matches the toaster...otherwise they can't live next to each other.   I'll be making homemade baby food for the boy, so this monster will come in handy!  I still have a bucket of tomatoes to process into a salsa so it will ...

The cabinet is painted...yes painted.  No stain for that little puppy made out of different types of wood, of different eras, and some old paint that just wouldn't come off without gouging out the areas.  So paint it is.  I chose a Valspar National Trust Historic color (a creamy color, can't remember the name off hand.)   This weekend I plan on rubbing off the edges and wearing some areas down and apply furniture wax to get that vintage look.  Pictures next week!   Instead of the original ceramic-metal, slider counter top, we're going to add a butcher block counter.  My husband hates the metal top for some reason, it grosses him out.  I think butcher block will be lovely and will help it match whatever our kitchen looks like in our future house.   I really would like a Boos counter with the name showing on a side!

I was low at 62 after dinner...due to busy-work painting my cabinet and climbing around on a table and stools like a pregnant monkey-mama.  So, in we go to have a delicious Little Debbie Nutty Bar (my fave) and I eat both bars in the pack, which have 30-odd carbs in it.  Sorta assuming that the rest of my work would take care of the little extra I ate.  Well, after cleaning up after myself and coming inside about an hour later, I feel a little crabby and can't-pay-attention-ish, so I test again and it's 64.  Hmm.  That's weird. Where'd that Nutty Bar go?  I think the baby ate it before I could have any.  

So we've made the official announcement, we're going to have a baby boy in January!  Hence the reason I've been MIA lately, besides having my surgery, then going to Flagstaff, AZ for the Labor Day weekend.  But the topic of this post is diabetes-related.  The dreaded insulin resistance in 2nd-3rd trimester has started... In the past 2 weeks I have continually increased my basals at all hours to at least double what they were pre-pregnancy.  My carb ratios have also almost doubled at all times.  Today was the last straw though, I had about 50 carbs for breakfast and actually bolused for 60, just to be safe, and 1 1/2 hours later, a damn 300 blood sugar!!  WTF?  I'm just tired of chasing the numbers...so low carb we will go! My husband has done the Adkins/low carb thing before and liked it because of course, he loves meat.  I'm slightly "meh" about eating meat, etc. all the time, but feel that high protein/low carb to be ...

I've been laying low for a while, as I had my carpal tunnel and trigger finger release surgeries last week.  It's been a week and I'm still pretty limited on my right hand use.  The surgery itself wasn't bad; I had a nerve block on my arm, which is a big, bad tourniquet on my shoulder, they sqeeze all the blood from your arm, and then they numb the arm with a local anesthetic.  I chose to forego the anesthesia to knock me out, which all of the nurses were quite impressed with me.  It was very weird feeling things, but not quite feeling things.  Slowly it's getting less swollen and more mobile, but the stitches will be in until the 5th.  I'm also proud that my blood sugar was 143 pre-surgery and was 139 post-surgery.  Usually it freaks out if my body is freaking out, but it stayed put!   Speaking of body parts, remember in biology class the critters and bits and pieces that were in glass jars filled with formaldehyde?   I at...

I still sometimes forget that I pretty much need to bolus for most things over 5 carbs that go in my mouth.  Every once in a while I'll regress to the old Lantus safety-zone thoughts of, "oh a little bite here and there won't matter, it will be absorbed and covered magically."  Nope.  I was making refried beans last night and a Tequila-Lime cake (more on that later!) for my husband's birthday party tomorrow and couldn't resist taste-testing the beans, well maybe more like eating 4-5 big spoonfuls because they were so damn delish.  And had to have one of the shortbread cookies I made the other night (pure buttery goodness) and later tested to see a crappy 197 on my meter.  Blah.  Here's my new mantra: MUST-REMEMBER-TO-ALWAYS-BOLUS-WHEN-BAKING-COOKING-TASTE-TESTING!  I do have a collection of rolling pins, just like JC.   

First batch of big jalapenos are ready to go!  We usually make turkey-bacon-wrapped, cream cheese stuffed, grilled peppers, but didn't have time last week, so I tried some pickles.  Plastic gloves were a must, they were super hot! An awful lot of mustard seed in this recipe, but hopefully they taste delish!   My beautiful Trionfo Violetto beans, or as I have come to call them camo-beans and when they're steamed just to heated, they start to lose the purple coloring and look like camouflage.  We had some for dinner last night and they were nice and full-flavored. Leeks!  They will be used to make potato soup with my potatoes I have growing in pots. Pepperoncini!  Next to be pickled after the party this weekend.  I didn't realize the plant got so big!  It's nearing 3 1/2' and doesn't look like it's stopping soon.

These are the invites that I made for my husband's Birthday Fiesta in August.  His birthday is actually (one of) the dates that is said to be the BEGINNING of the Mayan calendar!  I chose the serpent motif from the Chichen Itza pyramid .  Just so happens I found the perfect paper at Archiver's that had the blue waves on the back and the fun zigzag on the front.  Of course, the fun stickers had to be added too.  Menu: A Taco and Nacho Bar Tomatillo Enchiladas Homemade Refried Beans An assortment of homemade FRESH salsas-my jalapenos and habaneros are growing insanely well-I think I have to pickle some just to save them we have so many! Tequilas and margaritas will also be served The piece De resistance: A Twinkie-pyramid-inspired cake-playing on the notion that Twinkies will survive the end of the world/nuclear holocaust/etc.  Not fully Twinkified, as to make it to scale (9 steps) with solid Twinkies would create a...

My carrots are ready for picking!  They are very delicious and most are nice and straight-which was questionable in the shallow garden area they were in.  I'm going to be blanching and freezing a bunch tonight to get a head start on my veggie supply for homemade soups and stews.  Another bunch will make its way to my sister's house for her and almost 1-yr. old nephew if she's willing to share!  It's not a good harvest until you get that mutant carrot with too many appendages! 

Finally here it is!  These are super easy, quite quick and don't cost much at all.  Things you'll need: Foam board (use your Micheal's coupons!) Cotton batting-I bought the crib-size and still have leftovers Fabric Glue gun and glue sticks-I used 2 long ones Duct tape Picture hangers or small brackets of your choice Step 1: Measure your window width and cut or tape more than one piece of foam board together to fit the space if needed.  I made sure it was at least 1" beyond each side of the wood moulding.  Remember you'll add thickness and need to attach brackets.  Mine were 64" long, 9" tall and the sides were 2" wide, your proportions may be different depending on the window size and style.  Duck tape holds it all together nicely.  I did add wooden chopsticks to the middle where I taped two long pieces together so it didn't bend.  You won't have to do this if your window is smaller....