You don't have a garden but like to grow veggies? Read this!. On a long ride, how to entertain your (grand) children. Cute Halloween leather jewelry.

For everyone a mini garden!

I thank my mini garden to Tiffany from "Don't waste the crumbs".  I red her post about regrowing food in water last year and tried it out for fun and it did work! In another post I don't recall, I learned how to plant them. This is still better than growing in water. Now I  have my own mini garden and for free (you would anyhow have bought the veggies you are starting with); thank you Tiffany for sharing!! If you want one too, just follow the steps below; it won't take much time or effort.

Preparing your garden

Everyone can have a mini garden! The only thing you need is a container and some soil (this could be the hardest part). Your container can be anything that is waterproof; this could be a plastic container as well as an empty can. I have used a metal empty 5 liter olive oil can in the past. This summer I  had a container with a hydrangea that was more dead then alive; I took the hydrangea out and planted it in the garden and used the container for my mini garden.

Choose something that you have laying around in your kitchen or buy a fancy container, put some pebbles, stones, beer bottle caps, or the like at the bottom so the roots aren't permanently wet, fill up with soil (most soils have already a fertilizer incorporated) and your garden is ready! Best place to grow your mini garden is outside in your garden or on the balcony but a window sill with some sun will do too.

My mini garden!

Choosing your (organic) veggies.

When your garden is ready, go out to an organic store or market you trust and buy organic vegetables you like such as carrots (best is if they have some green on top), fresh onions, lettuce, spinach. If you start with organic veggies, you can grow your own organic food. When washing your veggies, don't throw away the water, because it has become fertilized: poor it over your babies.

Preparing your veggies.

Let's say you'll having a lettuce salad for lunch. And you'll add some scallions to spice up everything. You have chosen onions with long and healthy roots.  When paring 1 or 2 scallions, leave at least 5 mm of stem when cutting the roots, they feed on the 5 mm stem you left above the roots  Let the roots soak in water, on the window sill (I cut a small plastic bottle in half and used the bottom to soak my onions) till they spruce a bit; you'll see a small bump on the surface you have cut. This takes 3 or 4 days. Leave them a couple of days longer, take them out of the water and then transplant them into your container.

My onions 3 weeks after planting
and several cuttings later.

Do the same for carrots; you don't have to spruce them in water, you can plant them directly into the soil;  good carrots that don't have some green left, will spruce but with more difficulties

My spruced carrots

Lettuce is fun and easy: cut off the stem of your lettuce and plant it directly in the soil; in a couple of days you should have 1 small tiny leave. If you buy fresh spinach with roots, choose the nicest ones, leave about 1 à 1,5 cm of stem and plant them directly into the soil. I throw banana peels into the container as fertilizer; still better would be to cut the peel  in small pieces and bury them about 1 cm under the soil; but I am always in a hurry and just leave them on top of the soil.

How do you actually use/eat your veggies

You use the green leaves of your onions in your salad; I planted 4 onions and every couple of days I have enough green to add to a salad. Just cut off the amount you need; not from 1 onion but from different plants; this way you don't wear out 1 plant and the onions can reproduce the leave  more easily.

My organic scallions.

The scallions in the picture above were a meager 5 mm at the start; look what they have become in a couple of weeks!

I had quite some carrot leaves. I checked the internet to have some ideas on how to use them. Some articles suggested soup but I didn't have enough for a soup; others said to use it in a salad. At the end I followed my instinct: I boiled some potatoes, put some olive oil in my salad bowl, cut the boiled potatoes while still hot, tossed them in my bowl and swirled them around in the oil. This way they absorb the oil nicely and are very tasty. To top off the salad, I cut up the carrots leaves and mixed them with the potatoes. But I must confess: the leaves didn't add any extra taste to my salad. Maybe when cooked in a soup they might add some taste, but that I have to found out still.

My leeks, radish top and sprucing lettuce.

My lettuce is sprouting well, but not the leeks. I have another confession to make: I forgot to soak them in water and planted them immediately in the soil. Apparently that doesn't work for leeks; I could get them out of the soil, soak them a couple days and then replant them.

I planted the upper part of radishes (the pink color underneath the leek) with some stems and the cutting is producing new leaves are growing. I doubt if I'll get radishes but the leaves are very tasty stewed with or without onion in olive oil.

To round up:

If you have limited space and have only room for a small container (even a tuna can could become your container),  grow preferably scallions, then lettuce leaves and/or spinach leaves. You can try out carrot leafs and decided about the taste yourself, after all tastes differ. They sprout very easy. And try out for yourself and experiment, it's fun and gives a lot of pleasure.

Wow, this has become a lot longer then I intended.

How to entertain your grand children.

Next weekend is the annual Lebbe- gathering in West- Vleteren, Belgium the very same gathering I couldn't attend last year. But this year I am attending. My daughter and family and dog are attending too and we'll make a weekend out of it. They're picking me up on Friday and ride straight ahead to the coast. It is about a 2.5 hrs drive which is long for children. But when Grandma is in the car, time passes quickly and in no time we are at destination.

Children are happy when they get exclusive attention: when you are with your grand children lent them both your ears, not one ear directed to what the adults are saying and the other to the children! That won't do: give them all of your attention.

The easiest thing to do, when they are small (till 8) is to let them choose a color and count all the cars they see in their color, very exciting! or they can choose a type of car, truck, whatever.

You can tell stories: they love real stories about your youth, anecdotes about their mother or father, they love to be scared so tell them something scary but observe them closely to know how far you can go. The classic fairy tales like Snow White , Cinderella are still liked.

You can learn them funny songs; children like to laugh with silly things are sing the old songs they know. It's o.k. to sing them when no friends are  around. This brings us to older children

It takes some sophistication to get the attention of older children. Best thing to do is to talk about and ask questions about their interests. My grandson is 12 and he gets very passionate when talking about his games. He talks and goes on and I listen, asking him questions about the things I don't get or know nothing about till his sister of 9 interrupts him saying: you have talked enough, my turn.

Cute Halloween leather earrings and bracelets.

Last week I said that I wouldn't show any pictures of my leather Halloween creations because they are in consignment at a shop in my home town. But the earrings are so cute that I have to show them to you.

LoveLea's cute
leather skull earrings.

LoveLea's cute leather 
bone earrings

Aren't they adorable: and the skulls and the bones!

Here are 2 very simple leather  bracelets with a sliding knot, perfect for people with metal allergy.

LoveLea's unisex 2 skull
bracelet  with sliding knot

LoveLea's unisex skull
 bracelets with sliding knot

Glad I showed you my latest Halloween creations.

Tomorrow, Friday I am off to the the North See! I haven't seen the see in months and the North See in 2 years. I would love to have a swim in the North See but with the tides, I don't know if my swim will fit in, And to West-Vleteren. I'll tell you all about it.

That's it for this week. See you next week.