Midwest Gardening: Spring Starter Chores

We had a wonderful Spring weekend here in the Midwest.

It was typical -- a little sun, some gentle rain, and by the end of the weekend, 50 mph winds with tornadoes and power outages.

Ahh, the Midwest! Isn't it grand?

This was the weekend when my garden clean-up chores began. It was muddy and wonderful to get out with my spade to start moving perennials. This was the weekend when garden plans started to become garden reality. But, there is a lot to do! It was hard not to feel daunted by the sheer volume of work.

After a long Winter, the sun and warm temperatures made the work worth it. (Maybe I'm part plant.)

My spring clean-up chores were few, but significant. I have decided to devote our entire side garden to vegetables this year. I will be setting aside some space on the south slope of our yard for vegetables as well. To make the most of both planting zones, I will build raised beds this week.

But first, I had to get started moving perennials. I started digging up Brown-eyed Susans and peppermint from the herb garden. I moved them back to the sunny edge of our wildflower garden. All it will take is a few plugs of each to make a beautiful border back there.



When moving vigorous perennials, try to cut them from their bed with a large spade. Lift the entire plant with at least 5 inches of accompanying soil. Keeping the roots intact will reduce stress on the plant and increase the chances of survival in its new location. Dig a deeper hole than you need, and backfill it loosely with soil. I usually put water into the hole before inserting the plug of rooted perennials into the moist soil. Try to keep the level of soil even with the earth around it and press firmly to ensure good contact between the roots and the soil. Water again thoroughly.

Another chore I started to tackle this weekend was moving the compost pile. We use a 2-bay compost system, where we fill one bay each year. In the Spring, I move material that is not completely broken down from the full bay to the empty bay. It is a long process. But my philosophy of Spring chores is Slow and Steady Wins the Race. If the Earth can take it's time getting ready for growing, so can I.

I will work on the compost over the course of the next month. I combine moving it over with other clean-up jobs, so that I am layering older material with newer. We mulch our beds with leaves in the Fall. When the time comes to remove that mulch (not yet) each bed will provide a nicely broken-down layer for the new compost bay. If you're moving the compost at your house, be sure to make the outside edge of each layer a little thicker than the middle. A compost pile that is lower in the center than the outside funnels rain into the pile and breaks down faster. If you build your pile like a haystack, the rain will sheet off and the center of the pile will remain dry.

With steady work over the next few weeks, the compost will be completely moved and the lowest layer of soil, rich in nutrients, will be ready to work into my vegetable garden. There is no better fertilizer than fresh compost. It is my garden's "secret ingredient".

The final "chore" of the weekend was to complete my seed purchase with Johnny's Selected Seeds. I cannot say how clearly superior I find the seeds from Johnny's as compared to hardware store packeted seed. Their varieties are specifically designed for disease-resistance and many are tailored for Northern growers. They also have a wide variety of organic seed. They have a place on their website for gardeners to make a 'garden wish-list'. I love that I can shop for seed, choose a few varieties, and save them until I'm ready to buy. This weekend, I finalized my list. As soon as my seeds arrive, I'll post directions for home seed-starting.

As expected, our lovely Midwest Spring weekend is transforming into a chilly week. Rain today and tomorrow will help those perennials I moved to take root. But our trusty weather channel tells me that night-time lows will be well below freezing after Wednesday, so the layer of protective mulch I have on the flower beds must stay in place for now -- even if the daffodils and day-lilies are poking through the leaves to find the sunlight.

I'd love to hear about your gardens. Are you going to try to plant more vegetables this year? What chores are your biggest challenges of the Spring?


- Midwest Mom

Super Quick Turbo-Cleaning Tips

~Your mother-in-law just called. She's "dropping in" for tea in a half hour.

~Your son announces that he's invited a friend for dinner. Tonight.

~Your husband calls. The guys are coming by for a beer after work.

~You just got home from a rough day at the office. The calendar tells you that book club is tonight -- and it's at your house!


You look around you and see an ocean of clutter.

You ask yourself, Why don't people just put things away?

Don't panic. We've all been there.

It's the problem with actually having human beings living in your house. I mean, I would challenge any home decorating magazine to photograph that lovely living room on the cover after my children had been set loose in it for 15 minutes. I bet their readers would be surprised at the transformation. Better yet, we could televise the metamorphosis as a new reality show called "School-Kid Room Makeover: Clutter Edition".

But the clock is ticking!
You've got to get this place cleaned up!

Tip #1: Vacuum and dust at the same time. A quick vacuuming job does wonders, but why stop at floors? Slap on an attachment to quick clean ceiling fan blades or dust the mantle. (Take care not to suck up that photo of Great Aunt Winifred or the glazed clay dinosaur your husband made in kindergarten!)

Tip #2: Choose a gathering place for Clutter. As you vacuum each room, choose a table that you can throw "loose items" onto. In our house, that usually means the Han Solo Ice Planet Hoth Action Figure that was defending the dining room table, one pink sock that had been sticking out from under the couch (that's where it was!), and yesterday's mail, newspaper, and 17 fliers from school that were scattered around the kitchen. Choose a central location as you clean and just pile up that clutter!

Tip #3: Use Laundry baskets for more than Laundry. Once the floors are picked up and the clutter is centralized, I make a run from room to room with a laundry basket. Clutter goes in and either A) gets put in its place when I get to the next room, or B) holy mother of heaven they're going to be here in 2 minutes! ...so into the closet goes the clutter basket. It's true. I do it. (Don't you dare check my closets next time you're over unexpectedly!) Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Tip #4: Give hard surfaces a Lick and a Promise. Ever heard of Clorox wipes? Love 'em. They are made for situations like this. A greener alternative is to have a damp cloth, a dry cloth, and a bottle of eco-friendly cleaner ready under your sink. Take a quick run through each room looking for jelly fingerprints, dirty light switches, face-prints on the windows, or toothpaste spit onto the bathroom mirror. Ew. Wipe down counters, door knobs, faucet handles, and anywhere else that grime rears its ugly "this is our house and we live in it" head. (Also, ever since Mr. Clean graced the world with his handy Magic Eraser, my love for him as increased tenfold.) You can always do a better clean-up job later when you have time. For now, a quick clean is enough.

Tip #5: Don't just use your eyes -- use your sniffer. Have you been cooking cabbage today? Open the window! Does your garbage can smell like a stink bomb? Take that bag out to the garage. (Or if you don't think your guests will need to use it, take the whole can out there!) And, have mercy on us all! Hubby's running shoes must be moved from the front hallway!

Tip #6: Use products that do more than one thing. Next time you're shopping, look for products that can do more than one thing. Swiffer Wet can clean a dusty floor and deodorize a room. Putting a dryer sheet in your vacuum bag can do the same thing. Some Green cleaners can be diluted to different concentrations to fit a variety of cleaning tasks. There is nothing wrong with saving labor -- especially when you're tight on time!

And finally...

Tip #7: Marshal the troops! When time is tight, everyone in the house should be helping to get things ship-shape. Ask your sons to clean up their toys and books from the clutter depot. Ask your spouse to put dishes in the dishwasher. Ask your daughter to assemble some snacks and drinks for your guests. And don't forget to schedule in 2 minutes for yourself when all the work is done, to change into a shirt with no spit-up and brush your hair. (If you have time, a glass of wine wouldn't hurt, either!)

Take a deep breath... Whew! You're done.

You can slap on a welcoming smile and answer that door.



- Midwest Mom

Little, Nameless, Unremembered Acts

Life can surprise you with truth every so often.
Today Wordsworth speaks to me.
*******************************

Lines Written A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd -- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things. If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless day-lights; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the wood
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all. -- I cannot paint

What then I was, The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. -- That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh or grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
This line has a close resemblance to an admirable line of Young,
the exact expression of which I cannot recollect.

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; And that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Now wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.

~William Wordsworth

Nobody's Perfect: Teaching Kids about Mistakes

My husband is a perfectionist. He admits it, usually with an old-dog-new-tricks shrug. In his line of work, perfectionism serves him well. In other parts of his life, though, it can be tough to be so exacting. Life isn't an exact science.

Our oldest son has inherited this personality trait. He is driven and persistent. He is also fierce and unrelenting at times when he wants things to be done a certain way. My mother has told me that he is "Type A".

All I know is that he puts a tremendous amount of pressure on himself and has an amazing inner drive. But his constant pushing for perfection can sometimes be a problem.

I remember getting a phone call from his teacher back when he was in first grade. The class had been playing a math game, and my son had gotten a problem wrong and was out of the game. He fumed. Later on, he got a paper back that had been corrected. He had left the punctuation off of a sentence. He simmered. Finally, when he raised his hand to answer a question, he barked the answer at the teacher. She called him on it, and he boiled over. He didn't like mistakes. Their existence rocked his foundations.

I'm glad she called me about it. What happened at school gave our family a way to talk about making mistakes and use them as a chance to learn. That small episode turned out to be an opportunity for growth.

My husband and I have tried a few strategies that have really worked.

Talk and teach openly about making mistakes. Although we have always encouraged our children with positive reinforcement, especially when they had difficulty, we realized that we never really used the word mistake with our children. We treated small struggles individually and rarely generalized to teach the concept: we are human beings and all human beings make mistakes.

Admit our own mistakes. My parents were the unquestioned authority in my family growing up. But to teach our children about mistake-making, my husband and I have had to come down from our parental pedestal at times. We decided to try and admit our mistakes as they happen -- from humbly admitting that we forgot an appointment to bravely apologizing to one of the children when we have wronged them. [Trust me, the apology part is harder than it sounds. A true apology includes an honest effort to make amends. We decided that modeling was the best way to teach the art of the apology. Especially tough on proud Mama, I tell you.]

Forgiveness and Love go Hand-in-Hand. As a family, we believe that mistakes don't erase the love we feel for each other. So, when we have an argument, we make a point of airing our feelings and making friends again before we move on. Sometimes that takes time, but not as much as you might imagine. When my son is having a hard time forgiving himself, I reinforce that no part of my love hinges on him being perfect. I love him even with his flaws, not in spite of them. That doesn't mean I have no expectations for his behavior or that a mistake can no longer be called out. But it does mean that my son will always be my son. Sometimes he just needs to hear that.

Emphasize our humanity. There are no perfect people. When my son first started resisting the idea that any mistakes were ever acceptable, we asked him to come up with the name of even one person who never made a mistake. He said Jesus. Okay, he had us there. But in trying to give us the "right" answer, he actually opened up a great way for us to approach the concept of our common humanity. We talked about our faith in a different way than we had before. It was a great learning opportunity -- for him and for us as parents. As time has gone on, we have talked about other special people -- scientists, sports figures, national heroes. All one needs to do is open a book to find out that Einstein failed out of school or that Babe Ruth had a problem with his temper, or that Abraham Lincoln got in trouble for laziness because he read instead of doing his chores. Seeing "great" people as human has helped.

Mistakes are Opportunities to Learn. If we think about failure as an opportunity to build a skill or solve a problem creatively, mistakes become easier to handle. Sometimes in life, we make "silly" mistakes -- like when I hurry and put my keys in the fridge and the cream cheese in my purse, or when my son focuses on getting a math paper done as fast as possible and doesn't pay attention to the plus and minus signs. We look for the lesson: slow down, stop and think, re-check your work. If bigger mistakes are made, like hitting your brother because you want a toy, we look for the lesson, too. People are more important than things. We re-focus and try again.

Teaching about mistakes is something I'm sure we will continue to work with as the children get older and as the consequences of their behavior become greater and greater. I like that we are working on it together. It may be true that I am learning as much as he is.

We have noticed that the lesson is sinking in. My son told his sister the other day, "It's okay. We all make mistakes. You just have to try to learn from it." I smiled when I heard it.

Maybe I should call his First grade teacher and say thanks.

- Midwest Mom

Are Infant Car Seats Safe?

I just read a recent investigative report by the Chicago Tribune about Infant Safety Seats. It was disturbing to me as a parent, so I thought I would pass it along.

Apparently, there is a problem with infant seats coming off of their base in impact testing. Until the Tribune published their report, no data on such tests had been made public. They have posted video of what can happen in a test dummy trial. They tested every major brand. If you are a parent of a newborn or know someone who will be soon, please brace yourself and have a look. Then, please, please pass the information along.

As a result of this article, today Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a top-to-bottom review of car safety seats, standards, use, and industry testing.

- Midwest Mom