Violets and rescue chickens. The Chapter after Next?

Well, hello there!

It has been a shamefully long time since I've done much more than momentarily remember, with a twinge of guilt, this poor neglected blog.

 I miss it, to be honest.  I miss the life I was living while I wrote here regularly even more. 

The trouble--if we stick with the "next chapter" theme-- is that my life-book is no longer where it was when this blog began.   We're on the chapter after next at this point.

No longer am I an unemployed student exploring all of the ways I could build, bake, grow, or otherwise create the items we use in our daily lives.  I've reached a plateau in homesteadery due mainly to limits of time and energy...now that I am working outside the home again, it has become vividly clear to me that one type of work necessarily cancels out the ability to fully maintain the other.   (But that is a blog post to tackle another day--the economics of home-work versus outside-work.)

Hence, the lack of homesteading-specific blog material.  I'm not doing many new projects at this point, but simply trying to keep up with all of the others.  We still operate this household differently from many others; I am still always looking for ways to live better on less.  I think it is time, however, to change the fundamental purpose of this blog from an exploration of urban homesteading to a more general purpose, this-is-my-life-and-I-happen-to-be-into-herbs-chickens-and-craftiness type offering.

So, with that, here we go:

What, you may ask, is going on at our place on this pretty day in May?  Well, quite a bit, actually.

Dandelion jelly.  Violet jelly.  The first crop of plantain for infusing in oil.  The first stage of integrating a rescue chicken into our flock (i.e., run, Elsa, run!).  Lilacs perfuming the homestead with their ethereal fragrance.  And lots of lazy time with coffee on a gorgeous Sunday morning. 

This is what it looks like to start the jelly-making process.  I'll get to the actual jelling part in a bit....

...but first, a quick word about pollinators and herbicides.

The latter is killing off the former (with a lot of help from pesticides, of course).  These critters pollinate some of your favorite foods.  Like berries, avocadoes, almonds...and chocolate.

Worse,  home use of herbicides is the top source of run-off pollution in our lakes and rivers.  Not agricultural spraying.  Not commercial or industrial use.  Nope...it's the poison you pay to put on your lawn.  Ugh.   Please quit using that stuff and embrace your inner dandelion.

These little dudes will thank you.

But back to my jelly.  It is no great hardship to sit, surrounded by this loveliness, snipping stems off of flowerheads.

Dandelion petals, plantain leaves, and violet flowers.

The 2 cup measure runneth over.

This will turn pink later in the recipe...but what a gorgeous blue!

 Now I'll let these steep all day to make a strong tea.  The tea is the basis for the jelly recipe (add sugar, lemon juice, and pectin...boil...process in a water bath....yum).

 More soon!

Happy spring....