The View From Here – Gardening Tricks, Quarantine Body Shaming, And Stop Ruining Your Burgers

Do you have a green thumb?  Do you have a love of gardening?  I love flowers and plants, but not sure I’m all that good at it.  Maybe light green thumb?  I think my love of gardening came from visits to my great gramma’s farm.  I remember so many beautiful gardens.  Vegetable gardens and so many flowers.  Glads – hundreds of them.  And the most beautiful rose garden.

I remember those visits so vividly.  My mom loved her flower gardens too, so I come by it naturally.  I may not be the best or have the greenest thumb – but I try.

And I love to learn new tips and tricks.  Like adding banana peels and coffee grinds to your garden.  Did you know they are great to add to your roses?  Add them directly to your garden, and around your roses.

The secret to a beautiful garden, is in the soil.  Compost helps to build the soil, adding nutrients.  An organic fertilizer.  Coffee and banana peels are great additions – that you can add directly to the soil – WITHOUT the compost pile.  As they break down, they add important nutrients like nitrogen, and potassium.  Which give you better blooms.  Potassium strengthens the roses, prevents yellow leaves with brown edges and underdeveloped buds.

Coffee contains small amounts of nitrogen.  It lightens the soil around the plant.  Attracts worms that aerate and loosen the soil.  AND helps keep pests away.

You can ALSO add epsom salts, crushed eggshells, and orange peels. Saving you money on fertilizer and promoting “green” gardening.   I’m pretty sure my neighbours laugh when they see me dumping coffee grinds and banana peels and egg shells in my garden.  Here’s hoping for beautiful blooms on my roses this year.

Some of us have gained a few extra pounds during this whole “quarantine” time.  It’s not hard.  I know I have gravitated towards comfort foods.  Lots of baking too.  Now that I can find flour again.  Cookies. Pie.  Apple crisp.  Yesterday I made cookies, ate half the raw cookie dough, and ate cookies for breakfast.  Don’t judge me.  I ate cookie dough when I was a kid, and I’m still living and breathing.  But with all the extra pounds, and comfort food, comes the body shaming online.  One woman is taking a stand against the pandemic body-shamers.  Photographer Anastasia Garcia created the #MyQuarantineBody campaign to spread a message of empowerment and kindness.  She encourages women to share their own pictures and celebrate who they are as they are, right now.   For Anastasia, the goal is to empower women.  “Nobody can tell you how to feel about your body ― only you can decide that. Watching these women post images and make decisions about how they feel in their bodies at this moment ― that was the power, and it’s my goal to continue to do that.”   Follow Anastasia and her work on Instagram – 

Earlier this week we celebrated National Burger Day!  So many ways to dress up a burger.  but did you know you could be making your burger WRONG? Less is more when it comes to making the perfect burger.  I still like homemade burgers the BEST!  Salt, onion powder, a bit of BBQ sauce, an egg and a few bread crumbs. YUM!

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Carrie Buchanan