This Week (Head Colds, Festivals, and Seed-Saving)

Plant propagation projects: succulents grown from single leaves, and a sweet potato that decided to sprout.
Also, tiny Tabasco bottles.

I’ve had a head cold for the past couple days— yay summer sickness! I’ve been dosing myself with saltwater gargling and garlic-heavy food, although I really wish I had a batch of Cold Kicker Remedy. That stuff will knock your head off, but it certainly helps shorten a cold (and keeps me from losing my voice)! My mom and I swear by it over the winter. The formula needs a few weeks to steep, so I’m hoping to buy the ingredients this week so I can have a batch ready by mid-October.

Mikkel and Mikko... coming soon!

Speaking of October... I can officially announce that I’m going to be participating in not one, but two St. Charles festivals this year! I’m returning for my 11th season of Christmas Traditions, but also participating in the brand-new Legends and Lanterns festival. If you come down to St. Charles the last two weekends in October, you might run into a cranky old Russian woman called Baba Yaga, who uncannily resembles me. I’m super excited!

Also, I can’t believe I held out for two paragraphs before babbling about the weather. September has seemed very eager to get a jump on fall, and I am not complaining! I hope some weekend backpacking excursions are in our future— this weather is so nice. In the meantime, I’ve been keeping up on my garden a bit better and not getting heatstroke when I mow the lawn, so that’s good.

My garden has also been enjoying the break in brutal weather. The highlight of my gardening week was seeing the peas that I planted last week start to sprout! This was especially exciting because I harvested the peas from my spring crop and dried them in a paper bag over the past couple months. I planted two to a spot because I wasn’t sure if they’d germinate, but almost all of them have sprouted! Since this is an heirloom variety, I can save the peas from every crop and plant them again. Eventually I’d love to do this with most of my crops, both to save money and for the cool factor. In the meantime, I’m eager to see how my first seed-saving venture turns out.

And last of all, I have finally admitted to myself that I am, indeed, writing a PCT memoir. In the past two weeks, I’ve been butchering the long version of the story into a breathless, slightly more introspective Clif notes draft. As usual, writing something shorter is much harder than writing something long— it’s been a challenge, and it’s been amazingly fun. Every day, I wake up excited to get to work on it. So far I’ve finished a horrible rough draft of the desert section, which means I’m right on track. At this point, I feel good about the project. After all, if I can walk 2,600 miles, I can probably write a book, right?

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!

~Lisa