This has been rolling around in my head for a while now, and I feel the need to spit it out. Read it, think about it, and take what you will from it. The truth is, I hate arguing, and I’m not very good at it. I don’t expect to change the world — or even your mind — with this; but I do want to write it.

This is a Christian perspective, and I make no apology for using Scripture to back up my views, or from standing firmly on my Christian worldview. However, it is also a “liberal” one, in that most of my Christian friends seem to disagree with my conclusions. So, think whatever you like, but here is my opinion, as it stands now.

On the Wickedness of Humanity

A Christian friend of mine is fond of asking in disbelief when a person is supposed to have amassed enough wealth to go from being just a person to being “evil” and automatically assumed to be stepping on the little people for the sake of his own profit. I see three fundamental flaws with this line of reasoning.

First, a basic tenet of the Christian faith is that all humans are fallen, wicked things, apart from the grace of God. This isn’t a popular thing to say, but it is taught in Scripture. Apart from His working in our hearts, we are slaves to sin, unable to do or act apart from our own ultimately selfish desires. A person doesn’t go from being good to evil because they become rich; their wealth only allows them more control over the rest of us with their existing evil desires. Are there good people who do good, philanthropic things? Of course. But are people fundamentally good? No, I do not believe we are, and Scripture doesn’t teach it. To expect it of people is not reasonable.

Second, a large corporation is not governed by one individual person. It is governed by a body of people (a board of directors, a CEO, and a large number of shareholders), all seeking to protect their own interests. Each person in these scenarios is wise to assume that all others are looking out for themselves, and cannot afford to take an idealistic view of the motives of their fellows. Yes, they are all striving for the ultimate good of the company, because to do otherwise would doom them all, but they are held together not by a web of charity and grace but of selfishness and greed. This web tends to pull at the strands of such motives within each person in it. And despite the onus these words carry with them, this is really the only way things can be. There’s a reason we call it a fallen world.

Third, corporations are simply great machines, built with the goal of generating money. Even the governing structure mentioned above is part of this. There is nothing wrong with this. It is a basic American right to pursue wealth, and one which should not be vilified. Yet, to expect these massive, profit-generating machines and the people who control them to turn from their primary task of wealth generation and become concerned with the well-being of other competing businesses or other sectors of society is to expect more of them than is reasonable. Frankly, it isn’t their job. Yes, corporations and those who run them should be socially responsible, of course, and there are some business gains to be made from doing so, but to expect it of them as a matter of course is to ignore both the underlying wickedness of the men who control them and the purpose for which these machines were created.

Our own government is built on a series of checks and balances, because our founding fathers recognized the untenability of assuming the best in our fellows when these fellows are given power over the rest of us. I do not see why the same Christians who laud the wisdom of our forefathers in this regarding government simultaneously decry any attempt to curtail the actions of corporations who have nearly as much power over our lives, yet far fewer checks and balances.

I ask, not when men suddenly turn evil from because of their wealth, but when they suddenly become saints because of it?

On Voting With Your Wallet

“The market will correct itself,” is another common argument. “People will vote with their money and push corporations to do the right thing.” Again, I see three fundamental flaws.

First, I go back to the wickedness of mankind. Wickedness doesn’t always evince itself in grand actions of evil, but in simple selfish laziness. Can we be certain that enough people will care enough about righteousness and goodness to impact the great corporate machines with their decisions? Most of us can’t even be bothered to vote for the highest office in the country, much less our local elections — how many of us will research the ethics of every business we patronize? In fact, such an undertaking would overwhelm our lives! Not only that, but even if we do discover questionable practices, are we willing to make the sacrifice for the fuzzy good of mankind, or are we more likely to do what makes sense for the betterment of our own families? If majority rules, will the majority make the right choice, or only the conscientious few?

This leads to the second flaw: Do we even have the financial option, en mass, to force ethical practices on corporations? If I can get a shirt from Walmart for half the price I can get it from a local business, do I even have the luxury to choose to support the local business? Can my bank account support those kind of moral decisions? Consider this: Is minimum wage rising in accordance with the moral desires of the people, or with the actual cost of living, sweat shop shirts and all?

Third, despite anti-trust laws, there are some sectors which simply provide us no alternatives. Internet Service Providers are my strongest personal grievance. If I am unhappy with bandwidth throttling or a three-strikes rule, I can’t jump ship and go to another provider. There simply isn’t a viable competitor in my area. Is there one in yours? How can I vote with my wallet when my decision is to either continue paying a company I despise or lose access to the Internet entirely — and with it, the collective knowledge and communication hub of modern mankind (which also happens to be my source of income and my only connection with overseas family)?

Balance. It’s All About Balance.

I can’t stress enough that I don’t believe in the government cracking down and taking control over every aspect of our free economy. History has shown how that turns out. There are rights we should all be guaranteed, from the poorest busboy to the wealthiest CEO.

But history has also shown how the wealthy, when unrestrained, treat the poor, and how the gap widens and oppression results. Really, it makes perfect sense if you accept the tenet that we are all fallen people. It isn’t power that corrupts; it’s corruption that rears its head when we are given power. The motives vary: From fear to greed to simple ignorance — but the result is the same.

This is why our market, like our government, needs to be checked. We are terrified of giving our government too much power, yet we lavish it on our corporate sector. What makes the people in government evil while the people running corporations are not? Make no mistake, money brings power. Why should we give free reign to those who build themselves up in society through wealth, while screaming against any action taken by officials who built themselves up through politics — and, ostensibly, through our own votes?

The market needs checks and balances just like any other powerful force. We must allow them to be put in place — oh so carefully, they must be placed, but they must be there.

There. I’ve said my piece. And if you’ve actually read the whole thing, thanks. Now go make your own decisions as free Americans, whether for good or ill, and God bless the nation that gives us the freedom to do so.

You can send a “happy belated Easter” care package, can’t you? >.>

I painted the eggs with acrylic and sealed them with some Mod Podge over the faces. I wanted to fill them with fun Mario nick knacks, but I didn’t have time. After all, I was already late!

Art is incredibly liberating. It is relaxing, it is expressive, and it is simply fun. The trouble is, I think I’ve had the wrong idea about making art for just about my whole life.

It

When I was a kid, I couldn’t draw worth a fig. Or even a Fig Newton (I hate Fig Newtons). Then one day, my wonderful mom let me take oil painting lessons, and everything changed. I started seeing in terms of what was actually in front of me, rather than what I expected to be there, and my ability to draw made a huge leap forward.

Since then, I haven’t had much trouble drawing things I see. I’m no Michelangelo, but I can passably sketch a lot of stuff. What has always frustrated me to no end is my inability to draw anything I can’t see — things from my own imagination remain resolutely flat, without detail, and with pitiful perspective.

I’ve always wondered, What gives?!

After that magical switch turned on in my brain to let me draw things I could see, I kept waiting for another to flip and let me draw what was in my head. When none did, I’m a bit embarrassed to say I gave up. I figured I just didn’t have It, whatever It was, and what was the point of drawing everything in sight if I could never share ideas from my own mind?

I kind of missed the point.

You see, I forgot about this guy:

Not such a dummy, is he? (by Eowyn_86 on Flickr)

Light bulb moment! Are you ready for it?

Even fancy pants artists don’t just magically have the ability to visualize every one of their ideas in their heads! That’s why the wooden dummy exists. As well as wooden dummies for hands and horses and such.

You know who else uses visual aids to help their work?

Sculpted Russel from "Up"

Yeah, that’s right. The demigods of computer animated storytelling, Pixar.

So I really did miss the point. Being able to sketch the world around me doesn’t make me a noob artist. It makes me a newb artist. (For the non-nerds among us, one means someone who sucks, while the other just means someone who is new to something — they probably also suck, but at least they have an excuse.) The more things I draw, the more I begin to understand the way things are drawn. I’m building a mental toolbox.

In the mean time, I have a near endless resource of source material from which to draw (you see what I did there?) thanks to the magical Intarwebs. If I want to draw a cat, I can look up a cat on Google and probably find a photo of one in a similar position to the one I’m imagining, and sketch that. I can even look at other artwork by other people who have drawn cats and mimic it in order to learn from it. (Obviously I would never pass off a copy of someone else’s work as my own!)

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I don’t think there is a magical switch like that first “draw what you see, not what you think you see” moment. I’m not missing It. There is no It. Just practice, and a strategic use of visual aids.

Yay for no It!!

Right and Wrong

There’s one other thing I’m recently coming to accept. There is no right or wrong way to make art. And as a corollary, you won’t ever be able to please everyone.

I’ve known both of these things for a long time, but I haven’t really been able to accept them deep down. I’ve always looked at my work with a certain uncertainty, an undefinable dissatisfaction, a complete sense of incompletion. I’ve always said, “Well, there it is. I wonder if that’s Right?” I did the same thing with fashion, which kept me bottled up in drab colors and sensible outfits for far too long.

I think I’m finally coming to a point in my life where I can say that I don’t really care if it’s Right. I can actually like my art and my fashion and expressions of my self regardless of what anyone else may think of them.

There’s a bit of codependency I never realized I had dying off right there. Burn, baby, burn.

And that really is the whole point of art, isn’t it? To express yourself, not just by creating your own worlds, but sometimes just by illustrating how you see the one around you. How could that ever be Right or Wrong, and how could it ever be pointless?

Continued from Part 1.

When last we left our hero (and I use the term loosely), she had just finished tilling and amending the horrible soil in the horribly hot and dry Las Vegas valley.

When I began my landscaping project, my plan was to get the plants in the ground now, and worry about an irrigation system later. There was just one problem: When you pour water over my dirt, it doesn’t sink in. It just kind of lays there, looking at you, or tries to run away entirely.

Clearly, this would not do for my plants, which won’t need a lot of water, but will still need some. A drip system seems the perfect solution to this problem, since it delivers water oh-so-slowly that even the most stubborn soil has to accept it.

Besides which, drip systems are extremely water efficient, making them cheaper and more planet-friendly than any other watering method. Did I know anything more than that about irrigation in general or drip systems in particular? Of course not. But I was just sure it would be a good idea! (And you know what? I was right.)

Step 2.a: Install Pressure Vacuum Breaker

The first thing I did was to attend a conveniently timed free drip irrigation class put on by the Southern Nevada Water Authority at the Springs Preserve. If you’re in Las Vegas and planning to do anything like this yourself, I highly recommend it. We even built valve manifolds in the class!

Did I mention it was free?

By the way, I didn’t even know what a “valve manifold” was until I took this class. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

According to the SNWA, the first thing I needed to do was to install a Pressure Vacuum Breaker (PVB). This is a fancy copper device that looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book and keeps irrigation water from back-flowing into your house’s drinking water. It’s a good idea, and it’s also required by local building codes here.

Nearly every home will already have one, but if you live in a neighborhood like mine where the front yard irrigation is controlled by your HOA, you won’t necessarily have access to it. I got mine from Plant World for somewhere around $70.

Speaking of Plant World, the guys in the irrigation area are fantastic. They must’ve spent 45 minutes with me the first time I went in there helping me figure out exactly what I needed to do and how to do it, answering all the questions I didn’t know I had until I actually went to buy the parts. Then they gave me a military discount and a coupon.

So anyhow, back to the PVB. You can also use something called an anti-siphon something-or-other instead, which is loads cheaper, but if you get that, you have to install a separate one for each irrigation valve, so they add up in cost and annoyance quickly — three valves and you’re paying more than you would have for a PVB. I opted for the more heavy-duty, all-in-one solution.

This (and I apologize for the night photo) is what I had to work with:

Did you know this was called a "bib"?

So, I unscrewed the hose faucet (which is called a “bib” by fancy people), and was left with this:

That nut doesn't come off.

The folks at my local Home Depot were super helpful, and told me I needed to shove the nut back as far as I could, and take a hacksaw to the little ring that was wedged around it — being very careful not to damage the pipe — so it would break and I could pull it, and the nut, off.

Those indents are from my saw.

BAM!

This took some serious elbow grease. There is some kind of fancy plumbers’ tool you can buy for $30-$40 bucks that eliminates the need to saw, but this was quite good enough for a one-time thing.

Next, I polished it up…

And started adding pieces:

This is called a "Shark Bite". It easily snaps onto the pipe so you can screw things into it.

This is the assembly of tubes and connectors (5 pieces in total) that will let me attach the PVB out the top. This required a bit of critical thinking to figure out, kindly preformed for me by a guy at Home Depot.

The pipe joint compound is a goopy white paste that needs to be slathered all over any threaded connections to prevent leaks. You can also use Teflon tape, but this is what the Home Depot guy gave me, so this is what I used.

Next came the actual PVB, which had to be glued into that piece of PVC pipe sticking out the top…

I told you it looked like something out of Dr. Seuss.

And now I was ready to start working on the drip system valves.

Step 2.b.: Install the Valve Manifold(s)

Time for a whole lot of digging, because the valve manifold needs to be buried.

I mentioned my dirt is like concrete, didn’t I?

All that stuff in the hole is what I get to install next.

Fast forward just a bit, and this is what I ended up with:

The rocks in the bottom are for drainage, and the two extra PVC pipes are to allow for additional manifolds to be added in the future.

I cut all that PVC pipe with one of these bad boys:

No, I didn't take this pic. Did the grass give it away? (Image from: e-scoutcraft.com)

And bonded it together using “Hot Blue Glue,” which isn’t actually glue at all. It actually melts the PVC together using some kind of crazy chemical reaction.

Science is cool.

It’s also smelly and toxic, so wear a mask.

Anyway, here’s a close-up of the valve manifold, the heart of the whole system:

The valve manifold is where the tubing will come off to go out to the yard. It is made up of three primary parts, connected with PVC couplings. From left to right:

1. the valve itself, which has a wire coming off the top to hook into an electronic timer,
2. a filter to keep the emitters from getting clogged up (especially important here with our hard water and fine dirt particles),
3. and a pressure regulator, so the water doesn’t come flying out of your pipes at full speed and fling your drip emitters all over the yard.

Every connection in the manifold has to be tight enough to prevent leaks, but if it’s too tight it will actually cause leaks, so all the professionals say, “hand tighten only.” This is great, going from one to tough plumber dude to another tough plumber dude, but have you seen my hands? Well, maybe you haven’t, but they aren’t exactly muscle-ridden macho wonder-hands. This meant a lot of guess work on my part, and some using of my vice-grip wrench, despite the cautions.

Of course, you can’t test the thing until you’ve glued it on, so any further tightening (or loosening) has to be done while you’re standing on your head in the dirt.

In short, it was a bit of a pain.

You use pipe joint compound on all the threaded bits, and blue glue on all the smooth PVC bits.

Oh, and by the way, that little black tube coming out of the pressure regulator? That isn’t actually one piece. I thought it was, until I turned the system on and it exploded off of there and made me scream like a little girl — but it’s not, so you have to glue it.

So anyhow, when it was all done, I got so excited that I put the box thingy over it and partially buried it.

Well now, doesn't that look fancy!

Big mistake.

You see, in just a couple of days, I would realize that I needed to un-bury the thing and add another manifold.

And, having experienced how much of a pain it was to dig up once and realizing I never wanted to do it again, I decided that before I buried it again, I’d better put the third one on there, just in case I decided to follow through with my theoretical plan of drip irrigating my potted plants, too.

You’ll also notice the tubing attached to the pressure regulator running out to the yard; that’s also something you should add before burying the box.

P.S. I think I was supposed to turn the box sideways. Oh well.

Step 2.c.: Run the Tubing, Add the Emitters

There are two types of drip emitter systems:

1. inline emitters, in which the emitters are embedded right into the tube,
2. and point source, in which each emitter is above-ground on its own tiny tube run off the main, buried tube.

The brown tubes are pre-fab inline emitters, to water the ground cover going around my stepping stones, and the black ones are 1/2" poly tubing for point source watering of my shrubs.

You can buy 1/2 inch wide tubing with inline emitters pre-installed at 12, 18, or 24 inch intervals. This is great if you are doing a large area with lawn or ground cover (did you know lawn could live off a drip system?), or a vegetable garden where your plants are in grids. It is not great if you’re planning to water a bunch of randomly spaced shrubs. It is also pretty expensive, since the emitters are pre-installed.

For point source, what you do is buy polyethylene (aka “plastic”) tubes, commonly called “poly tubing”. You can get it in 1/2 inch or 1/4 inch widths, but for a large area, you want 1/2 inch. From here, you could install your emitters in-line by punching holes in the tubing and jamming your emitters right in. A better idea for maintenance purposes is to do the point source method. You get these little barbed connectors that you jab in the aforementioned holes, then add 1/4 inch tubes to stick up out of the dirt and hold your emitters.

Little tubes sticking up from the big tube - no emitters installed yet.

Oh, and you aren’t supposed to put poly tubing and pre-fab inline tubing on the same valve manifold, which is why I needed to add the second valve.

You connect both types of 1/2 inch tubing by shoving the ends into plastic barbed couplers.

These are HELL to work with. All I could think of the entire time was, “If a woman had designed these, they wouldn’t be so blasted hard to use!” Come on, you know it’s true. ;) I eventually discovered:

1. Don’t buy anything of the “ez-snap” variety. Every single one of them leaked when I turned the system on and had to be cut out and replaced, and they were actually harder to use than the standard, cheaper kind.
2. Do use soap to lubricate the tube and the coupling.
3. Heat is supposed to make the tubing more supple, so doing this in the blazing afternoon sun isn’t as terrible an idea as it may at first seem.

After you get all the 1/2 inch tubing installed, you flush it out to get rid of random debris, and you check for leaks. (This was when I discovered all the connections leaking the first time. Ugh.) Then you need to flush it again after you get all your 1/4 inch tubing attached, before adding the emitters.

Emitters come in different output rates, ranging from 1/2 to 2 gallons per hour. With my terrible clay soil, I should have bought 1 or even 1/2 gph emitters.

But… I kind of forgot about that when I went to the store.

And… I sort of bought a bag of the first ones I saw, which happened to be 2 gph. Oh well.

At least it will be easy to replace them, if I ever get around to it, because they’re sticking out of the dirt on 1/4″ tubes!

They look rather obvious for now, but the plants will cover them up as they grow.

The best part was when I turned it on for the first time and one of them just shot this tiny stream for like 10 feet into the air. I went over and played with it a while before replacing it. I mean, it’s hot here when you’re out in the sun all day!

Now it was time to bury my box…

And enjoy my yard!

Next step: putting landscaping rock around the perimeter. Maybe I’ll give myself a week before I start that one…

I’ve never cared much for gardening. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, there was no such thing. Oh there was plenty of yard work — but “gardening”? Not so much. The fact that the first place I lived away from home was so humid it literally made me feel ill to be outside could also have something to do with it.

Then, I moved to the desert. Talk about your 180′s.

Yet for some reason, it was here, in the desert — the “go through a bottle of lotion a week,” “100 degrees on a good day in the summer,” “all the yards are made of rocks and clay” desert — it was here of all places, that I decided I wanted a garden. Chalk it up to my husband being stationed overseas for a year, to redefining myself as a house-wife with a part-time job, to being sick and tired of playing the victim of my location, or to just being slightly masochistic, but there it is.

The dirt is so unforgiving, it needs a pick axe to break through most of it. And, thanks to the aforementioned horrible heat, horrible soil, and horrible dryness (not to mention the horrible water costs thanks to the horrible 10+ year, valley-wide drought we’re in), the only sensible way to have a garden is to install a drip system.

This is the yard as it started

Enter: One 26-year-old computer nerd female without a muscle in her body and zero experience building anything that isn’t made of pixels. “I THINK I’LL PLANT A GARDEN!!” Because I’m smart like that.

Yep, I'm a tough one.

Amazingly? It’s all going rather well. BAM. I bet you didn’t see that one coming.

Step 1: Amend the Soil

As you can see in the photo above, the dirt was packed down so hard, it was pretty much like concrete. It was also completely devoid of all life. I mean, we’re talking excitement if I spotted an ant. If you know anything about gardening (which I didn’t), you know that dirt without some kind of insect life isn’t a good sign, and it isn’t going to make for a particularly happy garden. Dirt without plant life also means it has no nutritional value for anything planted in it. There were a few horrible, horrible, nettle-covered, brittle, tumbleweed-like things lining the sides of my house, but these added exactly nothing, I’m certain.

Nothing except pain and sadness as I cleared them out, that is.

Anyway, I started doing some reading (mostly from this book) and learned about soil amendments. Plants need three primary minerals and a myriad of secondary minerals in order to survive. You don’t really have to worry about the secondary minerals, but the primary ones are what fertilizers (aka plant foods) provide. Most of our desert soil is devoid of two of those three. So, I got myself some fancy slow-releasing, organic fertilizers in the form of blood meal and rock phosphate, as well as a few bags of compost to improve the texture and minor-mineral content, and I started digging up my yard. After all, you can’t mix fertilizer into concrete dirt.

Soil, such as it is

I worked in strips for a few days, and I was getting about 2-3 feet width done per day. By my calculations, it would only have taken me a solid month to finish digging it all up. No biggie. Just 30 days of back-breaking labor with a shovel and pick axe before I could start planting things.

Hm…

It's not a grave, I swear...

Maybe I needed to rethink this.

18 in. 196cc Rear Counter-Rotating Gas-Powered 4-Cycle Tiller

Hello, Beautiful. This amazing machine I rented powered through 30 days of work in less than an hour (thanks to my friend who used his man-muscles to wrangle it so it didn’t eat me). Of course it only tills down about 5 inches, but that would be more than enough to let me dig in the amendments.

POW!

Tilled!

Now, we’re getting somewhere. I was so excited when this part was done, I went out and bought a whole bunch of plants. After all, the only thing left was digging some stuff into the ground. It would only be a few days before I could get my plants in the ground, right?

Ha. Ha. Ha. Right. Remember that drip system I talked about? Well, at this point I hadn’t decided to install one just yet, but let’s just say a drip system isn’t exactly a quick afternoon project.

In fact, it’s such a long project, I think I’ll give it its own post. Stay tuned for Chapter 2!

Today I visited the Las Vegas Springs Preserve for the first time. I was impressed! I’d heard mixed reviews, so I wasn’t expecting much, but I don’t know what the haters were hating about. I took a container gardening workshop, then a tour of the demonstration gardens. It was a lot of fun and really informative, and I’m definitely going back for more classes. I can’t wait to see it in the spring!

I went to Lowes the other day to pick up some herbicide, and do you know what I discovered? They’re expensive! Shocking, right? In a momentary lapse of judgement, I bought some anyway.

After I got home, I decided that rather than pay $25/gal for something environmentally terrifying which I’d no doubt need many gallons of, I could probably find a recipe online to make my own. It turns out there were several, and I returned the chemicals the next day (or maybe it was the day after… you get the idea!).

Here is what I found: boiling water, bleach, salt, rubbing alcohol, corn meal, vinegar, and simple sunlight starvation can all be used to kill weeds on the cheap, and keep them that way.

1. Boiling water cooks the roots right in the ground. 
2. Bleach kills just about anything and dissipates in a few days. (This seems environmentally hazardous to me, even if it does dissipate…)
3. “Salting the earth” does just what you expect, killing plants and poisoning the soil; the more you use, the longer it lasts, even up to a few months. 
4. Rubbing alcohol sucks the water right out of a plant and then evaporates.
5. Corn gluten meal prevents seeds from germinating. NOTE: Corn gluten meal is not the same thing as corn meal, and is fairly expensive in comparison. I’m considering buying this one from Amazon, or this one that doesn’t include extra fertilizer.
6. Vinegar kills the leaves (not the roots), traumatizing the plant; enough hits, and the plant will eventually die.
7. As for sunlight starvation, you can put down a thick layer of newspaper or even plastic.

All of these methods are non-selective, meaning hot water, for example, will cook your favorite rose bush as quickly as a nasty weed, but since I’m trying to murder everything in sight to lay down a layer of rock, I’m good to go. If you want to be more selective, you’ll either need a commercial product or will just have to be very, very careful. (By the way, if you live in a desert climate like I do, weed-selective commercial products will probably kill the plants you want, anyway; most of what grows here has more in common with a weed than a violet.)

Dead Weeds Horizontal by M.Markus on Flickr

My Recipe

I decided to go with a simple recipe: boiling water loaded with salt purchased for around $.50 a box at my local dollar store. After I’ve done the whole area, I’ll add a salt-cornmeal mix over the top and cover the area with plastic before laying down my landscaping rock. Edit: I’ve since learned that cornmeal won’t have the same effect as corn gluten meal. Bummer.

There are three downsides to this if you’re doing a large area (a few stubborn weeds or a small area would be easy). The first is minor: the house smells funny after boiling gallons upon gallons of salt water.

Second, it’s actually a bit dangerous! I’ve managed to splash it on myself just once for quite a nasty burn across my midriff. I’m thinking of buying one of these, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Third, I’ve spent the past two afternoons running (actually, walking very, very carefully) from my kitchen to my yard with huge pots of boiling salt water, and I’m still not done. The actual pouring doesn’t take long, even being as methodical as I am, but it takes about 10-15 minutes for each pot to reach boiling, making for a few very long afternoons. I ask you, what am I supposed to do with such teeny bursts of time? Here are a few ideas I came up with:

Garden Clock by Pietro Izzo on Flickr

Things to Do in 15 Minutes Intervals

1. Pull weeds, prune plants, etc., etc.
2. Watch a movie you’ve already seen.
3. Crochet or knit, or do some other craft project that can handle constant interruptions.
4. Dust.
5. Sort your pantry/cupboards/whatever.
6. Do the dishes.
7. Clean stuff.
8. Write a blog post (ta-da!).
9. Groom the cat (or whoever).
10. Look on Pinterest for more crazy ideas to eat up better your life.

Happy weeding!

Tonight I was craving blueberries and chicken. I’ve never had it before, but I picked up some blueberries at the store today and for some reason, the combination just sounded perfect. Go figure.

Looking online, I found a stove-top version that looked good from AllRecipes, and a baked one from A Few Short Cuts. I decided to combine the two, and put my own healthy spin on them by using honey instead of sugar, and raw apple cider vinegar for its various health benefits. The coconut oil I used in the side items is also supposed to be some sort of wonder food.

And, of course, it’s portioned for one: little ol’ me.

Baked Blueberry Chicken With Asparagus and Coconut Rice

Ingredients

• 1 Chicken Breast
• 1 Cup Blueberries
• 1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard
• Splash Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1/4 Cup Honey
• 1 Cup Uncooked Rice
• 2 Tbsp Coconut Oil
• Bunch Asparagus

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350*F.
2. Heat the honey and blueberries over medium heat, stirring constantly. The berries will start to release their juices as they heat (yum!).
3. Bring them to a boil, then allow to boil for 1 minute, still stirring.
4. Remove from heat and add mustard and vinegar. Adjust quantities so you can taste each of the flavors, or to your liking, at this point.
5. Pour over thawed chicken breast in an oven-safe container (I used my smallest cast iron pan), and bake at 350*F for 30 minutes.
6. While it’s baking, cook your rice using your preferred method, and throw about 1 Tbsp of coconut oil into the water while it cooks.
7. About 15 minutes before your chicken is done, start your asparagus steaming. Cook for around 10 minutes after the water begins to boil, or until they are bright green and tender. Serve slathered in the remaining Tbsp coconut oil.
8. Serve the chicken over the rice with the asparagus on the side, and dump the extra blueberry sauce all over everything. YUM!

Notes

While a delicious recipe, it does temporarily stain your teeth blue-black, so it may not be the best date food! ;)

I went to the Las Vegas Pet Expo on Saturday. I’ve never seen so many dogs in one place! My favorites were the huge ones like the Great Danes and Great Pyrenees, but they were so big in such a crowded space that I found it impossible to get a good picture.

I had a great time, but I was disappointed that it was about 80% dog-centric, 19% cat, and 1% anything else. Besides cats and dogs, there was one reptile booth promoting the Southern Nevada Herpetological Society, a booth across from it with a bunny and a pig, and… that was it. Cat stuff was limited. While I’m complaining, food was only available from the Cashman Center’s concession area, and was horribly overpriced ($9 for a dry turkey sandwich, a bottle of water, and a pile of mediocre chips). I’m glad I brown-bagged it! I don’t know if the Center would have allowed it, but booths offering food for a donation to various causes would have raked in a fortune and been much easier to pallet for visitors. I also was expecting more boutique concession stands with fancy collars and clothing for various furry friends, but although there were a few, I was disappointed overall.

That said, it was a blast looking at all the booths that were there and the crazy variety of dogs people brought with them. I also learned a few things from the reptile presentation, and found out about a wheat-based litter that acts like clay-based litters but is much easier on the environment (I’d been looking for something like this already due to environmental concerns, so the demonstration sold me instantly). My friend also discovered a local Las Vegas bakery with a whole line of gluten-free, vegan cake pops, working nicely around her dairy allergy.

Now, on to the pics!

CATwalk. Get it? Teehee!

Let's Adopt ALL the Pets!!

(Scariest Promotional Pen Ever!)

These "Porta Scoops" Crack Me Up!