Falling Leaves and Saving Seeds

September 29, 2014

I’m back.  It took me a bit longer to get back to writing than I had originally thought it would.  The main reason for this is because it’s been a bit hard for me to even look at my blog as it’s chock-full of pictures of Max the Wonder Dog. 

On August 14^th, Charming and I had to make the extremely difficult decision to put our beloved Max to sleep.  As it turned out, Max had cancer and didn’t respond to treatment.  Since then both Charming and I have been a little out of sorts.  We found the adjustment so hard that, after the first couple of weeks of mourning, we both started trolling petfinder.com in a vain attempt to find another dog just like Max. 

Of course there can be no other dog like Max and both Charming and I realize that.  I think I now understand why, in the “olden days,” when a woman lost a child her friends and family would encourage her to have another child as soon as possible.  Although we all know fully well that you can’t substitute one child with another, Charming and I were open to the idea of trying to find another dog to fill up our time and immediate thoughts in hopes that we would be able to move forward.

So to make a long story short…a couple of weeks ago, we got another dog from a rescue group in Kentucky.  The pup is (by our vet’s best guess) a little more than a year old.  He is a lab-pit bull mix; the same as our dear Max.  He was in a high-kill shelter in Kentucky when he was rescued by the Bourbon County (Kentucky) Rescue League.  We arranged to “visit” with him when the rescue group made their regular trek to Petco in Germantown, Maryland.  (That was a two-hour drive for us, but it was an enriching experience to see so many dogs and cats find their “fur-ever homes”.)  Our new little guy is a bundle of energy who does take up quite a bit of our time and energy.  He looks a lot like our Max, but he’s much smaller and probably won’t weigh above 50 pounds when he reaches full maturity.  He has one lab ear and one pit bull ear, if you can believe that.  We’ve named him “Jax” and there are moments…like when he’s stretched out on my lap with his legs up in the air, waiting for a belly rub…that we realize that he is a true gift in his own right. 

Moving on…I have been busily canning up the remainder of the vegetables in our garden.  I’ve also been drying and saving seeds.  If you’re an avid gardener, working towards self-sufficiency, or a Prepper then you’re always planning for the future.  The seeds that I save from this season should be viable for the next two or three years.  Saving my own seeds allows me to start the seeds indoors, often before seeds and gardening paraphernalia even show up in the stores.  It also ensures that I get strong, healthy plants that are not genetically modified and have not been exposed to harmful pesticides.  I like to know what I’m eating.

Below are pictures of my seeds saving process as well the finished product, complete with my hand-made seed envelopes.

Dried Napa Cabbage and Large Bunching Onion seeds that
have been drying for about a month in a warm, well-ventilated
room in our house.

Seed packets that I designed, using the "draw" and graphics
features in my word processing application.  (I "drew" in lines
to make it easier to cut uniform lines and then folded and taped
the edges.)

Voila!  Seeds for my garden and extra for family members.

Our Jax is a bit camera shy, but...

I was finally able to snap a picture of him before
he got away.