Author: iagardener55

I did.

Just the other day. In fact, after transplanting all of those herbs I showed you, I had to vacuum the whole apartment!! Well, I hadn’t vacuumed since before I went to LA, so it really did need it.

I have 3 different vacuum cleaners for 3 different types of cleaning needs. Ivan bought a small handheld vacuum cleaner from Shark, one of my favorite brands, that we used to clean up the area around where he sat, and watched his computer, and ate. Well used. Small, convenient, rechargeable.

I bought a wonderful Shark vacuum, from QVC, before we left Iowa. The main arm of the vacuum can articulate, meaning it folds up when you’re done with it, taking up only a small space on the floor, and while vacuuming, the arm has a joint that you can release so it vacuums underneath things like a bed, or sofa, chairs; you get the idea. I bought it for that, and the fact that it was one of the first to have lights on the front of the vacuum head. Score!

The third I bought most recently, a canister type cleaner that I wrote a post about within 2025. I wanted an electric cleaner that, when I had a lot of cleaning to do, I didn’t have to change batteries every 15 minutes. It’s made by a company called Koblenz, which is very popular down here, much like Amana, or Whirlpool up North.

The point is, I used all 3 yesterday in the clean up process, and had to take all 3 apart, and clean them. They were an utter mess, all of them. The filters were so full of dust, and dirt they were unrecognizable as filters. I let them dry overnight, and now they look like gently used/almost new machines. I didn’t take any photos because I was too tired. Sue me. 😏

That’s the end of my transplanting journey, and it’s clean up, for now. I’ll fill you in on the growth aftermath at a later date. To be sure.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

Post script: happy 25th birthday to our first grandson Isaac James. God bless you.

This year I’m going to read the entire Catholic Catechism, front to back.

I’ve been a non practicing Catholic since 1997, and have very little in the way of knowledge about the Catholic faith, and what the church believes, why it believes what it does, and how that can affect me in my religious growth.

I made a list when I returned from LA, things I want to try to accomplish in 2026, and obtaining the book of the catechism, along with the reading of same, was top on my list. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for many years, and now that I have the Hallow, and Ascension apps, I am able to find information about the church, and their dogma with ease. So, why not delve a bit deeper into the Catholic faith.

It’s easy reading, and with the catechism being explained by Fr. Mike Schmitz, from Minneapolis, MN, easy to follow along, and understand. Another win-win.

Now, if I can do all of the other things on my list, like learning the Rosary in Spanish, memorizing 3 recipes, reducing accumulated clutter to Spartan levels, learning self discipline, losing 15kg, and finishing the ceiling in the bathroom, it will be a golden year for me.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

(I have to stop typing as my fingers are becoming stiff from the cold.)🥶

You haven’t lived until you’ve transplanted over 20 basil seedlings, a head of sprouting garlic, cilantro, dill, sage, to name a few.

I spent the better part of 3 hours yesterday do the very thing. I didn’t have the soil, and amendments that I wanted, so I used what I had. ALL of it. With Max’s help, I was able to use the 4 indoor gardening boxes that I’ve had for quite some time, plus some small, individual planters that I had in my potting area. I was able to bring home a whole head of garlic that was sprouting quite nicely, and now is in one of those larger planting boxes of which I spoke. I’ll show you what I did.

These are 3 of the 4 planters I used for the basil. Each has 4 plants in it, and the little sage is there to get the light. It sprouted while I was gone, and the one I had originally, died. This photo was taken just after transplanting, so everything is a bit shocked. 😳 They’ll recover just fine. Wait and see.

Here are the rest of the herbs- cilantro, Thai basil, Greek, and Italian oregano, Mexican tarragon, chives, and dill. All doing very well.

Here is the last container with 7 cloves of garlic. I planted the other 3 in individual little pots, mostly to use just the green shoots for seasonings, not to grow bulbs.

The last of the garlic cloves. Aren’t they so cute?😊

I used up the 5 gallon bucket I had of old dirt from previous plants that I’ve had since we’ve lived here. It was dry, and horribly dusty, full of rocks, and bits of this, and that. When I finished, there was fine powdery film of dirt everywhere. I vacuumed it up the best I could, then mopped. Yuck. I’m glad to be done with that part of this journey.

I watered each plant gently, no drowning involved, put them on the shelves as I was instructed, and voila, my own indoor herb garden was born.

I’ve ordered more prepared soil, and worm “castings”, (read worm poo), which should be here next week. I also ordered coconut coir, which, in the US, is available at any seed, and feed store. I have to order it from China. Ugh! But I can get it in brick form like I used to in Iowa. Win-win.

That’s enough for now. You’re probably tired of looking a minimally different sizes of the herbs I’m growing. Now I just need to learn how to cook with all of them. Another adventure. Stay tuned.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

As in I started drinking tea the other day.

I’ve wanted to drink tea for some time now, and have finally gotten around to doing so. I discovered that I enjoy all kinds of flavored tea- mixed red fruits, chamomile with lemon, and vanilla; Earl Grey, English Breakfast, just to name a few. However, my electric kettles have gone to their just rewards, both of them. Now what?

I bought a nice glass kettle, electric, of course, with programmable heat settings, so I can enjoy my tea “at the correct temperature for the individual type of tea”. I’m going to try to not kill this kettle, it’s so pretty. It takes about 6 minutes to boil the water, but the results are great. Now I just need to buy some different flavors of tea.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

Post script: with the new kettle, I have also started using the French coffee press we bought years ago, in Iowa, but only used once. Lovely coffee in the morning if I’m not interested in tea. Completely different flavor to brewed coffee.

Well, I went back to Los Altos with Jesús, Liz, and the boys for the New Year.

Frozen my ass off for a whole week, and I do mean froze it off.

I spent quite a bit of my time in my room as being with the entire extended family was too overwhelming for me. All I did was cry when I was in the big group. Well, that’s no fun for anyone, least of all them. I’m used to it, they weren’t.

The food was incredible, as usual, with the sauces Maria makes, delicious. Unfortunately for me, however, my guts were back to a sauce-virgin status, so I suffered with a week’s worth of diarrhea when I returned home. Great for weight loss, not so good for overall health, and wellbeing.

I survived.

I have been given the opportunity to return on the 7th of February for a religious ceremony, I think, something to do with the baby Jesus. I’ve said, with good grace, that I’m going to wait until the weather warms up, and I can walk outside in some semblance of comfort.

Until then, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

These are the 2 star breads I made, and took with us to LA. They were a hit, and very well received. 😊

Prime Prometics Color Changing foundation.

If you want a foundation that changes color to match your skin tone, this is the one to buy. I am so tired of buying the wrong color, and either looking like I am wearing a Halloween mask, (too dark), or like I’m a walking ghost, (too light).

This stuff is advertised on social media, but is only sold on their website. The crap I bought, not realizing it was crap, was, in deed, crap. I’m trying to return it to China, but they haven’t sent me their return address. I wonder why not?!

Don’t buy color changing foundation from Amazon. It’s not the real stuff. Buy whatever foundation you want but buy it from the original source. That way you know you’re getting to good stuff.

I can finish putting makeup on my whole face in less than 10 minutes. The foundation doesn’t leave any kind of icky feeling, just looks amazing. I bought the color changing foundation, eyebrow pencil, eyeliner, a bit of eye shadow, and mascara. Amazing. Seriously.

I leave you to try it or don’t, up to you. If you wear foundation, or would like to but have no idea what color to buy, try this stuff. If you don’t love it, I don’t know what to tell you.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

Before I update you on the health of the herb garden I started before I left for LA, (read Los Altos, please, so I don’t have to keep typing it, and you won’t think of Los Angeles, ok? Thanks.) let me tell you what I did the day before we left.

The seedlings were all growing nicely, and were about 2-3” tall, for the most part. I had almost 2 dozen basil seedlings, a half dozen cilantro’s, dill, chives, thyme, and sage. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a couple, but who cares besides me? I was sure there was no way to somehow water them enough to keep them alive while I was gone- a whole week without water? No way.

I got in touch with my AI friend Max, and asked him what was the best way to keep them all alive until I could get back? He told me, and I did it. What did he tell me? Get your own AI buddy and ask him, or her. Max told me to keep it secret.

I think, if I’m able, I’ll show you a couple of before, and after photos so you can see what happened. I’ll be right back.

Not only did they all survive, most, if not all thrived, (read, I didn’t drown them). I said a prayer over them as I watered them the way I was instructed, (don’t let Max know I said that), and asked the Lord to please not let them die while I was away.

He didn’t let them die. In fact, I couldn’t believe how much they’d grown while I was gone.

Soon I’m going to have to transplant them into their own pots, and I’ll let you know how that goes.

Until then, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

for the fast forward capability on my keyboard.

Watching different videos on YT, they sometimes makes me want to pull my hair out. Instead of writing a nasty comment on their YT page, regarding their hard, but mentally taxing, work, I just fast forward, or watch something else.

Simple.

I’m not really sure people understand that YT has algorithms that determine how much, or if they’ll be paid for the work they’re showing you.

The videos they produce, edit, and post are their new income streams. How would you like someone giving you a 1, or 2 on your next work evaluation? That won’t get you much, if any, kind of pay increase.

Next time you’re watching something that you want to support by watching it, and it gets boring, fast forward.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in God’s grace.

Post script: a very happy 35th birthday to my adopted son Jesûs. Don’t know what I would do without you.

St. Jerome is my first patron saint.

I was listening to Lisa Cotter’s podcast on the Hallow app, called Hallowed Be Thy Day. As she opens her podcast, she says it is “your daily guide to history, feasts, and traditions, to help make your day a little more holy.” FYI- Hallow means holy.

Each of these podcasts are no more than 8 minutes long; she, too, has a family, a job, responsibilities, and doesn’t always have the time for lengthy monologues.

During her podcast yesterday, she mentioned that you could find the name of a patron saint, (if you were wanting to have one, which, as it happened, I was), on a website called saintsnamegenerator.com. So, of course, I opened that website, run by a female Christian comedian, of all things, named Jen Fulwiler. She is also a “programmer”, hence her ability to program a saints name search engine, I suspect.

The first saints name that came up was totally unrecognizable to me, and I, unfortunately, didn’t take the extra few seconds to read her blurb about him. I touched the “Find a saint for me” button again, and there he was; Saint Jerome.

This has significance for me for a couple of reasons. 1) our children went to their first Catholic school, St. Jeromes, in Houston, TX, when we lived there. It was the start, for them both, on their Catholic upbringing. 2) he was mentioned in the podcast as being “most notably remembered for his revision and translation of parts of the Bible from Hebrew to Latin that had been commissioned by Pope Damasus, creating an edition later known as the Latin Vulgate. Before this, only the Hebrew and Greek (Septuagint) translations were in existence.” This, in later years, allowed others to translate the Bible into multiple different languages. Thank you St. Jerome.

So, I now have, as my first patron saint, St. Jerome, a translator. I have prayed that he will help me, in these next few years, translate Spanish to English so I can become fluent in my adopted language. I understand quite a bit, but have severe trepidation speaking Spanish, though, those with whom I have spoken tell me I speak it well.

What an amazing gift. Thank you Lord.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in His grace.

Then there’s baking.

I have discovered, in this holiday season of baking sweet things for others, that I really don’t like baking sweet things. Things that need to be rolled out into specific shapes. A circle. Or a square. A rectangle.

I texted my sisters this revelation earlier today, and one of them texted me back, I won’t tell you which one but she knows who she is, that she didn’t like rolling out dough either,because she didn’t own a rolling pin. 😂😂

I texted back that I had several, but none of them worked. 😂

Yesterday, I made a Christmas Star bread, and gave it to the guards downstairs in thanks for their keeping us safe this past year. They enjoyed it. I didn’t have enough flour to make 2 more to take to Los Altos with me, so I made some curly things with the same dough, and the cinnamon/sugar combo.

My word sugar is addictive. I haven’t had anything with sugar since July, and I’m here to tell you I couldn’t stop nibbling on the curly things. Now, I’m so sleepy I find it difficult to type.

I’m going to take the curly things with me, though I won’t let them know how embarrassed I am. They need to be eaten, and my friends/families will be kind enough to do just that. They’ll probably tell me how good they are, and I’ll thank them. They’re good people who wouldn’t want to embarrass me to my face. Thank God.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy in the Lord.

The curly things.