New Season, Rough Start

The weather has been cooperative. Starting to get nice, sunny most of the week and rainy and cloudy during the weekend and not dipping below 50 degrees in the evening. Been pretty much perfect for gardening and jump-starting those outside activities we had to lock up in the closet. Ah, how I missed that spring time air where it is not too hot and not too chilly, but just right! 

So what is my rough start? Well, it seems that during the winter months when it is just one big rain storm here in the Pacific Northwest, I have developed a bizarre new allergy...to the sun.

That's right. This desert born-Coloradan girl is allergic to sunlight. It isn't polymorphic and it's nothing like a sunburn. Exposure to sunlight, within ten to fifteen minutes directly, causes a very uncomfortable blistering rash to spread on my forearms and the backs of my hands (anywhere exposed to light really). They itch like CRAZY! And scratching makes it worse! My patio and my little sky garden faces West. It tends to get a high amount of light during the day and I have to be quick to dodge in and out of the shadow when watering. 

I have talked to an individual who is my primary medical adviser, she has done work with me before on other allergies and diet issues I had in the past. Some are as mild as cat and dog dander allergies, and a few that are stress triggered allergies instead of environmental. When these skin symptoms started up, I called her and she did some tests on me and discovered that it was a sun rash. Basically, as she explained, the body can develop this allergy when someone spends a prolonged amount of time indoors, like during winter, for example. The pores forget how to expand wide enough to let in the right amount of UV to produce melamine that causes pigmentation to change, and sometimes when the body does produce melamine, the immune system attacks those cells, believing they are foreign. I know through my boyfriend, who works for a solar company, that UV can penetrate through cloud cover which is why the English Ivy and blackberries tend to stay pleasantly green all year long. The body is much like a plant, we still rely on having sunlight and that UV as a nutrient. I admit, I did not leave the house often during this last winter, and when I did, it was not during the day hours or for very long. Who wants to be out in the freezing rain and hail to get a pre-spring tan? 

I am the night!

When I first heard of the allergy, I thought it was pretty neat. I'm like a vampire! Hissssss! No sun! It burnnnnssss usssss! lol. Yes, I got silly in my head about it. How bad could it really be? I'm a night owl by nature, most of my hobbies are indoor anyways (ever try knitting while jogging through a park?) and vampires are kinda neat. I'm a writer, and vampires are something I choose to host in my stories a lot. Sort of taking my character personas to a whole new level, I guess. So I started to follow the advice on easing my allergy symptoms (they don't really just go away on their own). I found myself some knitting patterns to make little wrist-warmer type sleeves for my arms when I'm out. Something light, but not lacy. 

I was also advised to get some of that sunless tanning lotion, the one that has the pigment in it that stains the skin. This actually upset me a little bit. I'm a very white person, fair sensitive skin, but the one thing that I was always proud of was how well I tanned during summer back in Colorado as a kid. My hair would lighten with natural pale-blonde highlights from the sun, and I would tan beautifully. Part of the news was that I wouldn't be able to do that now, and I actually cried thinking of that. Cheater tans! That's what I would need just to go outside and not have my immune system attack my own melamine-changed cells! How horrible! No pool, no beach, no biking outside without a silly get-up!  

Always invest in some sun protection during summer anyways. Maybe even invest in a big, floppy hat. But remember, your body is like a plant. We all thrive on light and sun and we do need it for nourishment. I would love to hear from anyone else who has any kind of sun allergy or sensitive skin irritations and love to be outdoors when the weather is fine and beautiful like it has been the last few weeks. What works for you? Do you cope or stay inside? Do you have a big floppy hat?  

Sun protection, it's kinda important.

Spring Has Sprung!!!

cuteness overload!

Daww!!! It's nice to be back and to have the weather permitting me to work out onto my patio! This winter has been very weird, to say the least. And I'd like to give a shout out to my friends on the Eastern coast and the mid-west that are still getting hit by their second winter. Eventually it'll warm up guys, hang in there! It's been fairly dry and cold on my side of the coast. We even got some snow that made a huge mess out of everything! Geez...

But a lot of the moisture that did happen to grace us here in the Pacific Northwest has paid off! My strawberries have survived and are doing a lot better than I imagined. Small little patches in places I never even thought they would end up... like under the bike tarp... (what?). Though that's not really surprising, they tend to grow wild if you don't keep a strict watch over those suckers. We even had some carrots continuing to grow out of my big planter box even when it was snowing. Mint is doing well, being shy, but that won't last long with them, and Rosemary has taken over and decided it was a small bush!

My my, spring has given me quite a mess to work with.

Over the summer, I had a lot of my little plant babies go. Just cause there wasn't enough room on my little patio garden to keep them all. I sold some of the pepper plants, and my cherry tomatoes were growing wild, although none of them went to homes that had the space for them. I eventually just stopped spending so much time watering and pruning them cause there was just too many for me to care for!

I have some pots that I used to house them, but I mostly used the newspaper method to start my seedlings. Which, if you're short on cash for those plastic planters like me, is actually really wonderful! They drain out, so it doesn't get super soggy but they stay relatively moist to keep those baby roots well maintained. There are a few things I have a concern with this method, however. One is that prolong use of the newspaper planter makes them mold, which can eventually lead to root rot in some sensitive plants like my tomatoes. I had left some of the ones I couldn't afford space in the newspapers and that's what eventually got to them (after two months into winter but still...).

Recycled newspaper planters 

Another thing that an organic gardener would think about is the newspaper ink itself. While the paper is a great source of carbon and does eventually biodegrade while still being able to fit under the category of recycling. The ink bio accumulates some chemicals that are, in fact, very dangerous to your plants and the environment. And think about what is absorbed into the plant and digested by the consumers, that's important too. Dioxin and Chlorides!

I spent some time searching for some resourceful information on the specific effects of newspaper and gardening, and here's a link to a really great site here -->> Newspaper Toxins - Organic Gardening

But to be in the spirit of Recycling, there are other ways to make neat planters from left over items in your kitchen. One I tried out last year, was an egg carton. Each little pouch made it nice and neat to seed the most fickle leafy babies and they drain much like the newspaper cups you can make, but without the extra ink toxins! But they are shallow and babies will need to be transplanted really quickly, and if the roots end up bursting through the wet cardboard, you must be very gentle and very careful  not to disturb and break those little roots. Especially if you did carrots, which I learned the hard way that was a no-no!

Recycled milk carton planters

The other method that is really grand is using those left over, washed out and cut cardboard milk cartons! This is a favorite of mine for they are durable and you can get them to drain and they don't fall apart in a soggy mess over time. I found a nifty little way to make them drain perfectly, while they still hold in some moisture. Cut them so the spout of the milk carton is on the bottom and place a little wedge of plastic soda bottle with neat punctured holes (I used a screw to make these) on the inside of the carton next to the spout hole. This will keep mud from blocking it so excess water can escape. There are other ways you can make a neat little screen to keep it from clogging too instead of plastic. My partner is big on anti-BPA and would not approve of the plastic but, I'm a kludger. I make do with what I got!

I hope these are some great ideas to start a reused, affordable and at home garden as nature turns to the most beloved, twitterpated seasons in the year, Spring! I have already planted and seeded a few things like the peppers, Zinnia, and cucumbers. They'll germinate and we'll hopefully see the seedlings in roughly a week or so.

Happy Planting!