Friday Favorite: Espresso
Here at Chiot’s Run, we brew espresso and drink it with steamed milk. Every day, we brew two cups and thoroughly enjoy them, down to the last drop.
Every morning I’m happy as can be to be enjoying a delicious cup of steamed milk and espresso, what a wonderful way to start the day. Coming from Colombia, I started drinking coffee in the womb and never stopped. It’s been one of my favorite things for as long as I can remember.
Are you a coffee drinker?
Share this:
Fresh Basil
Every year I expand the number of herbs I grow indoors during the winter. This year, I added basil to mix. I figured I could grow it upstairs under my grow light in the warmest part of the house. It’s thriving and starting to bloom.
When I brought it in towards the end of October, it was already looking fantastic. It’s nice to have a bit of fresh basil here and there. I still need to get a flat or two of cilantro going, that’s the one herb that we both LOVE and use lots of in the kitchen.
Do you grow any herbs indoors?
Share this:
So…….Dry………
We heat with wood, which means the air in the house is dry. There are houseplants and pots of water on the back of the wood stove, but even with these measures, the humidity in the house hovers between 28-30%. Finally, we decided to break down a get a cool mist humidifier.
After much research, we settled on this version, mostly because it has the capacity to add essential oils to it. This time of year we love putting balsam fir essential oil in our diffusers to add a wintery scent. Now we can just put them in our humidifier.
So far, we’re happy with the amount of water we can put in the reservoir and how much humidity it adds to the air. We probably should get another one or two since our house is so large, but for now, this one will do. We were lucky in Ohio, our home was always at a good level, we didn’t need to add any moisture to the air.
Do you have to run a humidifier in the winter?
Share this:
Houseplant Cleanup
Now that it’s winter, I’ve been looking around at the houseplants and noticing they need a bit of tidying up. The banana plant was a bit crazy, though in my defense, I was hoping it would fruit this past summer, and I’ve always heard that you don’t trim off the dried leaves if you want fruit.
I meant to get a “before” photo, but completely forgot until I had already trimmed it up. Oh well, you get the idea. The pot wasn’t even visible because there were so many dried leaves all the way from the floor up to the leaves. While I was pruning, I also cleaned up the leaves with a mild detergent as they were a bit dusty.
While I was pruning, I decided to give all the plants a bit of a haircut. The elephant ear in our bedroom got a bit of tidying, as did the spider plants in my sewing room. Most of the other houseplants don’t any tidying. All of this brown material will go into the chicken coop as litter.
What’s your favorite houseplant? How often to do clean & prune them?
Share this:
Snow Day Activities
More snow, freezing rain, and ice rolled through yesterday. After office work and house cleaning, I started processing some of the many seeds I saved this past summer.
I’ve been developing better systems of processing them. Using a fork to remove the seeds from the dried flower heads is a huge finger saver, these seed heads are super prickly.
I’m looking forward to lots of tithonia in the garden this coming summer, hopefully in many other gardens as well (you can purchase these seeds over at Seeds & Sundries). Finding gardening chores that can be done when the snow is falling outside is always a nice way to brighten up those dark winter days!
What seeds did you save from the garden this year to plant next year?
