I grew 10 pounds of potatoes in containers, as my first potato growing experiment! I learned about all kinds of new pests and diseases with this project :/ and I'm looking forward to applying what I've learned during next year's potato growing season.

I’ve been on a mission over the past couple of weeks. A very sweaty and laborious mission, but a good one, nonetheless. I had a bit of a weed problem in my backyard. I mean, things were getting pretty jungly out there, and as I don't use chemical sprays, and I didn't want to spend an entire month pulling up weeds, I decided to order some wood chips to drown them out.

I've wanted to learn how to Timelapse plants for a while now, but I always just assumed it would either be complicated or expensive, so I held off. The other day, however, I came across a video on Youtube, where a man showed how he timelapsed his plants, and it wasn't nearly as complicated as I expected it to be, and I had most of the equipment that I needed already, so I gave it a go! This is the story.

Hidden away in a suburban neighborhood is a little garden that was loved into life by a human - me! This little garden isn't impressive, by any means, but it provides hours of enjoyment, and some food for me, while also providing food and shelter to a multitude of local bugs and critters. Before I created my little garden, this area was just a wood chipped patch of earth in front of a parking spot. There was no life there other than weeds in the spring and summer, and nothing that would attract any life.

I befriended a little injured butterfly earlier this week. Unfortunately she only lasted a few days because she couldn't fly, and something eventually got her. But during her time in my garden, I hung out with her quite often and she inspired me to look into her species. I learned about this little butterfly's host plant - nettles - and it inspired me to take a new approach to gardening.

I've been focusing most of my attention on creating a container garden this year, so I've been spending a lot of money on potting soil. In this video, I decided to walk around the yard and look under the house to see what old soil and other ingredients I had available, so I could revive and use the potting soil that I already had, rather than opening up another fresh bag of soil. This ins't a recipe, it's just me doing my best with what I already had available to me and I'm pretty proud of the outcome.

I've been experimenting in the garden! I'm practicing with growing my own potatoes, sweet potatoes and garlic, as my goal is to one day grow the bulk of all the food that I eat. Getting good at growing potatoes will be a major part of that. I still have a lot of practice before I get to that level, but I'm enjoying the learning experience along the way.

This video is about how I learned to become self sufficient. I share stories and photos from childhood, watching my self sufficient parents figuring out how to do everything all on their own. I've carried this desire to always be self sufficient into my adulthood and I often build and repair things all on my own. I believe that any skill can be learned if you have the desire to learn it. And I've learned a lot over my lifetime.

I've been bitten by the organization bug and have been going wild, organizing every single thing I own, so I made a little story about it. Hope you enjoy!

Back in September of 2020, I took a hike to one of my favorite alpine lakes in Colorado. I filmed the whole way up to anonymous lake, because deep inside, I had a desire to make beautiful videos and put them on the internet. I never let myself put all that footage together, though, because I didn't see any purpose behind it. Today I'm sharing that footage, along with some thoughts on creativity.

This summer I had an overabundance of mint choking out my garden, so I dried some mint leaves for tea, made a mint extract and mint ice cream. I took all the footage in the summer and just put the video together today. I hope you enjoy it!

It's pretty deflating to arrive at the end of the year, review everything I set out to achieve and realize that despite all of my efforts, I've achieved absolutely none of it. I can definitely celebrate the steps I took toward achieving those goals, but even that can be kind of deflating, because I see all the effort that I put toward something, but with no outcome in return.

Back in mid-October, I took a road trip up to Maine with the intention to see the colorful fall leaves. We saw some fall leaves, but not in Maine, as mother nature wasn't following along with this year's leaf color predictions. It was still a nice trip where I saw lots of beautiful things and parts of the country I'd never seen before.

I've been thinking a lot about change and transformation, lately. And not just because of the change in seasons. I've been working on transforming myself over the past 16 years and it feels like things are finally starting to shift.

I quit all of my social media accounts (obviously other than YouTube) several years ago. Since that time I've noticed that I very rarely document my life anymore, other than in video — and that's only select things. I love looking back on photos that I've taken. They're fun reminders of my life —usually just little things that I'd typically have forgotten, had I not taken a photo. And there's been a serious gap in photos since I stopped posting on Instagram and deleted my account in 2021.

Throughout the summer I buy flowers for myself to brighten up my house. They unfortunately don’t last very long in the heat, though, so toward the end of the summer I usually start to give up. I saw these beautiful flowers at the market yesterday, though.

The beautiful fall leaves have mostly all fallen this past week. It got super hot out, baked the color out of the leaves on the trees, then the wind picked up and blew them off, and then we had a freeze.

My whole life I’ve been a pretty fearful person. Most people don’t know it though, because I’ve done a lot of things that many people tell me they're too scared to do. I have a lot that I want to experience in this lifetime and I know that if I allow my fear to hold me back, I won't ever get to experience it, so I push through.

Fall is officially here. I mean, the autumn equinox happened over a month ago, so it's been here for a while now, but it feels more official now that the leaves are changing and falling. I get super motivated to get out into nature when the leaves start changing, because I know it doesn't last long, and the winter isn't very beautiful here.

I went to an edible park today, and it’s making me think about why we don’t have more edible plants and trees in our local parks.