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Allergy season is apparently among us and I feel like I've been sneezing three times for every single breath I breathe. It's painful. It was especially annoying while we were at Home Depot picking out flowers and vegetables to grow in our yard. I probably should have prepared for such an outing with some Claritin tablets but I guess now I know. Sean started growing hops last weekend for the beer brewery that has been founded in our house. This week, we plan to add vegetables to our growing indoor garden. Despite the sun in the photo above, it was only about 40 degrees outside. Not ideal for growing things so while the last frost in our area is around May 10th, we plan to grow indoors until Memorial Day. We don't want our time and energy and money wasted by some unnecessary cold weather. So for now, it's all maturing in our music room. 

I have plans to become self-sustaining though I don't really know what it entails. I've starting doing some research and my immediate thought went to raising chickens. It's kind of popular to do around here and I think baby chicks are really cute. The more I thought about it I realized that I obviously wouldn't want chickens to eat because that's awful and I can't imagine having to kill them! And then I thought about how I don't eat eggs -- and wondered about how that would help us truly be self-sustaining. I think it would just be a lot of work and stress since we have coyotes and other wild animals in the yard at night time. 

Sean's relieved that I nixed the chicken idea and went straight to a vegetable garden. I don't expect the garden to save us a ton of money, though it's neat to think that it may help, but I really like the idea of growing our own food. That's self-sustaining, right? I haven't taken pictures yet, but we're growing potatoes, bell peppers, habanero peppers, pepperoncinis, onion, lettuce, cucumber, green beans, broccoli, corn, tomatoes and grapes. This could either be really successful and exciting or a major disappointment.