indoors ~ outdoors

 The seasonal changes this time of year can be challenging for me.  The vibrancy of the autumn colors has faded to a dull brown and yet the clean, crisp, snowy winter hasn't come yet.  It leaves me feeling a bit blaaah.  Before having children, I spent years working in a greenhouse, transplanting, caring for, and selling plants year round.  The rooms in my apartment were full of green and flowering life.

Somehow (priorities, I suppose), I have become a person who can't keep a houseplant alive for anything.  Seriously, I have killed a spider plant, and they are notoriously tolerant of neglect.  Luckily, my husband has stepped up on the indoor growing, with herbs, lettuces, even tomatoes (supplementing south-facing windows with a full-spectrum LED light)

 basil microgreens

  Our science experimentation had taken a decided turn toward green things, too.  Kitchen scraps stuck in pots and lovingly watered by Camille are multiplying.  We have pineapple leaves, sweet potato vines, scallion roots, and celery sucking up colored-water to see how it travels through the stalks.  We also have a Strange Plant Collection growing in a dome.

The celery started out wilting in raspberry- and teal-colored water (because we had to mix our food coloring, you know).  As it absorbed the water and perked up we noticed the coloring mostly in the leaves, until, about a week later, Camille cut into it and was thrilled to see its 'veins'.

 Besides green-growing life indoors, getting outdoors for expansive movement and fresh air often improves all of our moods.

 So, we stop at parks while we run errands,

  stop on the side of the road to get out and admire sunsets,

 run through our field,

 play in the sand,

 and stay warm with newly knitted head wraps.