What better day to start a blog than Earth Day! Hello friends, my name is Stephanie, and this is “On the Sunnie side.” I know it sounds like I’m starting a TV show, right? This blog is all about living a better life and learning to take care of myself and in turn maybe someone will take something good away from this to help take care of themselves. The name of this blog means a lot to me. People associate the sun in positive ways. I know I always have. There are even cultures and religions that worship the sun. It is light and bright. It boosts the mood. And for me it has also been a nickname that I had since I was a kid. I got it when my little sister couldn’t pronounce some of the middle letters in my name leaving it sounding like ‘sunny.’ However, I always liked the ‘ie’ at the end.
Taking care of myself has always been a challenge. I’ve always found a million other reasons not to. “Someone else needs me” and “I have more important things to do,” have been my go-to excuses for far too long. I have also been guilty of making the New Year’s resolution to lose weight which I never actually put too much effort into. Normally, that resolution is a place-filler because I can’t think of anything else. But this year, I came up with something better- to take care of myself.
I started small. I started by making time every single day for something that I have always wanted to do, which is to learn a second language. I just passed my 100th day of learning French and have added Spanish as a third. I have also started making more time for things I like to do like baking, painting, and creative writing. Baking is a passion I have had for a long time, and it is so rewarding to see people enjoy my creations. These are some of my most recent cupcakes I made for my grandmother's birthday.
Painting is purely for fun. And writing will hopefully serve me well one day. I started creative writing again a couple of years ago after taking a very long break from it. The feeling of creating your own world with the written word is a feeling unlike any other.
All of this brings me to my next challenge that I have started this year and is perfect for Earth Day, a garden. This may not sound like a challenge to most people but for a person that did not inherit the green thumb that most of her family has, it most definitely is. I cannot keep plants alive to save my life most of the time. A few years ago though, I saw something amazing happen with a dahlia that I had planted on my front porch. I was so excited about it because dahlias are my absolute favorite flower. They come in so many different varieties and colors and are just so beautiful. I had watered this plant regularly and kept a watchful eye on it every day waiting for a little green to pop up out of the soil, but nothing was happening. I kept watering it though. Then one day I came home from work and either a squirrel or a rabbit thought he needed it more than I did. The animal had dug it partially out of the pot and took a huge bite out of the bulb. After that, I was sorely disappointed and just left it there on the porch. I hadn’t been watering it and barely took notice of it anymore until one day when I came home from work and noticed a little green stem emerging from the broken bulb. That stem turned into a beautiful white flower with purple on the inside. Ever since then I have been wanting to start a garden.
This year I started a fruit and vegetable garden on my balcony. I have spicy jane peppers, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, carrots, and strawberries. The tomatoes were doing great until we got a big storm, and the wind threw the pot from the plant stand. I’m not sure if it will produce any more from there. The peppers were not doing well at first. They had holes in them that I was concerned about, but I cut the bad ones off, moved around some soil, and gave it a good soaking of water and have since gotten two good peppers off of it.
Just a side note, I had never tried or even heard of a spicy jane pepper before. From what I had read the hotness level on them in somewhere between and jalapeno and a habanero. We tried them a few days ago and they are delicious! Hot as hell but delicious! Super sweet and super spicy. Can’t wait to get more off of that plant. And yesterday, I found that I have two baby zucchinis starting on one of the three plants.
This is the one that I am most excited about! I got the starter plants for the strawberries, peppers, and tomatoes, but the zucchini, carrots, and eggplant, I started from seeds. The strawberry plant looks good but doesn’t seem to be producing any fruit. I am just going to keep watering it and see what happens.
Today we are also doing a fun activity to go with this fantastic Earth Day! We are going to be making seed starter ropes. I have seen in the past when people do these in balls or in molds but when I plant flowers, I generally plant them in a row in the soil and thought this would make for a fun activity. And if it is successful, we can hand them out to all the green thumbs in the family. These could make good Mother’s Day gifts from the kids too!
I started by taking different colors of construction paper and sorting them by like colors. I did blue and green in one bowl and pink and white in another bowl. I soaked them for about 7 hours. I used an immersion blender to blend them one group at a time.
I mixed the seeds in with the paper mash and then formed the paper pulp into ropes on the towel before squeezing as much moisture out of them as possible. And then I let them dry outside for the remainder of the day. This is what they look like!
They came out great! Can’t wait to plant these and hand them out to family!
Hope you enjoyed this Earth Day!