Cèilidh Nam Freumhan

Author: TartanVegan

  • My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    The garden compendium was originally meant to be a catch-all. It included medicinal herbs with drawings, uses, and recipes; planting, care, and harvest instructions for all of the herbs and vegetables I planted; a diagram of this year’s layout; a planting calendar; and a journal of what I did, what happened, and how I could fix my mistakes.

    That plan hasn’t changed. The notebook will continue into next year, or however long it takes me to fill 300 sheets.

    What has changed is everything else.

    Originally, I wrote herb recipes on the back of each herb page. It didn’t take long to realize that a tincture is a tincture, my handwriting was getting messier, and my fountain pen was ghosting through onto the drawing on the other side. So the recipes are getting their own section, but only for the preparations I’ve actually made with herbs from my own garden. The herb pages themselves will stay as a high-level overview with drawings and uses.

    Then there are the medicinal herbs.

    I have become fascinated by them and have been researching them like crazy. That rabbit hole is deep enough to fill 300 sheets all by itself, which wasn’t the original purpose of the compendium. I wanted this notebook to be something I could leave behind someday—a record of the garden that my descendants could flip through and (hopefully) ooh and ahhh over.

    So, naturally, I’m making another notebook.

    Medicinal herbs deserve one of their own. The subject is practically endless, and if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone.

    I’ve also started color-coding the page edges. The notebook only came with two ribbon bookmarks, which isn’t nearly enough anymore. By highlighting the edges of each page based on the section—herbs, vegetables, diagrams, journal entries, and so on—I can find what I’m looking for without even opening the book.

    And finally…

    I did the one thing I swore I wasn’t going to do.

    I started an Excel workbook to track planting and care information for vegetables I haven’t even decided if I’m going to grow yet.

    Just in case.

    table with seeds, twine, and scissors for gardening
    Photo by Micheile Henderson on Pexels.com
  • The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    No matter how much research I did before planting my garden (and I’m certainly not finished), there were still plenty of surprises. Some things completely failed, while others did far better than I ever imagined.

    I organized my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, soil type, and a handful of other factors. It definitely created more weeding than I would have liked, but I needed to see what worked and what didn’t.

    In some beds, none of it seemed to matter. I planted starts at the right time, paired them with their companion plants, and they promptly died. I direct sowed whatever I could, and sometimes nothing came up at all. I even moved some of those stubborn plants into bins with fresh potting soil. A few are thriving, while others are either refusing to grow or have become an all-you-can-eat buffet for whatever animal keeps digging them up.

    Then there are the pleasant surprises.

    The borage is so big that I’m honestly not sure what to do with all of it. I’ll keep tossing the flowers into salads, and the rest will probably go to seed. It’s one of the best bee attractors in the garden, though, so it’s earned its place. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s gorgeous.

    The calendula is massive. I’m drying flower heads for a future tincture, chamomile for tea, and I have dill coming out of my ears. The lettuce just keeps producing, and the carrots have done far better than I expected.

    All that being said, the garden has been a fruitful learning experience. (Fruitful. Get it?)

    As the season goes on, I’m no longer fighting the garden. I’m letting it show me what works, what doesn’t, and how I can make next year’s garden even better.

    And as the universe is my witness, I will not let the quince from hell win.

    stock photo of a calendula head
    Photo by Prashant Gangwar on Pexels.com
  • I Like Knowing Things

    I Like Knowing Things

    One of the things I’ve realized this year is that I don’t really collect hobbies.

    From the outside, it probably looks like I bounce from one thing to another. Gardening. Bookbinding. Norwegian. Citation templates. Herbs. Cocktails. Ancient history.

    They’re all over the place.

    To me, though, they’re all the same hobby.

    I like understanding how things work.

    The garden has made that clearer than anything else. Before this year, companion planting was something I’d read about. Soil composition was something I’d heard people discuss. Medicinal herbs were mostly names in books.

    Now I get to watch it happen.

    I’m seeing why one bed dries out faster than another. Why some plants seem happier next to certain neighbors. Which herbs attract pollinators and which ones don’t. Which vegetables struggle through a heat wave while others barely notice. It’s no longer just biology in a textbook. It’s biology happening in my backyard.

    That’s probably why my garden is organized the way it is. It isn’t the most efficient layout, and I’ve certainly spent more time weeding because of it. But separating plants by water needs, companion planting, shade, and other variables lets me see what works and what doesn’t. I’m treating the garden as one giant experiment.

    The same thing happens with my other projects.

    I didn’t start making notebooks because I thought notebooks were too expensive. I started because I wanted to understand how books are made. Every mistake teaches me something, and every notebook gets a little better than the last.

    I originally started learning Norwegian because I had a reason to. Somewhere along the way, though, the language became the reward. I enjoy the grammar, I enjoy listening to it, and I was ridiculously proud of myself for using it in Oslo, even if it was only a little.

    The citation bundles might be the clearest example of all. I don’t enjoy formatting bibliographies. I enjoy solving problems, and I kept thinking about how much easier graduate school would have been if I’d had something like this on my desk.

    Maybe that’s why all of these projects seem connected to me, even if they don’t to anyone else.

    I’m not really collecting hobbies.

    I’m collecting understanding.

    woman surrounded by books and studying on her bed
    Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com
  • The Best Vegan Meal of Our Vacation Wasn’t Inside the Park

    The Best Vegan Meal of Our Vacation Wasn’t Inside the Park

    Recently, the fam and I took a trip to Southern California to ride some roller coasters. Before we even left, we knew the main park had two restaurants with Beyond burgers. At this point, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect.

    I was actually excited that one of those restaurants was Johnny Rockets. The location I went to in Vegas had a full vegan burger, so I figured this one would be similar.

    Nope.

    The park version was a Beyond patty on a bun. No cheese. No sauce. Just a dry burger and a handful of ketchup packets. Like a lot of amusement park “vegan” options, it was…fine. We weren’t hungry anymore, and that’s about the best thing I can say about it.

    The water park was even worse. They stopped selling the Beyond burger there about a year ago, so our options were basically pretzels or chips. We figured we’d grab some fruit instead, except the fruit cup at the main park came topped with whipped cream. Apparently, even fruit isn’t a safe bet.

    We rented a cabana, which came with its own menu, and decided to order the fruit platter. About an hour later, our $36 fruit platter arrived.

    It was a plastic clamshell full of moldy purple grapes.

    That was it.

    By the time I added the margarita I’d ordered, we’d spent almost $60 on moldy grapes and a drink that may or may not have contained alcohol.

    Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual. Disney World had a lot more vegan options than Magic Mountain, but “more options” doesn’t necessarily mean “better food.” We had vegan sausages in two different places that were so dry they somehow made the amusement park burgers seem moist.

    The biggest lesson we’ve learned from traveling as vegans is simple: bring your own food whenever you can.

    On our second day, we packed sandwiches, left the park for lunch, and honestly enjoyed them far more than anything we’d bought inside. They were healthier, tasted better, and cost a fraction of the price.

    Thankfully, the trip ended on a much better note.

    On our last night, we found a local restaurant with an entirely separate vegan menu—not just a Beyond burger with the cheese removed. They had loaded fries, buffalo tots, and the best vegan Philly cheesesteak I’ve ever had. Honestly, it was one of the best meals I’ve had, period, and I’m not usually someone who gets excited about food.

    So while the roller coasters were worth the trip, the theme park food mostly reminded me why we pack sandwiches. Sometimes the best meal of the vacation is the one you bring yourself—or the one you find after you’ve left the park behind.

    orange and teal rollercoaster
    Not from the park we went to, but looks super cool.
  • How Many Notebooks is too Many?

    How Many Notebooks is too Many?

    I first learned about commonplace books while reading the second book of A Discovery of Witches. It sounded like such a cool idea.

    I immediately found an unused notebook in my inventory and started carrying it around.

    I had been told that one simply writes down anything interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything interesting at first, and every time I wrote something down, it felt forced.

    A few months ago—maybe a year, time has ceased to have meaning—I started a bullet journal again. Instead of writing down things I needed to do or making trackers, it slowly turned into a commonplace book.

    I started devoting entire sections to things I was interested in: four pages on whisky, seven pages on Gàidhlig grammar, and assorted bits of trivia that appealed to me for reasons known only to my brain.

    Eventually, I had to start making separate notebooks. I simply had too many interests to fit into one.

    As far as I can remember, I currently have notebooks for:

    • Baseball
    • Gàidhlig
    • Norwegian
    • One for a game I am playing but refuse to admit to publicly
    • Religious studies
    • Gardening adventures (which covers enough topics to qualify as several notebooks by itself)

    And I still have many blank notebooks waiting to be filled.

    So how many notebooks is too many?

    Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

    Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
  • Finally Some Small Bounty

    Finally Some Small Bounty

    After weeks of weeding and sending good thoughts into the universe, I finally have some legitimate progress in my garden.

    My calendula and borage are starting to bloom. It’s a small thing, but it is so nice to see something that isn’t a weed.

    blooming calendula
    Calendula!

    The borage is starting to bloom, too.

    borage blooms
    The borage is starting to bloom!

    Speaking of weeds…

    I took a picture of something growing all over the garden, and Apple told me it was black nightshade. I wasn’t convinced, though, and looked up potato plants instead. Last year, I’m fairly certain I pulled up tiny potatoes when I cleared the beds out.

    volunteer potato plant
    Unwanted potato.

    As it turns out, potatoes are part of the nightshade family, so Apple was mostly correct. I also found some datura, which is a very toxic member of the same family. Even though the flowers are pretty, it is not welcome in my garden, just like the potatoes.

    datura flower
    Deceptively pretty datura.

    My vegetable beds are finally clear of weeds, so at this point I just need weekly maintenance. Right now, I’m working on weeding everything else so nothing can steal nutrients from the things I actually want to eat, and definitely yanking out those darned nightshades.

    Except tomatoes.

    Tomatoes are yummy.

    For the record, potato plants stink for some reason.

  • Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    I think a lot of us are taught that life follows a fairly straightforward path: go to college right after high school, find a career, and work forty or more hours a week until retirement. I never really followed that plan, and for a long time I felt like I had somehow done life incorrectly.

    As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that the things I didn’t do made me different in a way that I actually appreciate. I have always been curious, and I finally feel like I have given myself permission to simply learn things because they interest me.

    So these days I find myself learning crafts, bookbinding, languages, gardening, and even some homesteading skills. There is always some new rabbit hole waiting to be explored.

    Not always having steady work has certainly been stressful, but it has also taught me that life is about more than giving decades of yourself to an employer who may never appreciate you the way you deserve. There is value in creating things, learning things, and following your curiosity.

    At this point, if something sounds interesting, I want to try it. Some people may think that is strange, and perhaps it is. But I enjoy it, and I like the idea of keeping my mind active and open to new experiences.

    Maybe I am making up for lost time. Or maybe I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be.

    Either way, I think Hannah Montana had it right:

    “Life’s what you make it.”

    Photo by Paweu0142 L. on Pexels.com
  • I Finally Did It

    I Finally Did It

    I had an idea for an Etsy product several weeks ago, but life happened and I had to put it on the back burner for a bit. But! I finally finished it, created my Etsy store, and listed my first product.

    I have felt very overwhelmed during this process. Yesterday, I decided that I didn’t need an entire shop. I didn’t need ten products, or perfect branding, or a grand plan stretching years into the future. I just needed one product. Just the first one.

    And just like that, I took the tiniest step imaginable to share something I made with other people.

    I don’t care if my shop goes viral. I don’t care if I become the next Martha Stewart, but with study guides. I simply wanted to take that first step.

    Honestly, I think that’s the hardest part of any new project. Not becoming an expert. Not making hundreds of things. Just being willing to begin.

    So today, I am celebrating one tiny step. The rest can come later.

    And if anyone is curious, my little corner of Etsy can be found at Tartan Vegan. I welcome feedback, suggestions, and gentle corrections as I continue learning.

  • The Case for Overcomplicating Things

    The Case for Overcomplicating Things

    I have a tendency to overcomplicate things. At least, that is probably how it appears from the outside. But for me, I usually have to do things the “hard way” if I want them to work at all.

    For example, I grouped my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, shade requirements, and a variety of other factors. That left a lot of space in between them that still isn’t completely weeded and is taking a massive amount of time.

    But all of that was necessary if I wanted to see what works and what doesn’t. I already know that I can’t plant anything close to the quince-from-hell, and that apparently I can kill peppermint where I intentionally planted it, but not the peppermint that insists on growing literally everywhere else in the garden.

    I have notebooks for language learning. I keep lists of cocktail ideas. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time designing printables. I make tables, draw diagrams, and write down things that many people would simply trust themselves to remember.

    I don’t think the complexity is the problem. I think it is how I learn.

    I need to do things in a way that helps me not only learn, but remember what I learned and how I learned it.

    Paying attention applies to just about everything I do instead of blindly hoping for success.

    I have always felt the need to break things down and figure out how they work. I have never been able to simply memorize phrases and words in other languages because I need to know why something is spelled one way with one pronoun and differently when the pronoun changes.

    I enjoy creating systems. I love finding patterns. That might mean I have more notebooks than most people find necessary.

    Some days I will spend hours writing down Norwegian grammar rules and lists of reflexive verbs. Other days I will spend hours drawing diagrams of different baseball pitches.

    What looks complicated to others simply feels interesting to me.

    The goal was never perfection.

    It was understanding.

    And if understanding occasionally requires a little overcomplication, I think that’s a trade-off worth making.

    Mass communication complicated issues Karl by libraryofcongress is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0
  • Building a Language Compendium

    Building a Language Compendium

    I hit Norwegian hard before my trip and ultimately got burned out. One thing that came out of it, though, was an idea I really liked: a language-learning compendium.

    Obviously, I started with basics like articles, gender, common verbs, and conjugations. But I also wanted to add things that I knew would help me personally.

    For example, I struggle with vocabulary recall, especially when I’m nervous. What I ended up doing was asking ChatGPT to give me short readings at my current level. I would write down words I didn’t know, look up their meanings, and add them to the compendium. Writing them down helps force them to stick in my memory.

    I write everything in pencil first, then go back over it in pen. Studies have shown that handwriting notes helps retention, and after years of trying different methods, I know that writing things down works better for me than typing.

    Right now, I am diving deeper into grammar, like modal verbs, and writing down common phrases and usage notes. I still burn out from time to time, but I am really enjoying the process.

    I am also not sure why I am studying so hard, since I keep second-guessing whether I will ever be able to move to Oslo.

    But I know myself.

    I just can’t stop learning.

    Even if other people think what I’m learning is useless.

    book open to basic Norwegian grammar rules
    Basic grammar rules and commonly used verbs.