Construction zone

 The Final Day For This House

 The house across the street is being torn down today. This is the place in some of its final hours. When we first moved into this house, we were hopeful that one day, our neighbor would tear down his house and build something a bit nicer...you know, help us out with our property value just a little. Well, today, our dreams come true! The house is cute, but delapidated. The roof is caving in (even though, oddly, in this picture, everything looks fine), the walls aren't straight, and it's in a general state of poor repair.

This is the same house from my yard. You can see the planters I put in earlier this year. The trailer in their yard (to the left of the house) is where the homeowners will be living until the new house is finished. I think they're planning to move back into their home in just a couple months. They're building a duplex because, apparently, we live in the land of duplex homes. Seriously, almost every house in our neighborhood is a duplex, there are even a few quadruplexes. Our "neighborhood" is more like a zoning nightmare that leaves things up for grabs. We technically fall into three different zoning areas, so none of them claim this space and it is officially zoned as "the country." Some neighbors own chickens, goats, ducks, horses, etc. Some neighbors have chain link fences, some have nice cedar fences, some have picket fences, some houses are mansions, some literally have walls made of tarp. This neighborhood is truly an interesting place. In the past few years, our street has begun to pick itself up. First the house beside us was built--a fancy duplex with nice landscaping, then we began remodeling our house (a process that won't be done for several years as we still have landscaping, replacing of the fence and the house's siding, rebuilding the front and back porches, and adding a carport), and now our neighbor across the street, Keno, is knocking down his home and making his space more presentable. I have hope that this place has a lovely future.

The Garden

This is my garden today. Off to the left of it is my compost bin I purchased through Craigslist for only $50. It is a really nice double-sided composter. Since I am doing a juice fast right now, I am making a lot of compostable waste...you know, the stuff that usually makes your trash stink? Well, throw it outside, layer it with newspaper, cardboard, yard clippings and dead leaves and it doesn't really stink, you have great dirt for next year's garden, and your garbage can ceases its stinking and messiness.

This is my garden a little closer up. I should take a picture with me standing in it some time. You can't really tell from the picture, but the plants are getting absolutely huge! On the right is the corn, next to it is soybeans and okra, then asparagus ferns which won't produce for a couple years. There are tomato baskets (the red things) and between the tomatoes, basil is growing. It's a companion plant for tomatoes. Further left at the back are my artichokes, tomatillos in the front, and then peppers, garlic, onions, lettuce and other greens, and back where you can't see is all of my vines, so cucumbers, zucchini, cantaloupes, watermelons, squash, etc. Beyond the end of the garden are my raspberries and blackberries.

These are my greens from the other end of the garden. Close up, I have kale, then collard greens, then broccoli. In the second row, there is rainbow swiss chard, then lettuce. And between the greens are my carrots. They're thriving! Everything is. I am wildly surprised. I fully expected this garden to grow maybe 25% of what I planted. But everything, with the slight exception of habaneros and a few herbs, are growing rapidly!

This is one of my zucchinis. This plant is currently making about 6 of these beauties. These things grow like a weed in Colorado. I have a really tasty and simple recipe for making them into an appetizer. Then, of course, there are all the zucchini breads and things like that, and it's pretty great in juice, too. Maybe tomorrow I will give a quick run-through of my favorite zucchini recipes. You can never know too many when running a garden in this state!

My raspberries! One of my favorite memories as a kid was going into the raspberry thicket in our back yard and just eating raspberries, then picking rhubarb and sitting in the shade. As a kid, you can fit all the way back in the thicket, so you feel invisible. I planted two raspberry bushes in the hopes that by the time I have kids big enough to hang out in the yard, there will be a thicket worth getting lost in for a while. For now, I have these green little guys waiting for the sun to turn them red and juicy. In a couple years, I also hope to have enough of these to make pies and jams and preserves.

Cantaloupes. Yum! There are flowers all over these bushes. I started them indoors in about March. They're not as big as I would like, so next year, I think I'll start cantaloupes, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, celery, carrots, and soybeans indoors in January. Then, they'll be plenty large by June and ready to bear real fruit. This summer, my vines are kinda doomed to a life on the ground, but next year, I hope and plan to get a trellis built so they can climb and the melons can be held in a kind of makeshift hammock made of old shirts and sheets and such. I'll put it on here when I finally get that done.

Lettuce and broccoli. We've had several tasty salads (well, Jason has, I have had LOTS of juice) from the lettuce here. When this is all gone, I plan to put in red lettuce in its place. Having lettuce in the yard is never a bad idea, and the fence we have around our garden is a rabbit fence, so we might as well go crazy growing things.

Fridge Installation Gone Full Construction Zone

New fridge after the battle for installation.
Looks really nice!

Old fridge waiting to be removed

This past weekend, we obtained a new refrigerator. We found a deal through Excel where they'll pay you $50 for an old fridge as long as it still functions, which ours does, but is on it's last leg. So, in a couple hours, Excel is going to come get the fridge and pay us for it. Jason's brother, Jeramyn and his wife, Tamara, have a fridge they wanted to get rid of, so we struck a bargain. In exchange for the fridge (and the work to move it into our apartment), we helped them paint their entry way (and set up/take down scaffolding).
Here's a picture of the old fridge and the new fridge. Old fridge is on the left, new one on the right.

New fridge inside. So much better
for organization!

Old fridge inside. Not many shelves or spaces
for organizing and storing things.

Our old fridge began making these awful "ka-chunk!" sounds whenever the cooling system would turn off and this week, it's developed the trend of whining and making a high-pitch sound. A couple weeks ago, we went to get ice cream out of it and found a tub full of cold mush. It's time for a new presence in our kitchen. This old fridge will get to live a new life somewhere else until it finally gives up the ghost, and we get to be the proud new owners of a previously loved fridge that meets our needs much better!

New freezer! So orderly! I know where
everything is!

Jeramyn standing beside the disassembled
stairs inside our house. This was as
the guys were re-installing the stairs.

The new fridge is the exact size of the space we had available, and a bit larger than our entry way. Jeramyn and Jason ended up taking off the stairs (wooden stairs) in our basement entry way, and removing the doors from the fridge just to get it inside. It took from about 10am until 5pm on Saturday to get the fridge even into our apartment. It was 105 degrees outside and the house was almost as hot inside.

Then, there was the issue of the microwave needing to move 1/8 inch. The fridge fits in its place with no extra give room whatsoever, but the microwave caused some consternation. The picture on the left is as far as we could get the fridge in until we moved the microwave.


See the space here? Crazy, right?











Yeah, the entire microwave was removed twice and re-installed twice just to make space for that little overlap! The fruit of our labor finally paid off with a nice, snug fit between the appliances. The only small issue remaining which needs to be addressed is that the microwave doesn't really want to open well.

The way the hinge opens means it runs into the side of the refrigerator each time it's opened. Some cabinet will have to be shaved off and the microwave moved probably another 1/8 inch to make this a better fit. Luckily, we really don't use the microwave that often, so we have no real rush about that. I am just so excited to have such a system for organizing our food. Bins for everything and even a water dispenser on the door. Aren't we fancy? :)

Garden Time!

As a combined effort to avoid over-processed foods with mystery sources and a desire to do something productive with my yard, I am going to have a garden this summer. We're also in the process of making a spreadsheet (yes, Dad, if you're reading, I said spreadsheet) that helps us find Farmer's Markets throughout the summer (and winter, there are some excellent winter Farmer's Markets). I figure, we should be able to eat local pretty much all summer.

This is my garden when it was a dream, really a figment of everyone's imagination. My parents came to help put this baby in place. That's them in my enormous back yard in the figment of a garden. The garden goes here mostly because the corner to the right of what you can see has some trees that we plan to tear out, and we also buried my dear childhood dog, Allee, in that area, not a great place for gardening, ya know? The tricky part about the south side of the yard is the shadow you can see running the length of the yard. As the season goes on, I think this shadow will shrink a bit as the sun begins to move a little differently in the sky, but we still accounted for the shade in the digging of the garden.

These are some of the things I've planted by now. The green things are herbs mostly: thyme, basil (x2 because it is so yummy), hot oregano, chocolate mint, and a goji plant for indoors. The other two green things are asparagus plants. I guess these guys take 2-3 years to get to where they produce asparagus, but once they start, they are unstoppable. They'll grow for like 20 years. Hope everyone loves asparagus! Then, I planted some bulbs of garlic, elephant garlic and onions. I also planted some carrots I started inside several weeks ago. Hope those babies make it! They said they were alright in this zone at this time of year. Oh, and there's also rhubarb in there. An all-time favorite of mine. And for those of you wondering, yes, I can count...most of the time.

What do you attack such a garden with? Well, I would like to tell you we used a tiller, but being broke, we did not buy or rent one. We don't even have a lawn mower right now... Anyway, back on topic, we (my dad, actually, as shown in the picture) used a pickaxe. My dad did most of the breaking of ground, my mom and I did a lot of the shoveling and weeding. With a yard that's pretty much a blank slate (as seen above), there's not much in your way but weeds. They were impressively established having gone years without being challenged, but they eventually gave way. The wood lying on the ground is from the fence breaking in the wind. It is going to need to be replaced this summer. Our house is a constant project that we love very much and are also hard-pressed to keep up with right now. We're always gettting a little further in things, but it's so old and hasn't been really cared for in so long, it's a lot to bring back up to speed.

There's Jason, my husband, and mys sister, Kirsten finishing the tilling. Her dog, Saoirse really enjoyed the yard. After the garden was in, she seemed to particularly enjoy barreling through the poor new garden. She's a rescue pet, can we blame it on that? Probably not, she's just a dog. The garden is starting to shape up in this photo. You can see the difference between the garden and the weed-yard we keep. Some day, we envision sod and REAL landscaping, but I am getting ahead of myself, as you can see. This is today and this is phenomenal progress. Day by day.

 One last piece of grass/weeds to remove. We'll probably have a lot of weeding to do this season, but it's alright. Gotta start somewhere. I planted a garden in Bissau. It's a photo in an earlier blog on here. I was tending those poor seeds until my last day on the continent. Apparently, they have indeed sprouted. I just need to call someplace home, so this is it. I am growing my own food in my yard this year. Maybe next year, I'll try a winter garden. I hear those can be extremely successful, and besides, how rewarding would it be to still be eating food from your garden in December?

 It's all tilled and the plants are ready to go where they are meant to be. I'll get you some pictures of my indoor makeshift herb garden some time soon as well. I bought a few more things for it today. It's seriously absurd that for the price of a container of an herb at the store, you can buy an entire plant, and if you care for it properly, you'll have those herbs for a long time. Genius, I say. I also am amazingly fanatical about perennials. How brilliant is it that even in Colorado, things can live through the winter and make more fruit and such the next year?!

This is me planting the first thing. Anyone who knows me well won't be surprised that it was garlic. I just adore garlic. I have been hearing tales that garlic shoots are a thing worth noshing, and can't wait to have them growing in my own yard.

Root part down, pointy part to the sky, about a few inches deep and voila, garlic.

To the left is the garlic going into the ground. Um, yes!!!! I am intrigued to know how to pick garlic and how one clove turns into an entire harvest and all that. The elephant garlic was planted as one clove (yes, that is ONE clove) and the others were to be planted as an entire head of garlic all together. Wonder what's going to happen. Will we get one head of garlic per thing planted? I certainly hope it somehow multiplies. Just ONE garlic would be kinda disappointing for this kind of work.

There it is all lovely in the ground and about to be buried. Later, it will hopefully be like 10 heads of garlic that are eager to be eaten! One can dream. It seems like garlic farmers would go out of business if you needed an entire head of garlic to get one in return. Surely, there's better stuff to come than that.

This is the garlic securely in place and the asparagus waiting to be planted. Those things will turn into an entire BED of asparagus. Again, I totally don't get it. Those plants look NOTHING like asparagus, and they also look nothing like photos you see of growing asparagus. I am guessing that's the miracle God performs in the dirt. This wispy thing turns into a stalky enjoyable food item. Side note: I have been much in love with asparagus of late. I want it all the time. There's something satisfying in eating those green spears. They're tender and flavorful. Yum. What's your favorite veggie?  

 Oh, to completely take a tangent here, those hands belong to my sister, and she is consuming a San Pellegrino Limonata. It's like sparkling lemonade, except amazing in every way. It's made with real lemons and tastes like summer in a can of goodness. Drink some. You will be glad you did.

My sister helping me plant a row of onions. We talked about the value of having rows of things with trenches beside them for the water to go in. Who knew it was so funny that the garden is laid out this way. My dad has always used a hoe to dig the trenches, and he did this time as well. Then, you kind of make a furrow (seeds don't get planted that deep anyway) in the top of the mound and put the seeds in and then close it back up. I really enjoyed having my dad and mom there to help me with my first garden. Some of my best memories growing up were of being in the garden with them during the summer.

There it is after an entire day's work. The lumps closest to the camera are for asparagus and garlic, the rows have carrots and onions, and out of your view is the rhubarb. It later got moved because it needed more sunlight and is now quite a happy plant. This is a good day's work, and was lots of fun. I have high hopes for this little plot of land and hope to show bountiful pictures of the products. If not, maybe it will at least be entertaining. Since taking this photo, I have added rainbow swiss chard, kale, and collard greens to the garden.

Fun is in the dirt!



I'd love to know any new tips on gardening that you have. I am a newbie and am seeking wisdom. I will show you my indoor garden next time!