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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Like, a Ton of Bricks

Who in their right mind begins another labor intensive project when they already have many other unfinished projects? Us, of course. This past (long) weekend we were promised two sunny-ish days and one rainy day. And Nate's workload was low enough that he could actually spend some significant chunks of time working on the yard with me. So we split up tasks and actually made a lot of progress.

On Saturday, I finished prepping the soil in the raised planters and planted the starts we had on hand. I also planted the seeds. I'll be adding a parsley start, a dill start and one more bell pepper. As the season progresses, I'll probably add/rotate other vegetables as well. I'll show pictures in a few weeks when things begin to sprout. Right now it's just dirt.

Here's the point of the post: Also on Saturday, Nate dug out sod and soil along the driveway so that we could lay brick. We've been wanting to widen the driveway a bit, because I always drive on the grass and for 8-9 months of the year it is muddy. He made great progress, and we nearly finished it on Sunday.

We started Sunday off right by enjoying brunch with some friends at The Country Cat. After stuffing ourselves full of deliciousness, we decided to work on the brick together since there was a threat of rain later in the day.

First, Nate put in a layer of gravel that we've had since we demo'd the back steps...last summer. After that, I picked bricks while Nate set them. This week we'll finish it off with some sand and see how that works - it's a little bit of an experiment. It looks better than we imagined, so this one feels like a win!


So now we have a huge pile of tarped earth that we have further plans for - the side yard and smothering the rest of the parking strip. We ended up using the bricks from the path in the backyard, so the path is now kind of a muddy mess. I'm planning to have some 1/4-10 delivered (probably next week), and I'll use that to refresh the path around the planters. And I love that wagon - so much easier than a wheelbarrow.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

May Bloom Day

The usual suspects are blooming in the garden this week. The lilacs are already gone by and someone - my kid, not some random person - picked the bleeding hearts. Oh yeah, she also picked the alliums, which were surprisingly small this year.

Thank you to May Dreams Gardens for hosting Bloom Day each month.





Thursday, May 9, 2013

Hawaii Pictures

Nate got to/had to go to Hawaii for work, so the kid and I decided to tag along and make it a vacation. Yippee! Since we were lugging a three year old around the whole time, we had to pick and choose what we wanted to do. Before leaving I'd decided that I mostly wanted to see some cool plants and some sea turtles. I must be a lucky cat, because I got to do both!


In other news, we came home to a stinky surprise in the basement. Don't you love built-in blog content? More on that later. Also later, I hope to put together a quick run down on how we kept expenses to a minimum. We definitely didn't treat this trip as a "once in a lifetime" event, but I didn't feel like we nickel-and-dimed ourselves whole time either.

I think the best part of a vacation is having no to-do list for an entire week. You should try it, too!