Gardening and stuff

The new front garden / strawberry bed.

There's a lot growing at the Freehold this week! Our beans are huge, and I believe we're starting to get flowers. The peas are attacking their fencing with gusto. The first of the spring spinach has been harvested and eaten. The radishes are looking tempting, although aren't yet ready to come up. There's so much green around, and it's difficult to just... wait. One of my favorite new additions is the strawberry bed, pictured above. The edge is full of strawberry plants, and the center has two amaryllis flowers, two dahlias, and many marigolds (not yet mature enough to be seen). Next year, the bulbs will come out and more strawberries will go in (we have wild ones that are sweet as anything that are being transplanted here), but we only had time for the 40 strawberry plants we put in.

Split wood for winter.

We've started on the harvesting of our 2012-13 wood supply already. The electric company people have been taking down a lot of local trees, and since everyone around here knows that we heat mainly with wood, they've been offering us their downed logs. So far, I'd say we've managed to collect at least a cord worth of decent hardwood, for free. Gray has already begun splitting it, although a friend has threatened to bring his gas-powered splitter over, which would be a marvelous thing. Still, I'm not complaining. The more wood we get split before the fall, the better our fires will be this coming winter. We're not likely to get another warm winter like this past year, so we need to really be prepared.

Beans and peas.

Our beans and peas have really taken off. I'm using shaved wood as mulch right now, which seems to be doing well enough. Gray had to plane several pieces of wood, which generated an awful lot of very clean pine shavings, and you can see that there's no weed matter coming through at all. Around the edges is a different matter, of course, and I do need to get out and weed around the raised beds. Still, the beds themselves have had only minimal weeds at this point, tiny wee ones that have taken less than five minutes a day to take care of. I'm very pleased with the raised bed system, even if it doesn't look quite the way I intended when I started on this endeavor.

Tomatoes in buckets

I had planned on having a couple more of the raised beds ready for cucumbers and tomatoes, but that didn't turn out quite as well as planned. Instead, the few tomato plants I have are going two to a bucket. Each of these plastic buckets has failed us in some way, either collapsing and spilling out their contents, or cracking in some way. They all have holes, which makes them a great way to grow plants. They are, for all intents and purposes, instant raised beds. I filled them with compost and dirt, and in went the tomatoes. These ones (four of them) were courtesy of sis's mom, who visited a week ago. They're already flowering, and I'm very excited. They're the type that bear all summer, so I do hope that means we'll get a good crop of tomatoes out of them. I'll still need to buy some for canning, but at least our summer eating will be well taken care of. The baby tomato plants I started indoors ages ago never really took off. I've planted them, but honestly, I'm not expecting much from them.

Spuds in sacks!

The potatoes appear to be doing alright, although I suppose I won't know for a couple more weeks. I got them in very late, and the only seed potatoes I could find were quite withered and had long LONG eyes. Still, I am hoping that just means they're ready to explode with great growth and produce wonderful tons of spuds for me and my family now that they're in good quality compost. I decided to try my hand at the potato towers everyone was going on about, and so I have two of these filled with reds. The very top of each tower has five Yukon gold seed potatoes, which I'm hoping may also take. At this point, it's just more of that horrid waiting game.

The herb bed

My herbs are doing very well. Sis's mother got us some Greek oregano, some tarragon, and some thyme, all of which are in the bed now. My parsley is coming along nicely, and the cilantro I planted directly in the bed is doing marvelously. The sage is coming along, though slowly, and the basil never came up at all this year. I'm rather bummed about that, as I am a fan of fresh pesto, but again, I'm sure I'll find things at local markets this summer. And... it's still early.

Pretties.

We have a lot of flowers planted already this year. Some came with the house: day lilies, irises, and some interesting 'fuzzy' type greenery that is supposed to sport tiny yellow flowers eventually. Others we planted ourselves. I'm going to be taking some wildflower seeds I have, and tossing them out back along the stone wall at the edge of our property. They might grow and they might not (they're a bit out of date) but any that do sprout will be so beautiful. At the very least, the local critters will have a feast. We have several flowering bushes around the house, too, most of which I have no name for. The ones pictured here are the most delicate little pink flowers, and I've fallen totally in love with them.

Wild rose canes

These wild roses are going to be planted along our front property line. When the electric guys came, they took down all our privacy trees, leaving us largely exposed to the road. It isn't a big deal, but we really enjoyed that privacy, and the feeling of solitude it gave us. So, instead of whining about it, we're planting natural barbed wire to keep the nosy ones out. Wild roses have wicked thorns, and we received dozens of canes which will get planted as soon as the ground stops being so wet. This should be enough to create a full barrier between us and the road. Hopefully they'll grow up the trees a bit, and really block things off.

We hope to plant thorned blackberries on our side of that rose barrier, both as a secondary fence and as a method of providing our children with the fruit they seem to inhale. It's disturbing to see your twin six year olds freebasing strawberries...

Slowly Moving Forward (and IN)

The view of the road from the beach.

Up the road from our new home, about a five or six minute walk, there is a beach. During the summer months, they shut down the road with cement barriers, and truck in sand to cover it all up, providing the children and locals with a massive, soft sandy beach that seems to stretch on forever. In the fall, when school starts up, they push all the sand back onto the beach and open the road to motorists. The beach itself is still open, though, and on Monday I took the children there. It was 80F and sunny, probably the last "Indian Summer" day to enjoy the water. It was cold as anything, but they paddled about, swam, had a fun time. I took along my fold up beach chair, and just sat in the sand and watched the play. The brightly colored leaves belied the warmth of the air, a hint of the autumn that is both here and coming. Winter won't be far behind.

The view of the lake.

I did stick my toes in the water, but it was too chilly for me. I don't think our children actually feel the cold, though, because they plunged in like it was bath water. I think the sheer excitement of being able to WALK to the beach overcame their sense of frigidity. It was so peaceful down there. The occasional car went by, but mostly it was just quiet wind, the sound of some kids playing off in the distance, and the lapping of the water against the beach. Even though I'm still suffering from my cold, it was nice to just SIT there. I wasn't unpacking (or packing), cleaning, sorting, or anything else. I didn't even really read the book I brought with me, although I sat it in my lap. I just watched them build sand castles and counted my blessings.

Our front door

I must say, I do love the look of our new front door. With the steps the way they are, we were able to put sis's mums there, as well as the giant pumpkins the children wormed out of her. The little watering can in front is also sis's, and looks very charming sitting on the bottom step. Soon the pumpkins will be carved (and I'll be making roasted pumpkin seed snacks!), but for now it's just a beautiful fall display.

On another plus side, our children are completely enamored of this neighborhood and their new school. They have already made friends, have people to sit next to on the bus, and are eager to be out of the house each morning. It's gratifying to have children who are so eager to go to school that they are willing to skip lunch to get back in time!

The family room

Our house is coming together and beginning to become a home. The "family room" is slowly transforming from "space where we dropped things" to "our television and hang out room." There is a rip in the carpet, from where a badly sewn seam came apart, and so we put down our large blue carpet to cover it up. I think it actually lends a kind of "room within a room" feel. We have our television set up, with cable and HBO and all that, and a couple of chairs for lounging in. Now we just need a cheap but cute sofa, perhaps a futon, and we'll be set in there.

The dining room

Other than the shocking pink walls, the dining room is looking pretty good, too. I turned the table around so that the fold-down leaf is on the outside, allowing us to turn the table larger for each meal, but also reducing the general size of it when it might possibly attract junk. The table fits nicely in the space we have, and has potential for being enlarged into the living room (parlor, adult space) if we have many people over for food. We are hoping to get some wallpaper for the walls soon, maybe in a cream or off-white color with red and blue highlights. We'll probably stick with country type patterns, because that's what we like.

BEFORE

I've always wanted to do one of those "before and after" shots, and now I finally have my wish! This was our living room early this morning. It was full of sleeping pads, computer carcasses, laundry baskets, big boxes full of yet-to-be-built end tables, and a ton of boxes and bins. I was home alone all day today, and not feeling well to boot, so I put myself to the task of finding the living room under all that clutter and moving junk. I pressed the air out of the sleeping pads and rolled them up, moved all the computer bits to the office space, put away all the laundry, and did a lot of assembling. I'm rather proud of myself, even if I did have to take the second end table apart twice because I put it together wrong.

AFTER

And this is the same living room a few hours later. I turned the rug around, tucked it under the couch legs, cleaned up all the clutter, and have the finished tables at either end of the couch. It looks great, and I'm thinking people around here will be happy with the results. I'm tired now, ready for a shower and dinner, and a nap. Still, we're making progress.

The backyard will, in the next couple of weeks, be getting a leaf composting area put in. The previous owners left behind a dog run, the stakes and wire of which I will use to create a nice 5' diameter area for containing the multitude of fallen leaves around our home. Hopefully they will compost into some very nice soil that can amend whatever goes into our raised beds next year!