Day Lily.

Posted on June 17, 2008 3:23 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Wild Cherry.

One of a basketful of wild cherries we got off the trees in the side yard, after getting smart and wrapping branches in netting to fend off the birds.

Posted on June 5, 2008 10:44 AM | link to this entry

This is How We Renovate...In the Ghetto.

My original intent, when I began the front porch renovation, was to keep the costs low by using off-the-shelf materials to replace the crap I was tearing out. I'd looked at stuff at the local superstores and found inexpensive candidates, but I knew I'd have to special-order certain things (windows) because nothing in this house is standard size.

With that in mind, I've been hemming and hawing over the replacement windows for weeks now, unsure of my plans. The window openings on the porch were all framed in by drunks, so their heights all vary by as much as an inch, and the horizontal level is off by at least a half-inch. In order to figure out what I was going to do (and what shape the framing was in), I pulled all three of the front-facing jalousie windows out on Monday to see what I was dealing with. The base of the frame on the far right was in terrible shape, and I had to pull the entire thing out in order to see what I was dealing with. For a temporary fix, I cut sheets of plywood down and nailed them up until we got our new windows delivered.

Aaaaaaand, here's where things go south.

Returning to Lowe's Tuesday with my 10% off coupon, Jen and I looked at the off-the-shelf offerings, and she helped me realize how shitty they look. The mullions (crossbars on the top window) were inside the glass, which looks funny from the outside, and the entire window is covered with a screen, which is ugly. After some discussion, we got a quote for better quality replacement windows which turned out to be about three times as much as I was originally expecting—not what I was hoping for. With the coupon and a firm quote I figure it will go down to about twice my original budget, but this is still putting a major dent in our plans. I've got a couple calls in to the better window companies to see what decent replacement windows will cost; I'm not expecting miracles but I'm hoping for one. The hard part will be getting a quote for the windows minus installation fees; I'm pretty sure that's where their markup lives.

Meanwhile, eating our breakfast in the upstairs bedroom has gotten more exciting due to the looks of shock and awe of the passers-by as they crane their necks trying to figure out what happened to the front of the house.

Outside, we wrapped a couple of branches of the cherry trees so that we might be able to enjoy some of the fruit this spring. With the exception of the Year of the Locust (when plentiful, if earthy-flavored food was burrowing out of the ground all summer), the birds have cleaned out all of the ripening red cherries before we've been able to taste it. The grape arbor also got wrapped on Monday to keep the bunches protected for the season (and to keep the vines off the stairwell).

* * *

In other strange news, I had a dream last night where I was asked by Daft Punk to sit in on one of their concerts. I knew all the parts to the songs, but the "instrument" they stood me in front of was like no other I had ever seen, and made no sense. They got pissed at me when I couldn't figure out how to play it (it was like a vibraphone stood on its side, with lots of added glowing sampler buttons that made no sense), yelled at me in French, and kicked me off the stage. I was so psyched to put on a helmet and a jumpsuit and rock out, too.

Posted on May 29, 2008 10:47 AM | link to this entry

Spring Around The Corner.

This morning, waiting for coffee to brew, I was sleepily cleaning the dishes in the sink when I spied the first three dirty yellow male finches of the season on our thistle feeders, munching away. By the time I was able to get to my camera and put the long lens on, they were gone.

Posted on March 14, 2008 4:48 PM | link to this entry

From the Garden

Jen came upstairs as I was hunched over the computer to show me this. With the exception of the basket, everything in there came out of our garden, and there's a lot more to come. We have a ton of corn coming in, the squirrels seem to have left the second wave of beans alone, and there are several eggplant growing larger. The green peppers are getting pretty big, too. Plus, we've already used a couple bushels of basil leaves.

Posted on July 26, 2007 10:32 PM | link to this entry | comments (5)

Grape Arbor.

Our grape arbor is covered with bunches of fruit, a far cry from last year, when whatever it produced was devoured by birds in one afternoon. The lack of water and steady heat has been perfect for growing grapes, along with Jen's judicious pruning earlier this year; now we just have to figure out how to protect them from varmints (a large bird net has been purchased already) and when to harvest them properly.

Posted on June 27, 2007 8:42 AM | link to this entry

From The Back 40

Because it's a downright sucky day for Baltimore, I figured I'd post a picture of yesterday's yield from the vegetable garden in the hopes that it would brighten things up a little. Seriously, we pulled about 5 lbs. of tomatoes off the vines yesterday, adding to the 5 lbs. we have on the counter in the kitchen already. We're going to bust out the pots and cook us up some more sauce this weekend.

Posted on October 6, 2006 11:21 AM | link to this entry | comments (5)

Morning Glories

Jen planted a morning glory vine under our dining room window. It's going absolutely insane this week.

the triplets below are new buds.

Posted on September 22, 2006 1:20 PM | link to this entry

Green Thumbs and Open Spaces.

Hurricane Ernesto is going to dump a few gallons of water on us this weekend, so we took some time after lunch to shore up the plants in our garden. The cucumbers, which were coming on strong in the early part of the year, are getting long in the tooth and not producing as much (they were averaging about four cukes a week). However, the tomatoes are now in their prime and absolutely bursting with fruit—a rough count of six plants totalled at least 150 tomatoes in various states of completion. The basil Jen planted among the tomatoes is now waist-height and full with leaves.

We're already planning the addition to the current garden—I'm thinking it will roughly double in size. We're adding eggplant, red peppers, more soybeans, and pole beans to this year's lineup, as we know that it'll all do well here.

Further to the west, our neighbors engaged a landscaping company to wrestle control of their yard back from the weeds, brush, and poison ivy that have slowly been choking it to death. This week two men have used chainsaws, trimmers, clippers, chippers, and a Bobcat to haul off at least four trailers worth of yard debris, including the majority of our shared treeline. What was once a tangled "hedgerow" running the length of our west property line is now an open plain of dirt punctuated with a few startled-looking trees. Our cherry trees are intact, as well as a few sugar maples on their side of the line (and not the ones I'd have picked—I prefer trees that grow straight up and down), but all the ivy on both sides of the law has been scraped off with the blade of the Bobcat.

(August, 2003)

What was once a private, enclosed (and somewhat untidy) side yard is now a public space, visible and audible from the road, which has us concerned. Because the driveway side is less than aesthetically pleasing, we've been using the west side as our outdoor getaway, but that's a thing of the past. It's looking now like our plans to add a fence along the treeline just got bumped up in priority...

(April, 2005)

(August, 2006)

Posted on August 31, 2006 12:52 PM | link to this entry | comments (4)

One Benefit of the Heat.

This is our garden as of this morning, before the blast wave hit us. It's 100+ degrees out there now, and our cucumbers and tomatoes are love-love-loving it. The two plants up front are Big Boy tomatoes, the huge round beefy ones you see for $3/lb. at the store. The next two plants back are "Health Kick" tomatoes, which are low-to-the-ground Italian style tomatoes—long and dry, good for stuff like guacamole. Behind the tomatoes are four cucumber plants, which are going apeshit and climbing the ladders I built for them at the rate of about 6"/day. Each plant is throwing off blooms like crazy, and they have about 20 fruit between the three of them. Behind the cukes are four forlorn soybean plants, the ones the squirrels didn't dig up. We had dreams of growing our own edamame, but obviously the yard critters love Japanese food as well. (that freaky cat statue is supposed to be some kind of deterrent, but I think it's mainly serving as a perch for the local bird population, who seem to like to poop on its head.) Finally, in the far corner, we have two tomato plants grown from seed in our basement, which are finally coming into their own and putting off fruit.

Yesterday I made some hummus and we had cucumber-tomato-hummus sandwiches for dinner. While it wasn't the most filling thing we could have eaten, it sure was tasty.

Posted on August 1, 2006 3:49 PM | link to this entry

Garden Progress, 6.21.06

Here's a shot of one of our four tomato plants, with only a few of the fruit visible. The leaves are very dark, which could be some kind of tomato blight, or simply the way this particular variety grows—whatever the case, they're getting much bigger. We have cukes coming in too, but the pictures I snapped of them didn't come out so well. Maybe tomorrow.

Posted on June 21, 2006 4:29 PM | link to this entry

Potential For Catastrophe.

When I was around the age of eight or nine, gas and heating oil got really expensive. I didn't know about the oil crisis, of course, but the reality made its way into our lives in different places. My father gave up driving his monstrous green Ford station wagon (a Country Squire, if I remember correctly) and started a carpool at work, which meant we had a monstrous green Ford van in the driveway instead—the kind with seventeen rows of hard vinyl seats and a minimum of passenger comfort. My mother's '66 Buick convertible stayed mostly in the garage.

We also had a woodstove in our basement that suddenly started getting used. He may have had it installed just for the purpose of heating the house; I can't remember clearly. Whatever the case, one of our new chores became wood-hauling on crisp fall mornings. In addition to his other Ford vehicles, my father had a (monstrous, green) Ford F350 stakebody truck, something I'd wager very few other dads parked in their driveways. Besides doing duty as a moving vehicle, frequent trips to the lumberyard (I come by this home renovation shit honestly), and hauling our camper in a homebuilt method which voided any manufacturer's warranty, we used the truck on weekends to carry lumber back to the house. At some point, being the thrifty man he is, he answered an ad in the paper for a chainsaw and came home with the first model McCulloch built in 1939. It featured an engine the size of a dishwasher, and roared to life in the garage with the subtlety of a steam locomotive. He had a deal with someone who owned acres of forest, and let him cut dead wood off the property for firewood. He'd pack us kids into the cab of the Ford, heave the dishwasher chainsaw onto the bed of the truck, and off we'd go for an exciting afternoon of hauling wood through the underbrush.

Time is fluid as a child of eight or nine, so I don't remember exactly how long we were out in the woods with him on these trips. It could have been hours, days or weeks. I do remember countless trips back and forth from the truck towards the screaming, gnashing sound of the dishwasher chainsaw, finding him sweating with the effort of holding 500 lbs. of bucking pig iron four feet off the ground. When we'd carried enough wood (and my father had worn his arms into useless jelly), we'd pack up the truck and head for home.

Evenings included my favorite chore of all, the nightly trip to the woodpile in the dark with a wheelbarrow. I'd lift the tarp, sure that I'd be consumed by rabid, angry snakes or raccoons, and fill the barrow with split wood, (He must have split the wood when we were sleeping, because I don't remember that part) then bring it up to the basement window to heave it in to my Dad, who stacked it against the wall next to the hot stove. Then, I'd return out to the woodpile and get another load. In this quaint but character-building way, our family rode out the oil crisis of the late 70's.

I gained a huge amount of respect for my Dad this weekend when I finished cutting the final section of elm tree in our backyard on Saturday. I'd rented a 14' Stihl chainsaw after a frustrating failure to revive Dave's on Friday night, and fired it up for the first time with a healthy sense of apprehension. This was no dishwasher, but the potential to self-mutilate was still as great. The first few cuts were tentative, meek stabs at the wood, but after a half-hour of familiarity, I was splitting fat chunks of the elm into bite-sized half-rounds for lining the garden. When I'd finished that part, I cut the other sections down into quarters for splitting in the fall (everything is still soaking wet.)

By the end of the day, my arms were tired, my back was singing Ave Maria, and only the timely intervention by my wife with an afternoon meal kept me from passing out next to the woodpile. But the majority of the felled tree is now off the lawn, and I made it through the day without severing a leg.

Posted on March 13, 2006 9:34 PM | link to this entry | comments (5)

Seeds of Change.

Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on pre-grown plants at the Friendly Neighborhood Home Superstore this year, Jen and I decided to start our own seed in the basement. Partially inspired by my father's success (the man can make plants grow from moon dust) and partially inspired by our lack of funds, we bought several mini-greenhouses, their accompanying heating mats, and a bagful of seed. Unfortunately, hubris clouded our better judgement, because after reviewing the space and height requirements for each species of plant we're starting, it became clear that we don't have the massive acreage needed to cultivate everything we bought.

For the record, we're putting in three species of tomatoes (we love our tomatoes here), eggplant (I'm a recent and avid convert), cucumber, pole beans, soybeans (edamame is the shiznit) and a Blackwater-sized army of marigolds and nasturtium to fend off the bugs. We also have an additional pile of pretty flowers to start in a few weeks for the other gardens.

Jen has spent hours poring over book after book, collating information about friendly plant species, best planting practices, soil composition, and harvesting tips. Even so, we spent the better part of Sunday planning out the timing—different seed goes in on different dates, sort of like following the Olympics or reading a complicated train schedule—we then plotted the size, shape, location and arrangement of our vegetable garden-to-be in the backyard for maximum sun exposure and drainage requirements. (Unfortunately, we are cursed with a sloping, shaded, and unevenly drained yard, with a minimum of southern exposure and a swamp in the corner.)

Last night, we put 72 seeds in to bake for six weeks under a grow lamp in the basement, and I transferred our schedule to iCal so that we're on track with the plants. Let's hope our efforts are not in vain.

Posted on February 20, 2006 10:44 AM | link to this entry

Weekend Wrap-Up, or: Mulch, Food, Shopping, and Phlegm.

Jen took Friday afternoon to rearrange the living room to where four people can sit comfortably and chat with each other, which is a huge difference; it's really refreshing to have some feng in our shui, at least where that room is concerned. It would be great to make major structural changes in there, but just about everything we want to do will cost major cash, which we don't have on hand right now.

Saturday we hit the Home Despot and spent a little cash on supplies for the house. The yard here at the Lockardugan estate has been the bastard stepchild since autumn of last year; after the elm in the backyard was felled and all the rest of the trees dropped their leaves, I've ignored it completely. Meanwhile, the neighbors in back have a little senior citizen dude they hire in who shambles around with a rake and a broom, and over a few weeks' time he got their yard cleaned up to where it made us look like trailer trash. (He mowed their lawn in January. They're fucking with us deliberately, I know it.)

The first order of business was to rake the leaves, which were slowly oozing into (and killing off) our already anemic back lawn. In about fifteen minutes I put a mulch enclosure in, and got the majority of the leaves off the lawn. Next, Jen and I started pulling up some of the English ivy that's overtaking the southwest corner of the lawn. English ivy is sort of how I imagine kudzu would be—pulling armfuls of it off the lawn only reveals more armfuls underneath. Apparently the Doctor was all kinds of hot for English ivy, because that shit is all up this be-yatch—there's ivy hanging twenty feet off our trees. We cleared a section measuring 15'x30' out (five bagfuls, total) and moved the existing logpile to the back corner. Next, we got the debris from the felled tree that was still spread across the lawn up, and stacked it in line with the rest of the wood, leaving the huge crosswise cuts that can't be lifted for a date with a chainsaw. I'd imagine we have at least two cords stacked right now and another two cords in unmoveable wood to go. Then, I stopped over at the Cauzzis' to help push the Galaxie back into the garage. That car is too damn fine (and rare on the east coast) to wind up looking like my Scout. Despite a low front tire, little battery power, and a soggy trunk, we were able to push, pull, wiggle, and coax it into the garage, where it should stay dry. When little Callie decided her Uncle Bill was just too scary to deal with, I packed up the Saturn and headed west for dinner: Potato-leek soup, which was mouth-wateringly good the first time Jen made it and better this time. I even sprung for a six-pack of Harp, which went down very well after the day's activity.

I also picked up a pair of cheap Hi-8 cassettes for the Thrift Store Camera and within five minutes had tape rolling of our cats wandering aimlessly around the living room. Sears carries a no-name battery for $17 that I have to go back for this week that the engrish website claims will work on this camera. If I had a video card with RCA-out, I could rip it digitally, or use the camera as a webcam (hot geek webcam action!) but for now, I'll keep it plugged into the wall.

Sunday we took a fistful of gift certificates to various home-decor stores in the mall and browsed through all kinds of expensive stuff we can't afford. Who pays $350 for a set of bedsheets besides Liberace? I mean, really, what's so different from a $40 set Martha Stewart hawks at the K-Mart? It ain't the thread count. Maybe the Restoration Hardware kind is woven with golden silk or some other bourgeoisie thing that sounds good on the little cards they use to rationalize the 700% markup. "Handmade by a blind Nepalese monk with genuine free-range mountain yak assfur—as everybody knows, mountain yak is the smoothest, gentlest assfur known to Man, and worth more than its weight in gold." In the evening we decided to make a dish Jen found called Scallops Charleston, which cost us all of about $10 and tasted wonderful, even though I didn't broil it as well as I should have. Feeling pious after our day's work in the yard, we busted into our remaining bottle of red wine—Mmmmm, red wine—and ate like grownups at our dining room table. Then, we enjoyed a glass of port on our couch in front of a blazing fire.

Meanwhile, the sore throat I woke up with on Saturday morphed into post-nasal drip and a rocking good head cold for Monday morning. Swell. I felt awful about infecting my consulting clients this morning (and considered rescheduling), but as it turned out, the wife of the pair has the same cold. They watched me do battle with Verizon and Quicken 2006 for a few hours, and fed me homemade chicken soup for lunch. Verizon won (their DSL modem is hosed) so I'll return Thursday to fight the good fight. Also, Quicken 2006 for the Mac seems to be a big bag of shit, so I'd recommend staying with the 2005 version until Intuit gets they' head out they' ass.

Posted on January 29, 2006 4:19 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Vegetable garden.

My dear Gramma Dugan used to pronounce it ve-ge-ta-ble. "Eat your ve-ge-ta-bles." Gramma, this one's for you.

Posted on May 17, 2005 4:55 PM | link to this entry

Kill The Wabbit.

Jen was geeking out yesterday by sending me text messages on the Batphone: "DAMN BUNNies[sic]."

I spent the better part of Saturday digging out the shade bed (that bed which lies along the driveway and is hidden by three very emaciated bushes) and laying in a frame of 2x12"s to contain fresh dirt. Phase One was actually lugging the material home. Phase Two involved digging the existing plants out of hard-packed clay. (Think of the chain gang scenes in Cool Hand Luke.) Phase Three was constructing and installing the frame. That was definitely enough for one day, and a hearty round of applause must go out to our neighbors M. and S. for upping our suggestion of walking to get ice cream to a full-blown barbecue with beer at their place.

Sunday, Jen ignored all warnings from her Russian physical therapist and planted a paycheck's worth of pretty shade plants into the rich soil we added and watered the whole thing while I toiled at the computer all afternoon long. It looked great Monday morning, when her back felt like the whole Russian army had marched across her shoulderblades.

Apparently, though, this fluffy patron and her child think we have opened up a salad bar for their convenience. Now, I like bunnies. They're cute, and they eat lettuce and hang out in the glass cage at the pet store and poop little round pellets, like styrofoam peanuts. But when they start chowing down on my woman's plants like it's bluehair hour at the smorgasboard, I have some homicidal (bunnycidal) thoughts. We're going to have to look into some anti-bunny measures (punji pits? guard dogs? mines?) so as to keep our garden green.

Posted on May 16, 2005 4:01 PM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Growth.

This morning I made myself late to work. I threw my stuff in the Jeep, kissed my wife goodbye, and walked around the back of the house to water our fledgling vegetable garden. Along the way, I had to replant several gladiola bulbs in their pots, due to our local squirrels digging for treasure, and carry the pots into the greenhouse for safekeeping. The vegetables all look healthy and good so far. Two eggplants have recovered from their move—I thought I was going to lose one for a day or so, but it perked right back up yesterday. The tomatoes all look healthy and happy. (Strangely, one variety recommends "damp soil" and the other asks for "daily watering".) The red and green peppers are both looking strong.

Oddly enough, though, the thing that makes me happiest is that the cucumbers, which I planted from seed, are germinating well. I use a watering can to reach the back of the greenhouse, and the first slug of water washed the soil off the top of one of the hills I made. Tucked in together were five or six seeds, all sprouting sucessfully. I covered them back up and watered the rest of the plot, thinking about home-grown tomato and cucumber salad for dinner in August.

Next up is to get another plastic tub like the one I have (I'm using one of those under-the-bed storage containers drilled with drainage holes) and plant my pole beans.

* * *

In other geek news, I converted one of the interior pages on my main site to a mixture of about 75% CSS and 25% old-skool table-based layout. This has been something that's brewing for a long time, and I'm pretty happy with the results. When all is said and done, the page size will have decreased by about half, the style sheets will be consolidated, and the information will be updated (I only go up to 2003 on the design page—har har) Unfortunately it blows up in IE6. There's also an issue with Mozilla and my popup script that I haven't deciphered yet, and some other niggling issues to be addressed. But the heavy lifting has been done, thank God.

Posted on May 11, 2005 11:40 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Convenience and Overload.

Two years ago, when we did the walkthrough on the house, we oohhed and aahhed over the obvious stuff, like the greenhouse and the fireplace, but one of the things that caught Jen's eye was the garden outside the kitchen window. When we first visited, there was a birdbath, a feeder, and a garden ringed by brown modular ABS plastic on the west lawn. (I say "west lawn" only to provide a sense of direction. It sounds grand to say that in a sentence: "We'll have tea on the West Lawn." In actuality, it's a narrow strip of grass, bounded by a weedy, overgrown privet hedge.) When we returned for the walkthrough on the day of the signing, we noticed that everything had disappeared from the yard save the lovely brown garden edging and a patch of dry, dusty soil covered in squirrel holes.

Steadily, over the last two years, Jen's been making the yard look better in between life events. This spring she hatched a plan to rehab the entire flowerbed. Last night we set the wheels in motion by removing the platic edging and replacing it with pressure-treated 2x8's (which will have to do until we can mix cement and build the rock wall.) Next, we dumped six cubic yards of garden soil and tilled the whole pile as the sun was setting. Then, we measured and drove two lengths of PVC piping into the middle of the bed, and set the headboard of a $15 antique bedframe into the pipes. (My wife is so damned smart.) Finally, by the light of the moon, we replaced the plants in their complicated arrangement so that she could put them in the ground this morning.

Note the variety of plants in the above picture. Around the bedframe are sedum and other hearty perennials. Along the edge in front are a variety of herbs and smaller flowering perennials. In back, Jen planted some morning glory, a ton of gladiola bulbs, and other tall flowers.

Meanwhile, the Peapod delivery guy was circling our street trying to find the house, and finally pulled in the driveway after I flagged him down. I'd have to say that the experience of spending $80 at the store and returning home with three small bags of food is no different than having somebody deliver it to the front door, but the convenience of having the staples (milk, bread, tonic water, creamer, etc) is pretty cool. If we can offset the high price of Peapod by shopping at the Asian market for produce, we'll be coming out ahead in my book.

Jen was able to get all the plants in the ground this morning (I don't think she even finished her coffee, she was out the back door so fast) as well as a pile of bulbs that we bought this spring. (We have a ridiculous amount of bulbs, actually—some are still good and left over from my old house, where I had dreams of planting gladiolas in the back yard.) Before I left, I asked Jen to meet me for lunch today so that we could hit a garden center up here by work. We've been living with the selections at Lowe's and Home Depot only because of proximity and budget, and there's a hideously overpriced garden center in the 'Ville that Jen bought from out of necessity. I've been Valley View once or twice but never took the time to really explore, so it was a new experience for us both. Think of the garden center at your local Home Depot and expand it by about 400%. Add a whole section for live fish (featuring koi the size of a small child), wholesale stone, and a live herb section larger than a drugstore, and you have this place. We loaded up two boxes full of plants and got out of there before we did any serious damage, but still wound up dropping $50. I think we both agreed to regroup and think out a strategy for the future, bceause the possibilities have just been expanded tenfold, and we still need to make the mortgage payment.

Posted on April 27, 2005 3:17 PM | link to this entry | comments (6)

Greenhouse...Check.

This weekend I took advantage of the lousy overcast weather to completely strip and re-cover our greenhouse.

As you can see, it was nasty with a capital "N". Years of mold and dirt were stuck on the outside and in between the sheets of plastic.

Once the new plastic was up, the inside of the greenhouse was a completely different place.

I re-arranged the clutter and set up our tables so that there's one whole dry side and one irrigated side. During the rain on Saturday, I cemented the piping together and drilled holes for the sprinkler. This afternoon we finally got to test it out—everything works great. I have to drill another length of pipe with a smaller bit and adjust the pattern for better coverage, but everything works as advertised. (there's water dripping in this photo:)

Now I'm too tired to write anything else. Oh, yeah, we bought about $300 worth of plants. More on that later.

Posted on April 24, 2005 8:55 PM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Thinking About Summer.

Jen and I are trading out the cars this week to have oil changes performed and routine maintenance finally performed. This means I got to scoot into work in Jen's Saturn, which features standard shift and a sunroof. A couple of years ago, I had a functional standard-shift convertible, and driving Jen's car always makes me homesick for the Scout. The other day I was driving home in the Jeep with the windows down, and some strange confluence of scents on the air reminded me of driving on the beach. I immediately thought about Assateague, and had the idea to take Jen camping on the beach again before the summer heat and bugs move in. We have a bunch of commitments in the middle of May to attend to, but I'm going to shoot for a long weekend sometime that month to smell salt air and camp smoke again. Time to dig out our camping gear and take inventory...

In the small amount of downtime I've had today, I've been doing some preliminary reading on starting seeds from scratch. It appears we've missed the recommended window by a month or so, but I don't think that will hurt anything in the long run. Most of the plumbing is roughed in as of last night, so I'm just waiting on the plastic and the final fittings from the greenhouse supply company. I've set the whole thing up so that we can attach and detach different piping based on what's growing underneath, and there's an inside fitting roughed in for a hose attachment and the valves to support it. I also found a downspout diverter for the rain barrels; this will get hooked up to the gutters I'm going to be installing on the garage and routed into the greenhouse piping system, so that we have a natural gravity-fed watering solution.

Posted on April 19, 2005 3:46 PM | link to this entry | comments (5)