The last of the raised beds in now in place! I have no more reasonable area left to put any large beds in. I’m done. Yes, there is land around me, but it “technically” belongs to the empty lots on either side of me and I’m not supposed to expand over there unless I want to fork over the lot rent! (Ha Ha ha… ahem. No.)
I think 600 square feet will do just fine for a family a three. And a guinea pig that LOVES fresh produce.
It’s a little hard to see, but it’s at the end of the line of boxes, next to the utility hookup and all. Tim stained it before he put this one together this time, so it’s all stained and pretty and the others are still raw wood. I think tomorrow I’m going to see if Maggie will stain the others for me. She likes to paint. And stain and seal.
My Lowes has fruit trees on sale for $7 each. That’s a steal for bulking up your own permaculture in your homestead! I now have 10 semi-dwarf fruit trees. Apples, peach, pears and cherry. Four of them are heavy with fruit this year and they are not that old. Last year I got one apple… this year the apple trees alone have at least 20-25 apples on them each! I plan to watch and possibly thin some them so that it’s not too hard on these young trees this year. One or two have already dropped, so I’m going to let Nature work for a bit, see how it goes.
Tim planted an apple and a red pear on either side of Maggie’s bird feeder poles. We are hoping that they will grow up and provide a little cover for our bird friends as well as perches in the winter for them to wait their turns. And we don’t mind sharing the fruits with them either. It’s really neat to landscape with edible fruits. The trees are very pretty when they flower and are just as nice looking as any other ornamental tree. I plan to start adding more herbs and edibles into my flower beds. It just makes sense.
Look at all these little apples! How cool is that?
And the coolest thing? My little peach tree has a bunch of little peaches on it! I didn’t see them at first but Jessy found them and it was so cool. I’ll admit, the peach tree was a last minute purchase the very first year we were here. It was planted near the back door and it was getting bashed by the door and it was just too shady for it. So I moved it last year. And it really loves being out at the front to welcome folks, but I never thought it would fruit since we only have one.
Well, apparently with the serious increase in bees we’ve had this year, our little peach has found a mate! I’ve looked around and I have not seen any peach trees around with my neighbors, so I don’t know! Maybe it didn’t need a friend to pollinate, but well, I thought most peaches needed a friend to make fruit magic.
I can’t wait, I absolutely LOVE peach jam. I hope that enough make it to full size that I can can a couple jars of my own peach jam for the winter months! That will be a real treat.
The two potted cherries are doing wonderful by the doorway! They are bushing out nicely and are in full leaf. Luna was using the left one as a scratching post and I about clobbered her when I caught her. I promptly planted some little daisies around it so that she is now uninterested in dealing with them to get to the little trunks. I’m going to get a little tree wrap and give them both a little extra protection from feline attack.
I got a pair of pots to put some herbs in, sweet basil and catnips and catmints. I’m not ready to introduce some of these slightly evasive herbs into the beds yet. My chives and oregano are filling out their boxes very completely and I think if given the chance they would take over! Tomorrow, I need to harvest the chives and let them regrow. My first harvest!
My purple iris are blooming, the big ones. The SIberian and Japanese iris are getting close, reaching tall and beautiful. Those are SO beautiful when they bloom, just can’t wait. Yep, my yard is a lot of purple plants. I just luvs purple!
My elephant garlic is coming up and the red candy onions are doing great. They are the only things that I’ve actually got actively growing at the moment in the raised beds. I have another basket of candy onions to plant, but I think I’m going to put them in another area and see how they do there. I like doing a few little tests to see where some veggies like being. I’m pretty sure that the south side of the Moby is definitely my “money” side of the gardens but the north has done nicely in the past as well.
The front looks a little different without the half dead pines. Tim dug in two little Bartlett pears and then a deep purple lilac in the middle. The pines were just not happy. Two of them I pulled right out of the ground by hand! Easily, I might add. After two years they still hadn’t even gotten much in the way of roots out into the ground. The underneath was all brown and dead and they just were kinda hanging on, waiting for a mercy killing. They just did not like being there. It’s hard to cull something, but well, it was the front of my little Moby and every time I drove up, I was not happy. They were contractor’s specials for $8 each, and I got them too late in the season. I think they were already shocked and unhappy when I bought them. I might actually have the receipt somewhere and I suppose that I could bring them back and get three more, but I’m not sure that I want three more! I wonder if you can get credit towards something else. Hmmm. I might give them a call. After all, I have been a very loyal customer and get all my stock from there. Most everything has been wonderful. Good reason to save receipts!!!
For the last raised bed, Tim dug out the compost from the pile to line the bottom of the bed and he said it was nice and rich dirt! Yeah! It works! (ha ha) Of course, the top was still cooking, but the bottom was perfect. But we did make some compost mistakes that I won’t do again. We added intact cornstalks and sunflower stalks to the mix. They were still pretty intact. And made it hard to get some of the compost out. I think that super hard fibrous stuff might not be the best for a small pile. I read somewhere about running a lawnmower over it, or taking a little hatchet to the stuff, but that seems a little rough. I might bundle that stuff up next year and take it to our community composting facility. It’s just a mile from my house. And keep our pile for weeds and clippings and house veggie scraps and such. I might stop at the Circle K and ask if they would save coffee grounds for a day for me now and then to add some yummy browns to the pile. All a learning curve you know. But it’s wonderful to see that you can make big mistakes and still get good end product! And nope, I never turned or stirred the stuff. Just piled and let it work. Super easy.
Well, it’s getting late and time for bed, another day is already on my mind. I’ve got a little client work to finish up, but this whole week is going to be a home week, without a lot of outside commitments. The last couple weeks have been pretty hectic, hence the lack of daily postings, but this is a good solid week without too much going on. And no rain!!! Maggie is finishing her last bit of school and all the heavy lifting and building outside is done. Heck, even the puppy is settling in to our routine and Gypsy is already showing improvement with our Bag Balm treatment! All is good with the world. And tomorrow… finish fabric in the beds and we WILL PLANT!!!
All is good with the world!
As you might know, I make my living as a graphic designer with a small publishing company making homeschool products as well as music related products and my daughter sells rock and mineral kits for kids as well. So I spend a good deal of my day here at my desk, working at my computer and running the family business.
I absolutely love my desk. It’s an old drafting table from the 1930’s and it’s a perfect size for me. I like the deepness of the table top, so that I can have my pair of gerbils, Lester and Earl on my desk to keep me company and still have room to work. And with my large monitor, it keeps all the cords and external drives and other computer stuff tucked behind it and out of sight in the back corner of the desk. The drawers are super long and deep as well and can hold everything I need for day to day work close, but out of sight. I like a uncluttered area to work in. I just want a few of my “things” around me so that I can focus on what needs to be done.
However… what I do not like is the top!
It’s this white, nasty plastic stuff that is often on drafting tables. This stuff is old, probably close to the age of the table! It’s ripply and cut up and has marker stains on it and all, yes, character but it’s just getting to me. Partially because it’s not very nice to write on. Your pen tends to smoosh through the paper and all. And I can’t use a mouse properly because the pad is too ripply. I actually had to keep a little journal book under the mouse pad!
Well, I got to thinking… why am I putting up with this? It’s been years! Don’t ask me why we get into these situations where we really should have adjusted something that was a burr under our saddle, and we don’t! I suppose this is why some people stay married and perhaps shouldn’t be! Haha…
This burr has been rubbing me the wrong way for way too long and I decided that today was the day. Tim was due in a bit and we were heading to Lowes for a few things and I planned to find me a new surface and fix this situation.
I had pulled off the ucky white drafting surface and found a wood board underneath. Of course covered in years of this sticky gooey stuff. For a few seconds I considered stripping and staining it, but then I realized it was a very thin plywood veneer and to be honest, all chipped, cut and gouged. No thanks. I have time but not that much time. And even if I did strip and sand it, the cuts and gouges would be a problem in the thin veneer. Now if it had been the same old oak that the rest of the table is made of, I might have given it a few more minutes thought.
I had in my mind to get a piece of countertop laminate. But when I realized that it was $48 a sheet, well, that changed my mind pretty quick. $48 bucks was a little pricy. Just seemed overkill. I thought about wood Pergo flooring and then Tim said why not floor tiles and we were off. It’s so good to have a like-minded partner in crime with these Moby upgrades! Very often we ping off each other and he can balance off my quirky ideas and make them actually work.
I was going to go with a wood grain, but the grain was a little deep in the tile. I wanted something a little smoother. And to be honest, it would be hard to match the table legs and all, with the floor tile and I already have two colors of wood in my room. My bedroom furniture is all a sort of pecan-cherry, reddish color and the table is more oak. Adding a third possible color seemed that it might clash a bit. So then I saw this dark brown and reddish brown fake stone tile and it just shouted out “take me” and I got my 12 tiles and we were off to the garden department for other needs.
Since the top was already sticky, I just left it be. It was smooth, nothing funky stuck to it or anything like that. Simple, just peel, line up with the edge and press down.
My goodness, I love it! It’s nice and a hard surface, no more squishy plastic! I believe I might get a little dark brown poly-caulk sealer for the little cracks so they are less noticeable. The edges are a little grey and divot in a bit. I’ve seen small amounts at the craft store before, for mosaic projects. I think that would work perfect and give me years of work. And I love how it works in my room/office. It blends in so much nicer than the dirty white huge surface of before. Almost reduces the “size” of the desk a bit. What a great fix for less than $10! It’s so nice to see that these floor tiles are really getting very nice and realistic. The detail of the imprinted surface is so high resolution that you really have to stare close to see any dotted images. And the variation between the tiles is awesome, of the 12 tiles I got, only two match! So you are able to mix and turn them for a very unique and natural look.
We have an old big work table in our living room as our dining room/kitchen/shipping table and it’s pretty rough. I’m thinking that a piece of solid hard vinyl flooring might really give that a new life! It take a lot of abuse and it’s no antique worth refinishing… actually it’s two old bank desks that we screwed together to make this huge big work surface. If I catch site of a remnant that looks nice and fits some day… it might just come home!!
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