Long story short, since the last series of somewhat routine posts -
I started going to and getting involved with a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. It is/they are awesome. I met some friends. They are also awesome. In February we moved out of the apartment in the suburbs of Hampton to a house in the city of Norfolk. Guess what? It's also awesome. I'm keeping busy. Homeschooling is happening. Projects are everywhere (if not mostly in my head). I've been painting a little, writing a little, baking a little, cleaning a lot, exercising not so much.
However, since updates were not the purpose of this particular post, let me get to that particular purpose.
We have a yard!
And I'm starting a garden in it!
I really like the idea of an urban homestead, however, this is not our forever home. We don't own it, and don't even plan to rent here longer than a year or two, so I'm hesitant to do too much to set up "home" here. Gardens are good, though. They are as cheap or expensive and as simple or complex as you make them. In late winter, when we knew we would be getting a yard for sure, I was really excited and gung-ho about doing research for what type of garden was best and what type of plants I wanted. I already owned the books The Urban Homestead and The Backyard Homestead. I had all the pins on Pinterest. But I quickly got overwhelmed.
Guess what? There is information out there! And some of it is conflicting! There is no one best way to grow things! It's kind of confusing! So by the time we moved, unpacked, settled, and got back into some sort of a routine, as lazy and half-assed as it is, spring was upon us and I'd gotten scared and mentally pushed the garden thing to the side.
Then suddenly, it got warm. Like, high 70's warm. Trees, flowers, and grasses started popping out, telling me about how wonderful but generally inedible they were, asking wouldn't I like to plant them some friends? I couldn't procrastinate any longer. Either I was going to have a garden or I wasn't. I had wanted to make raised beds out of freebie materials, like pallets, from craigslist, so the next delay was in carefully combing through the ads once a week. Eventually we ditched that plan when M told me that the pallets I eventually settled on wouldn't fit in the back of the car and would need to be busted up first, which would result in a lot of lost wood and crumbles. Rather than continue to spin my wheels thinking of the next best freecycled, loosey-goosey, slap-it-together, hippie garden plan, I showed M the raised bed plan in The Urban Homestead and put him in charge of the building with real lumber and tools and all. Which he did for me Sunday.
Look how lovely!
I now have three 4'x8'x8" raised beds. We only sunk one in the ground at first, because I was being non-committal about where I wanted the other two, despite trying to carefully observe the sunlight patterns in the yard. As soon as I realized the size of the project I'd asked for, I asked my friend L if she'd like one of the boxes to be dedicated to her. I'd realized I might have bitten off more than I can chew by asking for three!
With the challenge of the building material for the raised beds out of the way, the next issue is figuring out how to fill these boxes. Again, I've read all kinds of things, and while I'd like to do this "right", I'm realizing that there isn't really a "right" way. However, getting worried and scared into not doing it at all will for sure result in garden failure. This is all going to be a big experiment, and we'll see what, if anything, comes of it. So I'll be taking notes here on the blog.
Garden Box A
I started on filling the first box, box A, on Monday. It is on the southeast edge of the yard along the fence that divides our yard from the neighbor's, and is probably the sunniest spot in the yard. To fill it, I first scattered the contents of the guinea pig cage (soft wood and paper bedding) on the ground, and took out the shiny print paper after I took the picture. It didn't take up nearly as much space as I was hoping.
I started scraping dirt off the cement walkway and patio in the yard, which we suspected might be a little larger than they appeared and largely covered with leaves and dirt. I don't have a wheelbarrow, so I started with using a cardboard box as a cart.
Isn't that the most pathetic thing?
It turns out an empty trash can does the job much better.
We've had a compost bucket, which at one time was an Ale Pale of M's, filling with kitchen scraps for about two weeks. Though the contents were not even close to composted, I decided to mix that in with the dirt and grass roots I was dumping in the hole. A lot of happy earthworms joined in. I'm sure it will compost-in-place in no time. I hope? I really have no idea what I'm doing.
It turns out the walkway and patio that are covered in dirt are much more substantial than they appeared at first! Also, all the soil that covers them is from composted leaves that had been left to sit there, so it is just lovely. I scooped up as much as I could on Monday before it started to rain. For a short time the kids joined me, using the box as their cart and me using the trash can, and we played archeology, trying to discover the edges of the ancient concrete.
It's supposed to rain most of the week, but hopefully there will be some time in there to finish up.
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