Progress

Some progress in the garden. Not many of my peas sprouted, so I re-seeded. None of the 2nd seeding sprouted, so I'm trying to sprout them inside in a wet paper towel, and then plant them when I see the sprouts forming.Lettuce, Spinach and Mesclun are coming along. The walls of water are basically warming the soil for tomatoes and peppers that won't go in until June
Some of the squash under the glass is beginning to sprout. Radishes are coming long and the Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts have transplanted well.

All my onions have sprouted and I've also planted leeks and shallots.

Also today I got a very large box in the mail. I received an early birthday present of a composter :) I'm excited. It's an Envirocycle Rotating Composter. Ever since I asked for it I've been bemoaning all the kitchen scraps that have gone in the trash. Now it's finally here and we can start making compost.

Garden In May

A view of the garden in early May. In the foreground a tepee structure that Matt built for me so that the mystery squash that are growing can go up. My mom and I found the mystery squash in late April. They had seed leaves just like a squash or cucumber so we decided to transplant them and see what they become. All the holes dug around it are filled with onion seedlings.
In the next bed the red walls of water protect Brussels Sprouts and broccoli seedling. Garlic is growing behind that as well as carrots, radishes, shallots and some other squash that I hope will sprout.

In the third bed you can see we have lettuce, beets, mesclun (under jars), spinach, dill(under jars), and peas. The peas had a horrible germination rate. I'm not sure what I did wrong. I'll fill the other half of the bed with tomatoes and beans when the frost date is past.

Rug and Garden Update

Stage 3 of my rug.
Pants (and skirt) count: 8
Obviously I haven't worked much on it since February. This week was school vacation and in addition to working on my rug, I started my garden. We seemed to have jumped from Winter to Summer with temperatures up to 80 this week. I'm betting that it won't get too cold before the end of May when the last frost date is (or that if it does, I can cover my seedlings to protect them.) So last weekend we repaired the raised beds here on the property, and turned over the soil and plotted out my squares. This week I've seeded dill, beets, spinach, mesclun and peas outside and many more things inside to transplant latter. Spring is so exciting!

Spring?

This week we started to shovel the snow bank that has collected as the snow slid off our roof this winter. The snow banks sits right on top of the the flower bed where the spring crocuses, daffiodills and tulips will sprout. We're trying to help them out by breaking up the bank so it will melt faster. Today I sat down with the seed catalog and a notebook to plan my garden for the summer. Some crops can be planted 4 weeks before our frost date (May 28th) but I'm not sure if the ground will be dry enough by the beginning of May. I also planned out for crops that will keep producing after the fall frost date. Our season is so short that I have to plant them in mid July for them to be mature by then. I'm hoping we can make the garden work and prevent the groundhog from eating the green shoots.

Rug 2

Stage 2 of the Rug

Pants Count: 6 (but 1/2 a leg of 2 pairs of pants remains for later)

This week has been my school vacation and I've been without a car for most of it. Its given me time to clean house and start some craft projects I've been meaning to do for a while. I've also done a lot of web surfing about these projects and have been inspired by others work and works in progress, so I thought I'd post mine.

I began a braided rug made from pants. If you know me well, you know I have a stash of old pants, mostly jeans, but a there is a fair amount of khaki and cordoroy in there too. Originally this was intended for purses, brownbags specifically, but I haven't made any of those in a while and so for now, this is ripe material for my rug. Considering there are 6 tubs of material, I think I'll have plenty for this project. Our house has a room we call the dining room that stretches the width of the house. It's an odd room with the outside door we use most often and doors to 5 other rooms off of it. So we have the dining room table in part, and a settee in front of the fireplace, but we have this large area that's empty because its surrounded by doors. It needs a rug to define the space.

So here is the beginning of the braided rug. Pants count: 3.