Old garden beds
These are going away here in the next couple days. We’re replacing them with Vego Steel garden beds. I built these in 2012. See photos of the building project below.
links for 2010-04-16
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Poor Tesla. Always getting kicked when he's down.
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Awesome discussion of sexism in Emo music, and how women's experiences are devalued and women's voices ignored in music genres.
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Learning how to separate and move the irises in our backyard bed. July or August after the flowers have bloomed, apparently.
Spring Flowers
Some of our spring flowers are up. Aren’t we lucky we have this gnome to do all the hard work for us?
Our new compost bin
No, it will not be staying in our living room.
Local Food Indianapolis and Green Indianapolis links
In the process of signing up for a local food co-op, we’ve been reading several local blogs about local food and green living.
Local Food Blog for Indianapolis – http://www.goinglocal-info.com/
Local Food Blog (not based in Indy) – http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/
A Guide to Local Foods in Indianapolis – http://www.goinglocal-info.com/my_weblog/indiana_food_guide.html
Finding Local Food Markets in Indiana
http://www.indianafarmdirect.com/index2.php
http://www.goinglocal-info.com/my_weblog/community-sponsored-agriculture.html
Indianapolis Green Blogs
http://urbanindy.blogspot.com/
http://www.green-lemonade.com/
Local Green Email List – http://www.greenpieceindy.com
Local Green Magazine – http://www.indianalivinggreen.com/
We ended up signing up for Farm Fresh Delivery, which our friend Jen signed up for a while back. They’re a local farm that delivers a bin of their produce on a weekly or every-other-week basis, and you can add some other groceries like fresh baked bread, eggs, milk or yogurt from local farms if you want. I’m happy about this because I’m wanting to change my regular eating habits to focus more on fruits and and lean meats, with fewer processed foods and fewer starches and refined sugars. It’s also nice because we’re supporting local growers and our food won’t be traveling as far and burning lots of gas to reach us.
I picked up Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” the other day (with a gift card! I’m not violating my New Year’s resolution) and it outlines what many books I’ve read about eating cover – leaner meats, fish, more vegetables, whole grains, less processed foods and less sugar. That fits nicely with The Okinawa Diet and You: The Owner’s Manual, which I’ve read previously.
Gardening
You’ll have to pardon me – this is on of those posts that’s just making notes for myself to refer back to later. Last night I planted in the front flowerbeds:
1 purple lavender
1 orange symphony
1 summertime pink charma
2 Dianthus – Confetti Deep Red
2 Dianthus – Spangled Star
A seed packet of Butterfly Flowers
2 Broadway Lights Daisies
3 Shasta Daisies
2 Coreopsis – Rising Sun
2 Pensteman – X Mexicali
1 Delphinium – Summer Blue
1 Delphinium – Blue Mirror
4 Delosperma – Cooperi Yellow
Over the weekend we planted – Lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, sugar snap peas, rhubarb and green onions.
Still to plant – seed packets of Columbines and more Blue Mirror Delphiniums.
Things I still plant to buy and plant – hostas and Pachysandras in the back at the corner of the house near the deck, to fill in so we don’t have to mow in the awkward corner, and Clematis next to the deck to climb up the trellis. Also, I need to plant the copper pipe trellis from the garage, and start some Clematis growing on it at the side of the house. And I need to finish weeding the side bed, and get some small fencing for around the vegetables, so the bunnies don’t eat them when they start to grow.
2007 Spring Flowers
The 200 bulbs we planted last fall are coming up nicely in front of our house, and last night I planted 2 daisy plants and a lavender plant in the front. I also bought seeds for Columbines, Butterfly plants, and Delphiniums, and the other day Stephanie and I planted seeds in a starter kit for Texas Blue Bonnets and Aster.
I need to get some topsoil to prepare beds for our vegetables; we’re planting lettuce, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, green onions, rhubarb, radishes, oregano, parsley and basil. I hope. We need to get started soon. This is the first year I’ve planted vegetables, so I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing.
Projects Around the House (Revised)
Revised list of stuff I’d like to accomplish this weekend, if I have time…
Help the neighbors clean up brush- Sweep out the back of my truck
- Put my truck bed cover on the truck
- Rearrange the living room furniture
We got part of this done. We still need to move my desk - Rearrange the library and move my desk in there
- Clean the kitchen and downstairs bathroom
We got a lot of work done in the kitchen - Vacuum whole first floor
Take more stuff to the basement (chairs, tools)- Vacuum in the basement
Bring extra waste basket from garage into house for recycling- Clean the aquarium
Plant the rest of the bulbs in the flowerbeds
I planted 25 Muscari bulbs, 30 daffodils, 2 bleeding hearts cuttings, 2 bearded Iris cuttings, 1 peony cutting, 6 hyacinths, and about 50 tulip bulbs. I have about 75 more tulip bulbs to plant.
I finished planting all the bulbs.- plant edging pavers into side flower bed
- Add step to bottom of basement stairs
- Install coat rack bar in Dining Room Closet
- Install additional shelf in Laundry room
- attach lattice to the back porch
- install towel hooks and toilet paper holder in upstairs bathroom
- examine top two basement stairs and measure for replacement
- hang some of the framed artwork
Amending the Soil
Our flower beds have very depleted soil, so I picked up a load of compost this morning and spread it around the beds after overturning all the soil. It’s amazing how much compost this requires, really. I’ll need to get another load of crap for the front beds; a truckload only covered the beds on the south side of the house. Technically, it’s not just crap – it’s a mixture of compost, peat and topsoil. But it smells like crap and attracts LOTS of flies, so basically it’s crap.
You can see a bunch more pictures of the work I did here.
I got it from Indiana Mulch Company, because I priced it in comparison to the bags at Lowes and this is a way better deal. They also are handy because they’re right downtown (we pass them on the way to the recycling place) so I don’t have to drive all over to get it.
I in no way resembled this character while shoveling shit.