Progress On the Suburban-Homestead

Well, life's still trying to work against us, but at least the new onslaught of bullshit isn't too time consuming. So this weekend we're trying to catch up on things that should have been done weeks ago. You may know that we started a shed a while back, and then it started raining. Then it snowed. Then some more rain followed by sleet and some rain. Once the weather cleared up, we were completely bogged down with other problems. This week, we finally got things under control, so we planned a weekend full of work. Life thought that was hillarious. Adam leaves his tools on the job site through the week. It's a fairly secure building on a pretty high security lot for a local manufacturer. Thursday night the building was broken into and over $5,000 worth of tools were taken. It's hard to build a shed with no tools. Luckly, Brendan, my son who works with Adam, brought all his tools home that night. So the shed show is on!

How Does My Garden Grow?

Wonderfully, thanks for asking! Well, what's in the ground it doing great. Unfortunately, I've fallen very far behind. I still have seeds waiting to be started that should be going in the ground this weekend, last weekend really! I'll start them tomorrow and Monday and if it works out, it works out. If it doesn't, I guess it doesn't. But I've gotta try, right?

The perennials are doing great. Mostly herbs, lemon balm, wormwood, oregano... The asparagus, not so good. I think they mutated into dandelions. Another theory is my jerk neighbor replaced it with dandelions. The bush cherries are just blossoming, which saved them from the last freeze. But it won't save them from being removed so I can start rubarb in their place. The cherries they produce are 90% pit, so I think rubarb will be a better use of the space.

In the big garden, the cabbage is doing really good. The parsley, dill, thyme and rosemary planted around it are growing fast and the carrots and radishes sprinkled in are coming along well.

I'm Outta Here!

I had planned on getting a bunch of seeds in the ground today. Some cucumbers, beans, jewelry goards and some corn so I can get the three sisters planted.

But, I got a call from my brother. He tells me that he's at the flea market, and there's a guy there with Baker Creek seeds, FIVE FOR A DOLLAR! Whaaaaaaaat? So I hollar at Adam, "I'm outta here! And I'm taking a $20 outta your wallet!" Adam picks his battles, so he says, "Love ya! Don't forget about that cop that's been radaring the intersection at 32nd street!"

What I find when I get there are banana boxes full of seeds. A couple of them are all Baker Creek. Most of them were packaged for 2011 to 2014, but I'm not too worried about it. They don't show any signs of having been wet, and there are no tell tale signs of having been bothered by pests. And I'm getting about 90% germination from the Baker Creek seeds packaged for 2012 that I started this season. So, I picked out 70 packages.

My original plan was to buy a nice, small but nice, tent and have the house removed from the property to make room for more garden, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought sharing with them would be more practical. Instead, I'll be giving some of them away here, so be watching for that. I also think it would be fun to start a seed carousel similar to the ones started by Hive account@beatitudes8.