We have been hard at work on the garden attached to the west side of the greenhouse. It's been neglected for years like everything else, but we are making some progress!
If you are wondering what it looked like before, just picture a patch of weeds. Okay? Now here it is. RC whacked all the weeds and underneath there was this raised bed, so we amended the soil in it and planted 21 tomato seedlings with lettuce, cilantro, and green onions in between. As an aside: whenever I say "green onions" that song by Booker T and the MG's starts playing in my head. Around the existing raised bed we have been creating paths, and then there will be more beds all around the perimeter next to the fence.
Here are the tomatoes! You can also see the green onions (cue music) sprouting down front. I was able to cut all those bamboo stakes myself from our supply, which is pretty cool. I will never have to buy bamboo stakes again, and you know bamboo has many other uses as well. Who wants bamboo sake cups for Christmas?!
Here is the patio next to the greenhouse. If you're wondering what it used to look like, picture a patch of weeds covered in trash. I'm still not done with the patio; I want to get all the weeds out from between the paving stones and put something in there, a creeping ground cover or maybe just sand. I hung up that hose hook thing yesterday and boy is it great to not have the hose snaking all over the ground.
If you're wondering, I'm still working on the chicken coop addition to the greenhouse. The coop will be inside where the outer wall is painted red. I've been figuring out exactly what I'm going to build, and then exactly what materials I need, what sizes and lengths of wood and so on. Then I have to figure out how much it will all cost; however, I think I can get a lot of salvaged materials from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore here in Yelm.
Some things growing in the greenhouse. We have tomatoes, cucumber, chili peppers, and watermelon inside, and of course I'm starting all my seeds in there. I planted that bean seedling out in the garden today! Hutterite beans are an heirloom white bean. In the past I've not had the room to get more than a small handful of beans from some container-grown plants, but now that I have space I will someday be able to make a whole pot of beans that I grew myself, and that's pretty exciting! Maybe with some collards I grew myself to go alongside?
Okay, here's some branches of our apple tree. I don't know what kind it is, but it's got all these apples on it! The only things I've done for this tree are to clear the weeds about 3' all around the trunk and apply compost there, and I thinned out the apples so they have room to grow without touching each other. We have four other apple trees, but they were planted in, like, the WORST places. Under giant fir trees, next to buildings, etc, so this one is the only one with apples. It still needs a lot of care, though. It's a very weird, leaning shape, and I don't know whether it was pruned that way on purpose or if it was the work of deer. But hey, at least it was planted in a place where it gets a lot of sun.
Other than the garden, we've been busy of course with everything else. Our beaver dam demolition plans are on hold as we get a permit from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. We had a wildlife biologist from that department out to look at our situation and advise us what to do. I felt pretty bad when we went to look at the dams because she fell into a hidden deep pool and she was soaked up to chest height! But after we inspected everything and she changed clothes, she told me that in fact, the beavers have moved on and we can just create large notches in each dam to let the water flow through, rather than having to build any sort of beaver deceiving devices. Still have to get a permit, though.
Okay, now I have to talk about two problems we've been having. One is the solar collector. Everything on the property is original to when it was built, 20 years ago. This means we have nice things like double pane windows, but twenty-year-old solar panels are really, really old and outdated. If we have a couple cloudy days, or if we need to give the garden a good, long watering, we are out of electricity. The landlord is going to get a generator which will attach to the propane tank, so we can have electricity even if it's cloudy. She has talked about getting more solar panels, but I'll bet if we just replaced the current ones with new ones we'd be in business. Anyway, the other problem is the fridge. The original fridge never really worked right, only got the temperature down around 55 degrees. Well, the handyman Brian took it away and we've been fridge-less for quite a while. Do you know how hard it is to find a propane-powered refrigerator? That isn't a tiny one meant for an RV? Must be pretty hard. Anyway, we could get ourselves a mini fridge to tide us over, but it would probably kill the power! So we are living the refrigeration-free lifestyle for a little bit. It's not so bad except that I really miss ice in my drinks.
I will close with a picture of our little bantam Minerva in her secret nest she built to brood on a batch of six little blue eggs. The silly bird stayed out there all night one night and caused me great emotional distress because when I went to put the chickens up and she wasn't in the coop, in fact was nowhere to be found, I went crazy looking all over with a flashlight, then I got very sad as I figured she had been snatched by a predator, and then I had to cry it out and say a chicken eulogy. . . It was a bad scene. But there she was again in the morning, and by that afternoon I had found her nest and moved the eggs inside which caused her to stop brooding anyway. But I thought her secret nest was very clever and she looked very cute sitting in it, the little jerk.
