Busy

This is my basement.  The light pink parts of the carpet are floating.  After killing 2 pumps, we're getting the water out with a neighbor's pool pump.  We'll be fighting it for a few days though.  The water table is so high, the water is coming in through cracks in my foundation.  You can see it bubbling up. 

This is the back corner of my yard.  Even the neighbor's trampoline is under water, something that has never happened.  

I'll catch up in a few days.  I'm busy remembering that it could be much worse.

The Story of Bottled Water

The Story of Bottled Water

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Noah would like everyone to watch this.  He requested that I post it to the blog.

The Story of Bottled Water

The Story of Bottled Water

Posted using ShareThis

Independence Days Challenge week 2

I'm a day late and a dollar short this week.  After lots of rain, we had abundant sunshine and warmth.  We're now back to lots of rain.  My backyard never quite recovered from the flooding from last week.  The new rain has reestablished the lake in my back yard.  I wish I had a way to hold all of this water for later in the year for the garden.  That would be a huge holding tank, I'm afraid.

Plant something:  peas, 2 types of lettuce, swiss chard, carrots and beets

Harvest something:  lots of chicken eggs

Preserve something:  I canned up 3 quarts of chicken broth made from scraps.

Waste not:  All of the boxes that come from Hubby's business in the past 2 months got used.  They are now forming walkways between my garden beds.  I also used all of the feed bags from the chicken feed. 

Want not:  Hubby talked me out of buying a rototiller.  He reminded me that it only would be used once or twice a year and I could rent one.  He was right.

Eat the food:  Made pizza sauce from the last of the canned tomatoes.  Used some cabbage and the last of the green beans in egg rolls.

Build community food systems.  not so much

First day of planting

What a gorgeous week we've had!  After flooding rains, we've been rewarded with May weather.  It's been in the 60's all week with 70's predicted for tomorrow.  Normal for us is upper 40's for this time of year.  It's just what the doctor ordered for my winter weary soul.

I took full advantage, now that my brood is back to health.  The Cascadia sugar snap peas were planted along the fence.  In the lettuce box I planted Winter Density lettuce and Winter mix lettuce with some Bright Lights swiss chard as well.  There will be salads galore. 

In one of my new beds, I planted Detroit Dark Red beets and Nantes carrots.

The carrots were seeded with this seed tape.  I tried making my own seed tapes last year with miserable results.  I wanted to try again with less work involved.  There is a discount store near me that sells these for 40% off, so I gave them a try.  They are certainly easy to work with.  If they work out, I'll make some up with toilet paper this year.  Last year I used napkins and seeds that were of questionable age, so it was my own fault that I had a failure.  

We'll be getting more rain early next week, so I won't have to water these in.  The soil is still quite damp, but not soggy.  It's amazing, I was actually feeling a bit blah until I went out and played in the dirt.  

The chickens are liking it too.

Different than I imagined

It's been a crazy day.  The family has been sick.  I've been racing from one thing to the next.

At a certain point I stood in my doorway wearing an apron and holding a hammer and thinking that this was certainly not where I thought I would be.  My morning had consisted of laundry, cleaning bathrooms, making bagels and bread, feeding the chickens, the dog and whoever wasn't sick.  I had stripped beds and vacuumed.  I had emptied trash and washed out recyclables. 

In the middle of all of this, J came running over to tell me that the chickens had escaped.  We then spent the next few minutes catching rogue hens.  It turns out that I'm a pretty good chicken wrangler.  Don't be jealous of my talents, people. 

While we were at it, we took off the lights and removed the water heater.  Then moved the chickens to the front.  This is when I got the hammer to remove the plastic from their tractor.  Thus, I now had an apron on, bread in the oven and a hammer in my hand. 

The thing is, I'm having a blast.  I'm not a Nurse Practitioner working in an ICU, which is where I was headed.  I'm a Mom, teacher, head chef, chicken wrangler, housekeeper and kisser of booboos.  It's so much better.  The rewards of a happy,( usually) healthy family are so much more.  I love my life.  Even when it's crazy.

Hoop house

As promised, the finished hoop house.  It has the plastic on now, held on by heavy duty clips.  The ends are open to vent it, since we're having some warm weather this week. 

An inside shot of the pathetic lettuce.  I'm hoping to get the cole crops transplanted in here by the weekend.  I should only need the plastic for a few more weeks.  It will then move to another section of the same long bed to be used to warm things up for the peppers and tomatoes.