A Bit More Gardening

Saturday afternoon/night, I worked on the second trellis for my garden.  It starts out looking like this:

And as I build it, the boys play with stepping in the squares and sometimes try (and mostly fail) to cut the string for me after I finish each lashing:

I learned how to do the lashing from volume 24 of Kitchen Garden magazine.  I have 31 of the 32 issues, and have been referring to them a lot this year. Here's a close-up:

Buying some 6' bamboo stakes and a roll of cotton twine makes this cost a fraction of what buying a finished trellis would cost.  Plus I've learned a new skill!

Here's the garden as it was Sunday morning, before I installed the second trellis and put rabbit netting around the second bed:

Fractured Friday

I forgot to take pictures today, but I got most of the second garden bed set up!  It has my four surviving (tiny) habenero plants and all three of my lemon thyme plants in it, as well as the trellis I made, which will have Minnesota Midget melons climbing up it, god willing, and a row each of golden beets, Chioggia beets, and purple bush beans.  When I get the second trellis done, that will go on the other side and I'll put cucumber seeds in for it.

And, hey, tomorrow's supposed to be raining, so making another trellis seems to be a good indoor project to me!

I also drove Squiddle to school so that he could return his library book in the big purple dropbox outside before the school year ends so that we don't get fined for keeping it.

Beyond that, I experimented with sriracha mayo chicken for dinner.  I thought it was good, but I am outvoted, so I passed the recipe onto my mother and sister, who also enjoy a hint of heat.  And I wrote on a Rise of the Guardians WIP, as well as editing a Check, Please story that I'll be posting tomorrow.  N-chan's beta-reading was invaluable!

Pictures again!

Not much happened today.  I'm grappling with editing those two fanfics I wrote, and I went out to pick up prescriptions, and two orders we'd placed at Lowes.  So now we have most of the materials to make the chicken tractor!  (I forgot to order roofing stuff.  And linoleum tiles to make cleaning the coop interior easier.  But those are a bit down the line yet.)

I have, however, remembered to move some pictures from my phone.  So!  Here are the chooks, temporarily in a basket while I gave them fresh litter:

And here's one of the (now filled) garden beds, with the riddle I made:

Easy directions for making the riddle: screw or nail four 2' 2x4s together in a windmill pattern.  Rip another 2x4 into four even widths.  Sandwich a square of 1/2" hardware cloth in between them, and then screw the thin pieces on, preferably in the empty squares, not on the wire.  Use to sieve soil!

49 Lashings

Gah!  Sorry I've been neglecting this blog!  I'll claim distraction by chickens and chicken tractor planning, or something. :)

No pictures right now because this is a hasty catch-up post before I go to bed.  I added a French Wheaten Marans chicken to the mix, but it died, but Wilco fortunately will replace chicks that don't make it!  So I have another.  Which is good, because she was by far the most expensive chick.  I've been adding grit to their feed daily, and uprooting dandelions from the yard (we have plenty!) to give them variety.  They love their greens. ^_^

I finished two more fanfics for Check, Please and have them both in the beta-reading phase.  One is a 6K+ werewolf story I've been grinding on for months; the other was 5400 word American Gods-inspired work that came together in one day.  What a difference!

My parents came over last week in my dad's truck and I was able to use it to get half a yard of garden soil at one of the landscaping centers.  Between that and the 3.5 bags of Costco soil we had left out in the barn, I've got all three of my garden beds filled finally.  This evening I lashed together a 6' x 6' bamboo trellis.  49 lashings!  But it's done and waiting out on the patio.  I have the materials for two more out in the garage.

I also went to a board meeting of the Quilters By The Bay as the incoming secretary.  As I'm kind of accustomed to, I was the youngest person there.  By rather a lot.  But I like them and I like the guild.

And, there's been no sewing or quilting getting done, but I finally got my quilts back from the person in Texas!  I'm really really happy about that because one of them is the only quilt I have from my maternal grandmother....

Chickens and Beds

Well, the chickens have survived one night in our tender care.  Little boys want to pick them up, hold them, then put them down and hold another one, which I suspect is stressful for the chicks, so I've been limiting it.  Jazzy doesn't like me limiting it.  Fortunately the brooder box is high-sided enough that I am the only one of the three of us who can actually reach the chicks.  Squiddle named one (the Brahma) "Joe."  Given that they're all theoretically girls, I suggested it could be "Jo" and listed off some long names that Jo is short for.  He picked Joanne.

Wonderful Husband helped me build and place the third raised garden bed, and I got it mostly-level, then started sifting the soil from sod using the garden riddle I built.  Now that it's fully functional, oh how I love that thing!  I'm not sure it makes the process faster, but it certainly makes it easier, and the dirt ends up sifted and fluffy and rock-free.  And while we were building the bed, I finally saw a hummingbird approach the feeder!  I'd been hearing them but not actually seen any, so I'm pleased.  It was rust-colored, so maybe it was a Rufous Hummingbird?

I finished my reread of Uprooted, by Naomi Novik.  I have a pile of new books to read on my side of the bed, but I just don't have the mental/emotional energy to deal with new universes right now.  I know this is the stepping block too high because the only new books I've been able to read in a while were Knife Children, by Lois McMaster Bujold, and Golden Age and Other Stories, by Naomi Novik... both of which are set in universes I'm long familiar with.  Torn, by Rowenna Miller, on the other hand, I'm just stuck on.  I try to read further into it, and I just... can't.  Sorry, Morag!  When the world calms down some, I hope, because what I've read of it I have in fact really liked....

And no pictures of anything today, I'm afraid, because I stupidly let my phone battery run down earlier.  Tomorrow, I promise!

Chookies!

Today I finally bit the bullet and got chickens.  I blackmailed Squiddle into going with me to Wilco, where the stock they had on hand almost entirely did not match what their website said.  In the end, we picked out one each of five different breeds: a Buff Brahma, a Silver Dorking, a Golden Campine, a Brown Leghorn, and a "Color Pack," which I was told lays the blue-green-pinkish eggs.  I kind of was hoping for a Cuckoo Maran as well (dark brown eggs!) but there were none, alas.  A couple of them still have their egg tooth, so they're less than a week old.

We've set up their brooder out in "the barn" and will be building a chicken tractor over the next month.  Jazzy is utterly charmed by the chicks, and would spend all day with them if he was allowed, I've no doubt.

I also finished digging the sod up from the third garden bed, so hopefully tomorrow I'll get to help put together the raised bed and put it in place.

Approximating Finishes

Ugh.  Today was another energy ebb day, so not much got done.  I actually ended up napping on the sofa in the afternoon.  I did not dig more in the garden, and tomorrow's supposed to be rainy, so I probably won't tomorrow either.

Wonderful Husband, however, did figure out the table saw!  And ripped one of the 2' boards into four even lengths, which I screwed on to the bottom of the garden riddle.  Except they're each just a little longer than the other 2' boards I used for it, so they need to be trimmed down.  He thinks the circular saw will work for that.  Sooner or later it will actually be done, right? :)