Tag Archive | personal: garden

<3 Microclimates!

Aug2

Guys, I am so excited about my garden!!

It’s not a big garden – two 4’x24′ strips – but it’s going wild.

I’ve been very good about watering it any day we don’t have rain (This particular corner of NYS isn’t in a drought so I’m not breaking any water regulations) and the heat has been awesome for my tomato plants. They are just sproinging out all over the place – this is going to be (knock on wood) the best tomato crop we’ve ever gotten, and not just ’cause I went nuts planting plants.

The Finger Lakes climate is generally different from that where I grew up – Lake Ontario has its own band of warmer, wetter weather, so this area, 2 hours away, is colder in winter but less snowy, in general (No giant lake to moderate, or dump snow on us). That’s got to be part of it, the unseasonably warm March also part, and I’m guessing microclimates have something to do with it, too: we’ve got no shortage of water here. I mean, our well has an overflow tube O_O.

I am /very excited/ to see what this crop provides – and we are already eating tomatoes and cukes from our garden!!

😀

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State of the Lyn!

Jul29

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything about my life. Can I blame summer?

Yesterday morning, we woke to find the kittens nowhere. I wandered around the house making cat-calling noises for a minute or two – until T noticed that the living room screen was out.

Then came ten heart-stopping minutes of wandering around the yard making cat-calling noises, until we found them hiding under the lilac bush, soaked and miserable. But safe, whole, and healthy. Thank you, god of cats.

Wet? Yes. It’s been /pouring/ here. Thursday, I came home from work, started to thaw dinner… and the power went out. A dinner of Subway subs later, we learned that a tornado had touched down in Elmira, an hour away, but all we’d gotten closer to Ithaca was thunder, lightning, and rain.

All this rain has been good for the garden; my tomatoes are going wild. So are my squash and my peppers. It’s going to (knock on wood) be a good harvest)

And speaking of wood – we pulled the Horrid Paneling off of the dining room and living room, and found… well, lots of wood, in one wall. “Bare Studs” the size of trees, where plaster and lathe had clearly been removed at some point. The rest of the walls have unpainted but heavily-nailed-in drywall. This is going to be interesting.

How’s your summer going?

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What’s Lyn Been Doing?

Jun22

Not being on the computer much, that’s for sure!

State of Nano: As of this morning, I have written 45,378 on my Addergoole, Year 9, 1st Semester piece. That, with previously written material (over 11.5K words, wow!) brings it to 11 chapters and some mini-interludes, which means that I’ll finish 12 chapters in just over 50K. Hopefully by the end of the weekend.

State of the garden: we bought another pepper plant (shoshito) and another tomato plant (pear-cherry). Also a cilantro, finally.

The squash are having fun, stretching out finally. The onions are being onions, ditto the leeks.

I have bean sprouts! And pea sprouts! and radish sprouts! (The sort in the garden dirt; I also have sprouts growing in a jar in the kitchen).

And last night I started planting a bag of salt potatoes that had gone to sprout.

State of the everything else: T has been cleaning out the loading ramp that came with the house – essentially a dirt ramp framed in railroad ties. We plan to use it as a planting bed.

After we get the safe out of it. O_O

And the dresser is very nearly done! I have to decide if I want to sand, smooth, and then 4th-coat the top, the sides and drawers are done, and the knobs will get here this week.

And … that explains, I think, the lack of anything else lately. If I owe you Giraffe Words, I apologize. When I hit 50 K, I will start working on the giraffeyness again!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/355432.html. You can comment here or there.

Where has all the Blogging Gone?

Jun14

I have been remiss in blogging lately! If you have noticed the camp-nano posts, you can easily see one reason why – I am trying hard to get 50K done by the 20th (the 21st is our 10-year wedding anniversary).

The other reason? Summer!

This weekend I finally got a portion of the garden put in – planted 7 tomato plants in 3 varieties, 7 hot pepper plants in 4 varieties (6 of 2 more to plant), basil in 2 varieties, sage, oregano, and beans. I weeded the carrot patch (apologies to Anne Bishop readers) and laid down weed cloth over the squash (well, around them), too.

And I got another coat of poly on the dresser and started painting it!

In terms of nano, I’m looking to get most of the first semester of Addergoole Year 9 completed: the series will cover, in 52 weeks, one year of the Addergoole school through the eyes of the twenty-some members of the Ninth Cohort.

Also: We got two new kittens. Their names are Oligarchy and Theocracy and they are 12 weeks old and beautiful.

And a link: Finally, a Home where you can enjoy the Post-apoc.

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Belated Last-weekend-was-awesome post

May25

So… Last weekend was awesome.

I feel guilty about that, because I still miss Drake. It’s hard to even look at his things without sniffling. But this weekend was still really good, and I think that’s okay.

First: there was a small wine festival about 40 minutes out of town (At the local ski resort, which was clever of them). We drank lots of wine and had lots of fun and bought a couple bottles – and I may not be allergic to goat wool!

We stopped on the way home at our favorite bulk store, got roast beef and cheese and pasta, and stopped at two plant stores and the beer store for plants and olive oil, then came home to a dinner of shrimp with olive oil, blue cheese crumbles, tomato and pasta. Nom.

Between Saturday and Sunday, we planted acorn squash, leeks, leeks, leeks, flowers, and two raspberry bushes, worked on the dresser, weeded,… oh, yeah, planted peas… and generally spent a lot of time outdoors playing in the yard. Awesome weekend. Absolutely awesome.

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Using what we have

May13

We have, right now, a lawn service for mowing (cheaper in the short run then buying a mower, and we have a rather large yard). We also had a delay in getting them to mow this spring, so we then had a need to rake because our lawn was drowning under the cuttings.

We have, also, a small garlic garden by the loading dock (doesn’t everyone have a loading dock?) which T. planted from Chinese-food-store garlic last autumn. The garlic is doing very well, but it was getting a bit choked with weeds. It needed mulching.

A=B = garlic bed mulched with grass cuttings. Using what we have. I love it.

This weekend, I also planted some alyssums, a bay tree, and a lavender plant in pots on my patio. And I finished planting the butternuts. Meanwhile, T. raked grass and played with his new sickle, knocking down weeds the mowing service didn’t get to.

We still have a double handful of plants to put in the ground that we bought this weekend: we gave [personal profile] capriox our little play house for her goats, so we’re going to plant the resultant square of dirt with raspberries, pansies, groundcover, and alyssums.

Having a yard is a lot of fun!

Unrelated: I am going to have reason to send a bunch of letters/postcards soon. I am looking for small-business greeting cards that are pretty and $5/less a card. Want to sell me some? Know someone I should look at? Drop me a line.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/338872.html. You can comment here or there.

Planting and Raking… Homeowner joys

May11

Today, I planted three of my 6 butternut plants I started from seed. The ground where we’re planting them is all rocks and sand, so I dug a big hole for each and filled it with composted manure and peat moss, watered well, and prayed it doesn’t snow again.

This was going to be a longer update, but after planting and raking (first mowing was a bit late)… I’m going to fall down now.

ALso? [personal profile] kelkyag? Thank you!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/337043.html. You can comment here or there.

Weekend Finds and Fun

May8

(Monday went by before I managed to write this up!)

We found a bay tree!!

Background: we have been looking for a bay plant to grow for several years, through several nurseries. They’re a Mediterranean tree and can’t survive outside in a NY State winter, but they can be brought inside for the winter if grown in a pot – and T. cooks with a lot lot lot of bay.

So we finally found one utterly by accident while looking for pepper plants! SO EXCITED!

(We also: saw the Avengers, bought a cherry tomato, and bought sage, mint, mint, and strawberries. And Lavender).

Capriox came to hang out Sunday afternoon for a while – we ate banana bread and showed off our mess. 😀 It’s always awesome when friends come to visit. <3

Then we got to work on the “invasives” garden: A spot by the eastern side of the house, between the chimney and the garbage cans, where I planted freecycled chives last year. This year I added chocolate mint and pineapple mint in these two giant square cement blocks that had been stacked near the chimney. Should take them a couple weeks to grow out of that!

Link du jour: Vertical Farm in a gutter!

Please check out the Summer Giraffe Poll and the Giraffe Theme request.

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Tuesday, with Rain

May1

It’s raining, but it looks like it’s finally warming up the normal way (gradually and damply, not in 90-degree bursts). Warm season might finally be here!

This weekend, we got the onions in, and we finally decided on what we were doing on the raised beds. Now to figure out how we’re getting them home… I really need a truck. Peas are next, and then the rest of the garden in a week or two.

I spent way too long looking at furniture DIY redos in the time when I was too exhausted to sand the dresser anymore. I have reaffirmed that I hate hate hate the distressed look, but that’s about it.:-)

I’m looking forward to starting to pull the house apart and put it together. Hopefully, we can get a lot done this summer!

Link du Jour: Literary Association Ads – teeny books! Giant books! Books on the stairs!

I am not yet certain about decorating with books. I’m also not sure where our bookshelves are going to end up. Would love built-ins. Will see how that works out.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/330113.html. You can comment here or there.

Gardening… start! Or my weekend in the dirt

Apr17

This was a busy long weekend for me and T!

Thursday, Mother-Woman and Father-Man (alderfather) came down with the chainsaw and the rototiller and the truck (Yay parents with machinery!) We dug some garden space out of our yard – two long rows by the side of the garage, one 18″x25′ and the other 4’x25′, about 2′ apart. The narrow one is going to be squash and onions, while the wide one will be three 8×4 raised beds housing… almost everything else.

We also put in a long trench in the back against the hedgerow for asparagus (YAY! Asparagus! Finally!), which was… fun. Till, dig out the dirt, till in the trench, repeat. Lots of work, but rewarding! Then Mom & Dad & the truck took us to Tractor Supply Company so we could get our awesome cart!!

Friday, we drove to Syracuse where I got zapped with lasers, then spent an hour at Lowe’s on the way home. Peat, manure, sun hat (Yay sun hat)…

I really need to start taking pictures, don’t I?

Saturday we put in all the spear roots. Asparagus is a weird plant to grow, in that you get these little octopus roots, and bury them just-a-bit, then, as the plants come up, bury them more and more… and then you don’t get to eat the plants for three years! But after that, you have plants for years! article here

We dug the trench for the spears about 2x as long as it needed to be, so we planted carrot seeds in the front of the rest of it. When the field behind us plants corn, as we hope they will again, we’ll plant a row of corn there, too (Corn is wind-pollinated; the more corn, the better).

Then it started raining. The onions will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Giraffe Call is still going strong! We are just $5 from the first donation-incentive level!!

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