So today because there is not enough projects going on, I ripped out one side of the front retaining wall made of Green treated timbers and have begun to build a 20" field stone wall. It will take most of the summer to do both sides of the house but it won't rot like wood and will give the house a nice look.
The side I am working on is on the right. The old timbers are piled in front.
Here are some bulbs starting the show that we planted last year.
Friday it was 68 degrees and we were working away in the garden. Today 7 inches of snow and now an addtional inch of ice is falling from the sky. The good news is it will be 68 degrees again next Friday.
Before my bride and I were together she found this chair which we have had a green blanket thrown over. Today I decided we need to re do this chair. It is a well built chair, so I figured I could rip the fabric off it in an hour or so.
I did find out it was a well built chair and that at least five other times this chair has been redone as the multitude of fabrics left in the back show.
So rather than having this chair done in a day I brought it back into the house to sit proudly where it was until next weekend. You are welcome to sit in it now but I bet the springs will pinch.
Because it was 72 today I thought I would take advantage of the nice day and replace the rocks with wood. I also leveled the beds out so when it rains the water does flow like a river down hill but is on a nice flat surface.
A little more than a week ago we started our seeds for the garden. We have been saving toilet paper tubes to put them inside the orange juice bottles we have been saving as well. The seeds are popping up which is always fun to see. It is hard to imagine some of these seedlings will become 6 feet tall and provide pounds of food for us. When they are ready to go in the ground we will just take the whole toilet paper tube and stick it in the ground. The tube will encourage the roots to grow deep so the seedlings will not get root bound. Then we will take the orange juice bottom and place them over the seedlings for a green house to protect them from the cold and birds who like to pull our early crop out to use for nesting material.
This weekend we started to garden once again. Yeah! It was so nice to get outside. We are replacing all the rock with wood. I made two new beds this weekend as well. Each bed takes a full day to dig and sift through the rock, glass shards, nails and whatever else comes up. Mostly rocks. After sifting the dirt out we add sand, soil, compost. The bed on the left had potatoes put in already. Saint Patrick's day is when you are suppose to put them in but I looked at the weather until then and saw it was going to be in the 60's.
The bed closest here has had the rock removed and the wood put around it. The chives and shallots are doing well already.
This is what our soil starts like. This is also why it takes a day to dig a 2" x 8' hole 16" deep and remove all that foreign matter. The rocks we are saving and I will show you what we are doing with them after it is done. People go to the store and buy landscaping rocks around here. The ground is nothing but rocks here. (I know I am missing something.)
I have been wanting to build a better compost bin for a while now. This week I also got this done. The font above is the old base board moldings from the house. They slide right in and out so it is easy now to remove or flip the compost.
This is the back of the bin. About every five days I will go out and put all the compost in the other side with the bags of leaves in it. Then five days latter flip it again. I can make pretty good dirt in two months this way. It is a 48" x 48" x 48" pile so it gets pretty hot. A lot of people might say this is a lot of work but I say work is going to an office every day. This is fun and it doesn't cost anything. Plus we get dirt for the garden and my wife is happy.