All my toys in the yard

I was trying to get as many ladders as I could in the yard as I painted the house today.

Harvey

Harvey the watermelon has grown to 5".

The flowers she plants

We have not really made much of a landscape plan for this place, other than pull out weeds and remove the variety of trash from the property. As we do that we are left with empty ground that we will work on later. My wife however runs around and puts flower seeds in this type of ground which turns into the following flowers.

There is a big old bumble bee on this sun flower if you click on it you can see. Wouldn't it be funny if when you click on it there is this guy that jumps up on your screen and screams, "AHHHHHH!" Go ahead click on it. lol

Look at the melons grow

This is Harvey the watermelon. If you just stand there looking at your garden long enough, food appears. This morning I was doing this and there was this 3" melon growing. It is the first one as far as I can find. So his name is Harvey the watermelon. Now if I can just learn to speak melon I could tell Harvey to encourage all his friends to grow and I will put their baby pictures on the blog too! I am praying that Harvey becomes a nice 40lb watermelon in September. Just imagine an organically grown, pesticide free, sweet melon melting in your mouth. This must be close to the food angels eat.

A New Paint Job

For whatever reason I woke up on Thursday and thought, "I am going to sand down the deck and repaint it." Then Friday morning I took my bride to The Home Depot & she picked out the paint for the entire house. Which is now our current project. It is good because my mind tells me that Summer hasn't even started and it should be about March 15th of 2009 but the days have actually gone a little faster than I expected in this life. I keep thinking I have lots of time left this Summer to paint the house. This is by far the fastest & greatest Summer of my life. Sanding and painting a deck isn't a big deal, or even remodeling a house isn't that new to me. What is new is seeing everything through Kristines eyes and her happiness as these things take place.
I look foward to this week and watching the house change colors. Well that is if it doesn't rain all week. That tends to mess up painting plans.

Melon Cage

We have these little creatures called Cucumber beetles down here that will not only eat your squash, cucumber, pumpkin & watermelon vines but once they bite the vine they inject a bacteria that is unstoppable and will kill the plant. So while we did get a lot of squash and such the plants have died and we replanted melons where the sweet corn was growing. To protect the melons we have made this melon patch cover that I retract a few hours a day for the bees to pollinate the melons. I put a ton of good compost in this bed after the corn so we are hoping we will have too many melons to eat and can give some away.

Straw in the garden

I am always in search of grass for the compost. I would also like to put down wet newspapers in between the garden rows and pile grass upon it. The problem is, there just isn't enough grass for both projects. Then yesterday I found a local nursey selling straw without chemicals on it. So I did two rows today and made a place for the melons to grow out on to. The cucumber beetles are hard on them so nets have been the only solution I have found. Working outside on a day like today last year would have been out of the question, but now 96 degrees isn't so bad.

Garden Produce

The tomatoes are coming in pretty fast now. We have heirloom varieties that are wonderful. I pick some but eat a good part right out there in the garden. I love them when they are warmed by the sun.

Garden July 2nd

The garden has changed a bit. The corn is harvested and melons have been planted there now. The tomatoes have just started to come in. We have learned alot this fisrt garden and we are looking foward to next year and having a second batch of compost to add to the soil. A gardener can never have enough compost I am finding.

The Garden June 17th

We have received so much out of this garden already, my wife has planted second crops in many places.

Before and after bathroom

Sometimes when I am running out of steam, I like to look at before and afters just to get a shot in the arm and keep going. Here is one of the bathroom. :)

A little light rain today

We made it through this storm today. Spent a bit of it in the basement however. It is hard to see from the picture but the street was flooded and that is hail splashing in the water. It was almost golf ball size. The garden came through ok. The corn leaned a little to the west as this great big east wind whipped it pretty good. The nets covering the berries had a few buckets of hail in them.

Garden Progress

I love watching the progress of the garden. If you click on the above photo you can see the garden grow in detail.

Dan Quayle's

Today we took a few of the Potatoes out of the garden. Whenever I see potatoes I remember Dan Quayle's moment of embarrassment. William Figueroa a 12 year old knew how to spell "Potato" even though the VP insisted on adding an "e" to the end. I have never missed spelled potatoe since! I am sure there are many mistakes that I have typed on this blog, so knowing how to spell potato isn't that big of an accomplishment.

Free Privot Hedges

Yesterday on Craigslist, I saw an ad for "Free Privot Hedges." So I ran over and grabbed these hedges that were planted 30 years ago. The picture above is not them but what we hope to have because of what we palnted.

I palnted a total of 17 plants around the house. A set of them on each side to block the view of the neighbors and at the back of the garden to block the North wind.

There was a time consideration as I planted them, because the roots needed to stay wet and each hole took forever as the ground is nothing but rock around here. After I dug each hole I filled it up with water and stuck the plant in the for a few hours. Then using compost and top soil I back filled the hole. I am hoping this all works and I just didn't spend all day digging holes for nothing. If we see new growth soon we will know the answer.

Garden May 31st

The berries are ready soon.
We ate this last night. It was the first of many that are on the vines.
It seems everyday the garden grows 6" or more.

Growing Garden & Offical Member of the Clean Plate Club

Here is Boo Boo wishing that plate wasn't so clean.

Our Garden this morning. The first crop of potatoes are almost ready. Corn should be knee high by the 4th of July...we might be there now. Maybe that is only a Wisconsin saying.

Studio

The last few days I have been using the last of the floor boards to create a studio desk, printer table and framing table for myself. When we first arrived here I just pulled the mouldings off the wall and turned them into the tables I was using. There hasn't been much posted about this room as I wasn't to happy with the old tables that were slapped together looked. This is what the studio looked like in April 2008.
This is the studio a few weeks ago. It worked but......

This is the new studio, with a new layout, desk and tables. Mostly all made from the floor boards from the back porch.
Boo Boo has found his spot on the rug, I think.