the common milkweed

Native Seed Starting

2012-01-23T13:06:00.001-05:00

We collected native wildflower seed this past summer/fall during our weekly hikes and just recently put them into some soil to overwinter.

We, of course, headed out to our potting shed for the fun!

Inside, with a little heater, we stayed quite toasty and happy. We put Steve's new potting bench to work and loved having a dedicated space for activities such as this.

Here's a few of the seeds we started:

Close up of a pile of mixed wildflower seed....so pretty!

We did not do any real seed preparation, but rather planted the seeds in a flat....

and put the flat outdoors to let the weather do the work. We will report back on our success next summer.

Ruminations on Food

2012-01-14T21:04:00.001-05:00

A family member recently asked us how to get started with vegetarian eating. While we certainly do not feel compelled to tell other people what to eat, we do feel strongly about the importance of healthy eating (of any kind). In the spirit of that, we thought we'd share the snippets below more widely.

Here's some stuff to get started on:

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/2007/pdf/vegetarian_starter_kit.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Enchanted-Broccoli-Katzens-Classic-Cooking/dp/1580081266 (or any of the Moosewood cookbooks. Moosewood is a famous vegetarian restaraunt in Maine)

http://www.101cookbooks.com/

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/

A couple of things to focus on:

1) Learn how to cook grains (brown and wild rice, spelt, millet, quinoa) and beans and integrate them into your cooking. Learn how to flavor your food with spices, peppers, onions, garlic, sauces and marinades (rather than salt, butter and fat).

2) Learn how to make your own pie shells (so that you can make veggie pot pies - you can put all sorts of stuff in pie shells).

3) Lean how to cook and use squash (butternut is the best to start with) in your cooking. You can buy this in the freezer section if you don't want to process fresh squash. Pureed squash is sweet and makes a great "matrix" for burritos and pot pies.

4) Ethnic foods such as Mexican and Indian lend themselves better to vegetarian eating than do the traditional american "home cooking". For example, you can make a huge batch of beans/rice/cheese-based filling for burritos, pre-roll and freeze a bunch and then just bake them when needed. You could also just buy bean burritos but they won't be as good as home made.

5) Your likelihood of success at any kind of healthy eating is greater if you cook your own food and greatest if you also enjoy cooking your own food. Quality over quantity (in both your ingredients and your portions sizes) will go a long way to helping you to dispel the myth that quality food "costs" more.

6) Share your passion for healthy eating with others. Hang around people who share your passion for health.

7) Experiment wildly with your cooking. What have you got to lose?

8) Have fun when you cook. Eat slowly. Share meals with others.

9) Look for quality ingredients at food co-ops, Whole Foods stores or the organic/health food sections of major grocery chains. Buy organic food and ingredients as much as possible. If buying quality food seems "expensive" then don't eat out and use the savings from that to "subsidize" your new found habit of supporting sanity in agriculture. Soon you will realize that this "subsidy" is really just paying the true cost of healthful food.

10) Spread the word about how good you feel (physically, emotionally, spirtually) since you've reclaimed your palate and energized your mind and body with GOOD FOOD!

Transitioning to a plant and grain-based (yes, we eat eggs and dairy but as condiments, proportionally) diet is one of the most life-changing things we've come across. Give it a go, be patient, be open, have fun!

Making Watches? Never!

2012-01-12T06:29:00.012-05:00

I may have mentioned this in previous posts but it bears repeating, as it's a life-altering concept. One time my brother and I were working on a project that certainly did not warrant the level of perfection that I (at that time) was requiring. He grabbed whatever it was out of my hands and said, "we ain't makin' watches!". The point being that watchmaking requires extreme attention to detail while many, many, many other things do not.

Here's a more recent example:

This old table was used and abused and left behind in our basement...

...but it has a solid frame and some excellent natural paint patterns, so....

...why not use the originally-elaborate top with folding leaves and....

...with some scrap oak, cut some strips to...

...span the misc. top boards and...

...fasten them down to...

...create a new top (this new top will not have folding leaves nor the associated moving parts and complexity - but retains and highlights its "distressed" appearance)...

Now, just to attach the top by...

...driving some long screws into the...

....frame. I carefully measured the spacing on the scraps that span and combine the top boards into one piece. Why? Because, in so doing, I eliminated unwieldy measurements to evenly distribute the top with respect to the base. In other words, the properly-spaced scraps dictated the position of the top on the base w/o additional measuring.

Prior to my brother's "we ain't makin' watches" lesson, this sort of project would have involved a complete dis-assembly, re-gluing and clamping of the joints in both the base and the top (then an overnight delay for the glue to set), stripping of paint, sanding, staining, varnish....you get the idea.

Under the "we ain't makin' watches" framework, this project took about 2 hours!

Check out that cracked paint! Rich people would stumble all over each other for a chance at this thing, were it in a fancy shop.

The best part is that this project is complete and ready to use (and it didn't cost a single penny). If you have a propensity for hand-wringing over "the details", feel free to try the "we ain't makin' watches approach" - if you try it on a project that you've scrounged for free, then you've got nothing to lose (and productivity to gain).

New Entertainment Center Still Captivating

2012-01-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

Our Multi-Media Entertainment Center is still doing the trick:

Now we just need to paint the walls a vibrant color (just got the paint tonight) and we will be set until spring when we will shift to our outdoor multi-media center!

What To Do When You Can't Sleep: The Little Shop Of Colors.

2012-01-08T20:40:00.001-05:00

This morning I (Steve) woke up at 5AM and knew that there was no going back to sleep (even though it was the weekend and I should have been able to sleep in!). What the heck, I got up, brewed some coffee, ate some cereal and headed out to the one-car-garage-disaster-area that, this AM, was my shop-in-progress.

Here's what was I was facing - everything piled in the middle so that the walls could be insulated, sheeted, primed and painted. I'd already completed the first 3 tasks over the past week but the finish painting remained so I took a deep breath, fired up the kerosene heaters and got after it.

I used a combination of colorful paints that we'd used in our kitchen and dining room. While living in New Mexico we became captivated by the fiesta of colors that is commonplace and we've been inspired ever since. This project, being a creative space, was very much in need of the energy that colors can bring.

Here's two walls...the place is still a mess but more colorful and, given that, I was excited to get this shop up and running. More paint and quite a few hours of organization later and....

...here's the very same wall that is shown in the first photo in this post. To the left is my indoor stockpile of reclaimed wood nicely organized on a rack that I'd build from "junk" that was left behind by the previous peeps. To the right are a few old saws that I find interesting and inspiring (3 of them were pulled out of junk piles here and there). The big one is a gift from Jennifer.They all still cut just fine too!

Here's a shot of the opposite wall - same yellow but a nice deep red for contrast. I made the workbench along the wall from wood that I pulled out of the trash when we lived in Grove City (trash day was always a bonus there). The metal cabinets and some of the other racks were purchased (thought I'd better chip in and do my part to boost the consumer economy since black Friday and cyber Monday have seemingly "failed" us).

I found this little gem in a junk pile in another scenario and screwed it to the wall for fun and to store small things and maybe a first aid kit (got all ten fingers still but one never knows....). That cracked paint is NOT faux, believe it or not!

Finally got to put up the Audubon bird call clock that my brother got for us several holidays ago. Yeah, that's 6PM, same day (I was going on a 12+hour day).

Here it is, pretty much ready to go for woodworking and maybe some metalsmithing.

A recording of a particularly heavy set by Umphrey's McGee helped me kick this project's butt, and I must give a headbangers seal of approval for their version of Dr. Feelgood. Additional thanks for inspiration go to Jennifer and The Land of Enchantment!

Case #1 - 2012: Northern Cardinal

2012-01-04T14:42:00.000-05:00

New Year's Day brought an injured male northern cardinal to our feeders. He attracted our attention because the other males kept jumping at him trying to get him to leave, but he would just pitch forward and try to balance again with his wings. We let him go for a few hours as we went on a hike knowing it's generally best to leave wildlife alone and figuring he may have struck a window and needed time to recover, but alas when we returned he was pummeled by the crazy wind and blown into a hole where we dug up our septic tank lids.

The little dude was mostly immobile so we decided to try to help.

There's a great wildlife hospital on the north side of Columbus so off we went.

Upon arrival the cardinal was still quite alert and after a bit of his fear wore off began to eat some seed. When I left the doctors were inserting tubes to feed him intravenously due to his as yet unexplained "extreme emaciation." The cardinal was the first case for 2012 so he's a bit special to everyone I think.

Thinking good thoughts for the little bird!

Getting A Good Jumpstart on a Great 2012

2012-01-01T09:06:00.001-05:00

Premonitions, signs...whatever you want to call those feelings that are available to us regarding the future...we've recently had a couple of clear ones that predict a great 2012 here on 3.5 acres in Morrow County, OH.

First, we visited our local USDA Service Center (epicenter of The Farm Bill) and were whisked through the process of registering our property as a farm!!!

Here's an aerial showing our place (yellow rectangle in the center) amidst a rural mix of agricultural and woodlands. There's a lot more forest around here than where we are from and we love that.

Zoom in and you will notice several polygons. The north polygon is what we've designated "pasture" while the south polygon contain our buildings, our yard/wildlife habitat, our garden and our orchard.

Around this same time we found the below note tucked in a Christmas card in our mailbox. Apparently, someone had been driving by who still had some emotional ties/memories of the place and was happy to see it being LOVED again:

When you are coming off a year of cleaning up other people's trash and a series of projects just to get a place back to live-able, it's nice to have a couple of pats on the back like this.

Here's to a quick jumpstart on a great 2012 to ALL OF YOU!!!

Not enought gift boxes?

2011-12-28T11:56:00.001-05:00

That's ok...make your own! This year for gifting locally made recycled glass suncatchers and truffles and our homemade sweet relish, soap, and homegrown calendula seeds we found we did not have enough gift boxes. Not wanting to purchase any, we made our own. We raided our stockpile of used boxes, cut off the top flaps, wrapped the bottom in brown paper we stashed away from 2011 soap ingredient orders and made new tops out of festive paper found at the thrift store. ($2 versus $20 for a brand new book of scrapbooking paper!)

3 of our 4 cats were big helps with the project! Alvin guarding the paper:

Flora guarding the paper once Alvin tired:

and Bounder sending us peaceful vibes:

A little miscellaneous saved ribbon, twine and wire makes for some pretty gift boxes!

Merry Christmas to all!

2011-12-25T00:10:00.005-05:00

Wishing everyone a very warm and meaningful Christmas. Peace, joy and love from our home to yours!

Our Christmas Gift to Each Other: A Multi-Media Entertainment Center!

2011-12-23T20:28:00.001-05:00

At long last - our very own Multi-Media Entertainment Center: A WOODSTOVE!!! (thanks to Robert, Rick and Jules)

It not only heats our house but also serves as a multi-media entertainment center. It has two channels: warm and hot. It has multiple entertainment modes: dancing flames plus mesmerizing heat. It provides a center for gratefulness (for the firewood and Earth's fertility whence it came and for a good neighbor who cut it, etc, etc, etc.). It keeps our home, cats, coffee and hearts warm. All of this is way more entertainment than we need!

Plus it goes quite well with our high-end collection of homemade and gifted (from family and friends) decor.

Looking for entertainment? We've got a chair next to the "center" ready for 'ya, come sit a spell!

Happy Winter Solstice!

2011-12-22T00:10:00.003-05:00

“One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.”
- Henry David Thoreau

On this shortest day of the year, we hope you find joy in simple pleasures. Happy Solstice!

Ovenbird in Franklin County, OH

2011-12-18T12:16:00.000-05:00

Since December 7 an ovenbird is residing at Inniswood Metro Gardens. Check here and here for all the cool information about this bird, where it should be right now and why it might still be here.

How long will the cilantro last?

2011-12-12T14:46:00.000-05:00

Our coldframe is still protecting our greens and our cilantro! We knew the greens would be fine still, but weren't at all sure about the cilantro given the lows in the teens this past week. Take a look at these healthy growing plants...

Below is our cilantro patch after Steve made a quart of salsa. To make our can't live without salsa, he used our frozen tomatoes and fresh cilantro; not bad for December!

Our two boxes with mixed greens are ready for more harvesting. We took a break for a couple of weeks to give the patch time to grow a bit more so we can continue to harvest for a while. We are only 10 or so days from the winter solstice - when we will start adding some daylight back into our days. Maybe this patch will last till spring!

High School Metal Shop Still Handy After All These Years!

2011-12-06T19:56:00.005-05:00

I pulled this little wheel barrel out of the trash. It had a flat tire (which I repaired) and...

...the plastic "barrel" part was cracked (don't ask me why this is made out of plastic!):

I don't remember much from high school but I do remember a bit from metal shop. For this project I found some metal stapping and, using a hammer and a radius, shaped it to fit...

...the inside radius of the barrel, spanning the crack:

Next I drilled holes (using a metal bit, low rpm's and some oil to facilitate cutting):

Using some machine-thread bolts I fastened two of these straps across the crack:

Here's the repaired and stabilized crack:

This little gem will provide years of service (since we will not overload its light capacity plastic barrel).

It Ain't A Potting Shed Until It's Got A Potting Bench

2011-12-04T19:55:00.002-05:00

Now that our little potting shed has a new roof and stays dry inside we were excited to start native plant seed propagation so....

....we scoped out a corner of the shed that would accommodate a bench....

......grabbed some salvaged lumber from....

...the never-ending supply left behind by the former people (remember this junk pile - one of many!?)...

.... and pieced-together a frame for the top of the bench.

Here's the finished frame that would define the rest of the project:

The frame is held in place with double 2X4 legs in front....

and lag bolts (into native oak framing) on the wall side.

Here's the leveled and attached frame:

For the top we used salvaged 1X6 decking. Here's the finished bench with supplies stored and ready for propagation! We will likely add some drawers and shelves at some point but this gets us to a point where we can get some seeds ready for over winter cold stratification. Project Cost: zero$ (salvaged lumber and even used all salvaged hardware!).

Malabar Farm State Park: A Thanksgiving Hike

2011-11-30T20:53:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving day found us at Malabar Farm State Park, an interesting visit if you are in the area. We visited with family the weekend after Thanksgiving so we enjoyed our free time outdoors. An excited spirit and a picnic lunch always make for a fun adventure! We started the day hiking the Butternut Nature Trail. A nice little trail passing by....

big boulders and big hemlocks,

a whimsical, inviting cave (yes we went in!),

and some very interesting tree falls that create important micro-ecosystems.

Malabar Farm is steeped in history, as many farms are, and staff work to educate folks on the history and importance of farming in the area. The sugar shack is a fantastic building that we plan to visit again in March for the annual maple syrup festival!

The Pugh cabin (in the background) is available to rent for special occasions. A family celebrated their holiday at this cabin during our visit. How fun!

Good for the spirit scenes...

Do you see it?

Look closer! Yes, it's skunk cabbage up in November! WOW.

Ohio is a beautiful place...

We felt mighty grateful to be here, in so many ways, on this day of thanks.

Potting Shed Progress

2011-11-25T09:25:00.001-05:00

Obviously our potting shed needed an appropriate roof and we were shooting for metal. Luckily, a neighbor was tearing down a barn and had some free metal for us!

Using a circular saw and a metal-cutting composite blade I cut the metal to length....

...and started screwing it down:

Some cross-cutting was needed for the ends to come out right...

...and it's looking pretty good:

Some final screws and...

...wow...what a difference a little scrap metal can make!

But what about the peak?

That's why they make pre-fab peak cap (white strip on top). We had to buy the cap and some screws but, so far, we've only spent 70 bucks on this little gem. Stay tuned for paint colors!

Potting Shed After All

2011-11-13T19:07:00.001-05:00

Previously we'd been calling our little shed a chicken coop:

http://thecommonmilkweed.blogspot.com/2011/07/chicken-coop-that-could.html

Now that we've had time to think about it and determine our most pressing space needs, we've decided to make it a potting shed and a place to store most of our gardening tools:

Next: metal roofing installation:

For the love of parsnips

2011-11-04T13:21:00.000-04:00

We are just starting to harvest our parsnips now that we've had a couple of freezes. The freezing helps create more sugars so the parsnips are deliciously sweet. I harvested a bucketful this morning and used them in Mollie Katzen's gypsy soup, one of our most favorite soup recipes. I replaced the called for sweet potato/winter squash with the parsnips since they are equally sweet and very like a sweet potato in texture. The parnsips put out some seriously long roots so hand pulling proved a bit challenging this morning, but as long as I pulled very close to the root, it eventually came out. I peeled the parsnips just like carrots and voila - a perfectly sweet delicious root vegetable that's loaded with vitamin C, fiber, folic acid and many other healthful vitamins and minerals.

We still have a few bowl fulls of fresh tomatoes that made a perfect addition to the soup. I used up the last of our fresh sweet peppers so we will now start using our frozen. It's lovely here today and more garden cleanup is on the agenda with a nice hot bowl of soup to follow. Perfect.

Fall hiking at Mount Gilead State Park

2011-10-25T20:42:00.000-04:00

Wow, this great place is only 5 miles from our house!:

Blazing fall colors...

...babbling streams...

Towering forest of Oak-Hickory and Beech-Maple.

Infinite beauty...

..."cats"...

...all of these things make nature nuts very happy:

But, wait, there's more...on this fallen tree we found...

...this little guy: a gray tree frog:

This network of roots stabilizes, supports and feeds a huge tree...and our souls!

Some incredible fungi...

Jennifer performs the "Big Tree" cheer!

Tulip Tree - one of our favorites. They grow straight and tall, get really big and have the coolest of flowers (being in the Magnolia family):

Something about being under the canopy of a Midwestern hardwood forest...words can't quite explain...you just gotta experience it:

Gardening for wildlife

2011-10-16T18:25:00.000-04:00

Amidst our vegetable gardening we continually garden for wildlife. It's so much fun to plant and watch the critters come! Doug Tallamy talks much about using your home space for wildlife. It could really change the world if we all were to embrace this philosophy. We've mentioned his book before, but if you've not read it - check it out!

We put in a new well this summer and found ourselves with a nice dug up patch to fill with either more grass or natives. Of course we chose the latter. We also planted many plants in the surrounding grass and mulched heavily with hay. Check out this 1000 lb bale!

The area we are converting to a pollinator/bird garden is between the house and the garage. The house faces south below so in the summertime this area is flooded with natural light. The sun is starting to dip low behind the garage now but that is ok since most plants are going dormant.

In a few areas we laid boxes and paper to deter some of the more persistant grasses, but mostly we mulched heavily 12-20 inches in some places.

There's a lot of hay in this bale and yes, there are some field seeds. Nothing worse than the grass already there and with the heavy mulching we should be just fine. There's documention!

The new planted area is quite large. The area ringed with rocks is a bumblebee garden we planted this spring. The coldframe is at the lower left of the photo and you can see the lettuce, spinach, cilantro and radishes.

We look forward to many native plants flowering next year! Just today we harvested more seed to sow in this area. A quick list of some species present: cardinal flower, joe-pye weed, blue lobelia, New York ironweed, yellow coneflower, New England aster, common milkweed, bergamot, Riddell's goldenrod, bush clover, blue vervain, compass plant, prairie dock, black-eyed susan, blazing star, purple coneflower, rosinweed, and many many more.

Winding down the garden

2011-10-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

Autumn is here in Ohio...

and we are getting festive for the season!

Check out all our homegrown pumpkins and gourds!

Our garden is winding down though we are still harvesting chiles, tomatoes, beets, carrots and many herbs. The carrots and beets will be fine for a few more months outdoors. The parnsips will soon we ready and we are so excited! We planted new patches of cilantro, spinach and lettuce in our cold frame so that should keep us going for a few more months and for the first time ever we planted garlic. We planted the cloves about two weeks ago in one of our raised beds. See the straw covered bed below. They should be ready next summer!

We are preparing our finished beds for winter by weeding and edging and throwing those organic materials directly into the bed.

Once we've piled up some nice organic matter we top the whole bed with compost, straw, mulched grass or mulched leaves depending on what we have on hand at the time. The beds pictured below grew our squash this year and will grow our tomatoes next year. We will pull the mulching back to plant, but otherwise leave it in place to compost and feed the soil.

These beds were our main tomato growing area. The goldfinches are loving the sunflower seeds!

We will tackle more of the garden once we receive our first frost. Overall, our first garden here in Ohio proved INCREDIBLE!

Knobstone Trail, IN

2011-10-03T20:03:00.001-04:00

Long in the planning, our Knobstone Trail hike finally materializes! Here we are at the trail head, ready to depart. From L to R: Steve, Jennifer, Paul McAfee, Savannah (four legs) and Tim Geradot. Pic by Paul McAfee.

Getting the hydration system tweaked (two engineers, no troubles).

Paul, Tim and Jennifer: ridge runners all of them.

A bit of rain? No problem. Just put on your pink 100 gallon garbage bag moo-moo pack cover!

Leaky tent? Just set it under a tarp. Seem redundant? Not when you end up dry!

How many people does it take to start a simple campfire? At least 3: one to light matches, one to blow on embers, one to pray (the rain was a drizzle now and we really had to work at this fire).

But all was well. Night #1's fire was exquisite:

And, ohhh the nature! A few sightings:

Female Giant Walkingstick (Megaphasma dentricus)

Yellow-haired Dagger Moth (Acronicta impleta) caterpillar

Arrowhead Orb Weaver (Verrucosa arenata)

Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)

Lycopodium

Eastern hardwoods and mist...a better combo we could not think of....

Bleeding fairy helmets (Mycena haematopus) - reddish mushrooms below

Beech-Maple forest on the moist landforms....

Oak-Hickory on the dry. Nature's mosaic draped over the land, how cool is that!?

Bedrock exposed in the creek bottoms.

Creekside and on lower slopes with moist, thick soil is where we saw the finest of Paw-Paw patches. Seemed tropical...

No matter where we are in nature, we find nature's grandeur w/o too much trouble...

Gray Treefrog (Hyla sp.)

Other than all the nature sighting we also hammered out solutions to the world's problems so watch for the publication!.

Bee Nesting Block

2011-09-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Early this spring we created a number of bee nesting blocks for a program Jennifer helped present and, of course, also created one for ourselves. We found the plans in this great book put out by the Xerces Society:

We first thought to use some of the old 4x4s laying around, but opted against them since they are treated. We purchased a nontreated 4x4 from a local big box store and got to work. First, cut to length!

Angle cut the top of the bee block and add a roof as well. We want all the best for our bee friends!

Draw a pattern with specified spacing for specified hole sizes (see book) and drill the holes.

Ta-dah!

Early this spring, we placed our bee block in our garden by setting it on a cabinet and facing it east to help minimize weather effects. Take a look at those holes in September!

Yeh! Many are now plugged by the adult female bees. There are probably 3 or so bee larvae in each hole now, each in their own cell created by the adult bee. Most will emerge next spring/summer.

What an easy project to help attract native bees to your garden for all their pollinating services!

Basement is improving!

2011-09-15T12:12:00.000-04:00

We are within a month of the one year mark for owning our house. It's amazing to contemplate the work we've done here thus far! Most recently Steve's been working in the basement and the hallway to the basement. We don't have many pics of this space but trust us - it was nasty! Here's our only image capturing some of this hallway space and all the trash in the basement.

Steve busted out some of the salvaged paint from this place and made us a nice clean, tidy hallway!

There is no bathroom vent, but for this cute little window...

Looking back into the kitchen:

Did you notice the coat hanger? Steve found an old dresser mirror in our green barn. The mirror was ruined so he cut the bottom of the mirror off and Jennifer glued on the tiles (purchased for a few dollars while living in Carlsbad, NM) and painted a green accent. Steve found some old salvaged hooks in the garage, screwed them on and voila...a super fun coat hanger!

After the hallway, Steve moved into the basement to deal with our root cellar wall. Due to gutter leaking we get some moisture in the basement, which rotted away the bottom of the wall closing in the cellar. Before:

In the process:

After!

Nature posters always make everything more fun...

The freezer above is jam packed with our summer garden harvest. We've now switched to canning...

Potatoes, winter squash, tomatoes and relish populate the root cellar so far!

A quick kitchen cover up

2011-09-11T20:36:00.000-04:00

Before we moved in, Steve ripped out a filthy cabinet in the kitchen and exposed our bathroom plumbing. (See the old kitchen here.) We found this quite handy as we worked on the plumbing, but quickly tired of the ugly hole in the wall. We posed many different fix-it ideas, but settled on some handy faux tin backsplash found at a nearby big box store. We just recently got to this project and you can see the hole is already covered in the lower left of this photo:

Some adhesive and box cutters make for a super quick project. In a house filled with projects, quick ones make us giddy with excitement....

Not too shabby for 30 minutes of time! The plastic looks quite real; it's pretty incredible. This really makes us want to put a real tin ceiling in our dining room. (Let us know if you hear of one getting ripped out somewhere close to central Ohio!)

After searching for many months for a dough table for this spot, Steve's father found us one at a garage sale. He refinished the whole unit and presented us with the finished product this weekend - after their 50th wedding anniversary party!

It's perfect!

A quick stop at Big Lots, one of our favorite places for looking for marked down health & ethnic foods, presented us with all these grains and where better to inventory our haul than our new dough table in front of our now complete wall?

Now to just get the radio hooked up after fixing the outlet!

Another great find! Imperial moth caterpillar!

2011-09-04T16:22:00.000-04:00

Remember these cool moths? Well happily for us, we (most likely) found one of their just as cool offspring! Pictured below is an imperial moth caterpillar that left his/her sugar maple feeding grounds and is now searching for an underground pupation site.

It's a BIG caterpillar!

The long setae and size are quite diagnostic.

The caterpillar really started to do some ground searching here. Unfortunately the ground was too dry in this location so the cat moved on. We're not sure where s/he pupated, but we're wishing this amazing invertebrate much luck!

The Cat Whisperers

2011-08-28T19:06:00.000-04:00

Another one? Really?! Walking down the road the other day a kitten ran out of the woods at us. There is an abundance of outside cats a mile or so from our house that continually breed and she must be from that group. She adopted us (word must be spreading amongst the cats), followed us home and here she's been. Initially flea covered (Jennifer combed out at least 100!) and bloody with flies feeding on her, she is feeling much better now. Check out this sweet girl:

How to Make Your Own Peace Post

2011-08-24T19:44:00.003-04:00

Admiring peace posts for years, I decided to make my own interpretation of one.

Here's what you need to make one like I did:

4x4 wood post
letter stencils (or not if you are steady handed!)
Sharpie
soldering iron
paints
waterproofing spray

Step 1: Choose words and stencil/draw them (with Sharpie) plus additional doodles on your post

Step 2: Use your soldering iron to burn the outline of your words and doodles

Step 3: Paint inside your burn lines (I used acrylic craft paint I had on hand)

Step 4: Dig a hole, set your peace post in the ground and admire!

My 4x4 is an old oak one found on the property, hence the crack. It just adds charm I think. :) We found a can of waterproofing spray and added a few coats once the post was in place.

I think the green flower is my favorite on the entire post.

Place your post somewhere special to send well wishes to all who pass by!

Harvest Season is in FULL swing

2011-08-22T17:12:00.000-04:00

The garden is abundantly producing and we are working to put it all away. It's a fantastic time of year!

All the flowers are in bloom now and the birds and butterflies are most happy. The colors make us happy too.

Many onions are ready for harvest. We dry them for a few days outdoors in the sun then move them indoors to finish curing.

Beets are still coming along. The greens don't like the heat, but the roots do just fine. We harvested a couple buckets and probably have a few more buckets left to harvest towards the end of the season. We are freezing many of these for the winter.

Sweet peppers, cayenne peppers, jalapenos and anaheim chiles are all coming on strong. We are drying the cayenne peppers and the red anaheims and freezing all the rest we don't use right away. The habaneros are still green, but are growing larger.

The lemon cucumbers are going nuts this summer! We can hardly keep up. We eat most fresh, give some away and will can a few pints of pickles for the winter. The long cukes are Boothby's Blonde and are good too. The skin is thicker, more like your typical green cucumber. The lemon cukes sport a very thin rind...perfect for eating on homemade bread sandwiches with a bit of cream cheese and herbs.

Typical kitchen scene this summer...

We are harvesting and drying many herbs too. Currently drying is basil (also are freezing lots of this, some with oil, some with water, some as pesto and some as whole leaves), lemon balm, parsley, sage, oregano, thyme and calendula flowers. Bounder just loves to be held. HA! (More on the paint and 4x4 in a future post.)

Onions are moved to the craft room after drying outdoors for a few days. They will cure here a few weeks and then move to the root cellar. On the shelves and in the paper bags are harvested dried beans (lima, black-eyed pea, tiger eye and agate soybeans) plus dill seed heads for planting next year.

We just planted winter greens, spinach and a last or second to last batch of cilantro in our cold frames. It's so hard to believe we are to this point again!

How To Impress Your Partner With a Pile of "Junk"

2011-08-15T22:20:00.001-04:00

What do you do when you have a bunch of misc. cast-a-way antique scraps?

Take the table base that you found in a raccoon-feces-infested-garage-attic and re-size it to suit....

...the old door you found in someone's garbage....

...then add the drawer that used to smell like cat pee...

...then attach the top from an old dresser that had largely rotted into the ground...

...and, like magic, you've impressed your beloved partner who...

...quickly improves the situation even more to...

...create a pretty sassy front porch presentation!

Remember, pretty much nothing is truly junk.

Porch Again Sees Light of Day

2011-08-14T20:42:00.001-04:00

Our little house, we always felt, would look a lot nicer after we removed the closed-in part of the front porch.

We finally found a neighbor/carpenter who was willing to take on the job (allowing us to keep moving on myriad other jobs) so this project went darn quick:

Going...

...going...

...going....

...gone!:

We like it much better now!

Sleeping Bear Dunes!

2011-08-04T22:05:00.000-04:00

Ah vacation....it's been a long time coming and well worth the wait though we don't desire this long of a wait for next time! Here's a bit of our adventure last week:

There's just something about big water...

We enjoyed a great visit with friends we met in Carlsbad, NM! (Love you guys!!!)

The walk-in sites at Sleeping Bear ROCK...

Yep, we also witnessed a beautiful wedding of two inspirational people...

We found our way to South Manitou Island the latter half of the trip. An 1.5 hour long ferry is required to access the island.

Fun, fun!

Backpacking in sunshine, with beautiful water and woodlands. What could be better?

Must hug big, old trees.

Ahh dunes...

Water beckoned after traversing the dune....

Really?! So fantastic!

Toad burrowed in the sand. COOL!

Time for peace, quiet and reading in a beautiful setting makes for...

a very happy camper...

two very happy campers actually.

Welcome to our garden...

2011-07-25T19:58:00.000-04:00

Our garden is giving us so much....here's a little photo tribute to our amazing space this summer.

Jethro Bodine Salad, A Summer Favorite

2011-07-19T18:54:00.000-04:00

For those of you with fond memories of The Beverly Hillbillies, here's our twist on Jethro Bodine's humongous bowl of cereal: a Jethro Bodine-sized salad - we use our second-to-largest Pyrex bowl and fill it at least 3/4's full of greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, sunflower seeds, Parmesan cheese and dressing. There's no holding back during summer gardening abundance! Hope we are not alone in this...

Some recent cool nature sightings

2011-07-14T21:25:00.000-04:00

There is so much happening and so little time to write our blog. We are spending most of our time outdoors tending the garden, hiking and playing croquet with our new antique set. Yes, we're old school, but it's so fun! Here's some of our recent nature sightings.

One of the haploa moths...

Turbulent phosphila caterpillars...

White-dotted prominent caterpillar...

Bumblebee on cosmos...

Peck's Skipper...

Gray treefrog on Cup Plant...so cute!

Another gray treefrog on goldenrod...

Fly pollinating a sneezeweed...

We so LOVE summertime. Just last week we traveled up to Toledo, OH to visit Kitty Todd Nature Preserve and saw our first Karner blue butterflies, a federally endangered species. Fantastic! We forgot the memory card to our camera so can't share but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Next up - a garden update...it's growing, growing!

Liability or Asset: Another "Junk" Building?

2011-07-09T20:50:00.001-04:00

Our little green shed originally looked like all of the other structures at our place - surrounded by, and filled with, junk. We could have just hired somebody to dumpster the whole mess, building and all, but we decide to give this neglected shed a fighting chance so we removed the junk, inside and out.

It looks a lot better now, and is nicely centered between our garden and orchard.

The remaining question was the north side which was rotted out at the base due to people piling junk and soil on both sides of it. The sill plate was completely gone and the lower portion of siding was rotted away. Here you can see that the vertical supports are literally swinging in the breeze.

All of this resulted in a huge sag in the roof on that side. Can't find a good picture of the sag but here you can see the rotted siding from the outside. Believe it or not, soil was piled up to the rot-line!

So here's what I did...

Installed new sill plate:

Jacked the roof up using some post jacks (you can see the sag if you look at the bend in the top plate of the wall):

Repaired vertical supports (2x4's on either side and 4x4 spacer under):

Removed/replaced the rotten siding:

Note the roof line - pretty darn straight! The door to the left of the plywood patching needs replaced but that's a quick job compared with this roof jacking job.

Now to organize the inside (it will be used for material storage for Steve's woodworking creations)...

We will probably paint the metal roof green and the siding red! No longer neglected, this little building will serve us well.

What to do with old insulators: Make a tree charm

2011-07-08T08:00:00.004-04:00

We found a couple of insulators with eyelet holes and kept them because we thought they were cool. Jennifer just recently made them into tree charms. Check them out!

One of our tumbled and drilled rocks ends this charm...

Any beads will do! How charming is this?

What a find! Imperial moths!

2011-07-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Walking to the compost pile this weekend Jennifer found these amazing moths! These moths are giant silkworm moths called Imperial Moths: Eacles imperialis. The mouth parts are vestigial, hence these guys and gals live only a short life. A week is about their duration, but my is it glorious!

See why they're "giant" silkworm moths?

So incredible! We waited for a long while to see them fly, but alas they stayed put later than we stayed awake. :)

Check here for a caterpillar picture. Happy mothing/caterpillaring!

The Chicken Coop That Could

2011-07-02T06:16:00.001-04:00

Remember this? An apparent demo project...

But, in the spirit of "The Little Train That Could", we saved a hidden gem. Here's how:

Removed the hideous tack-on's:

Cleaned up most of the trash lying in, around and under:

Added a stone path:

Installed native plants:

And, lookie here, quite a gem:

Next, we'll add mulch, put on a new metal roof, paint the outside and we've got a dandy little garden shed!

2011 Will Be Known as a Great Gardening Year

2011-06-30T21:15:00.001-04:00

It's not even July yet and we've eaten from our garden: lettuce, spinach, onions, kale, beets, beet greens, radishes, basil, chiles, cilantro, dill and tomatoes! Hope all you other gardeners out there are having a great year too!!!

When the Weeds Get Ahead of You...

2011-06-25T19:37:00.001-04:00

Due to above average spring rains and the sheer amount of work it's been to establish our new garden, some of the beds got ahead of us, weed-wise. After some initial and futile pulling of weeds we decided to do some mulching instead.

First we weeded quickly along the bed margins and such...

...then we covered the weeds/soil surface with newspaper...

To keep the newspaper from blowing away we put handfuls of compost down:

Finally, we added more compost and spread it uniformly:

Now, that's our kind of "weeding"!

Supporting the Future of Battery Technology or "We Just Need a Power Mower!"

2011-06-21T20:49:00.001-04:00

Our garden design has only one downside so far: lots of grass between the planting beds. While we like the look and feel (soft on our bare feet) and while we also like the idea of having interstitial vegetation (grass) with associated soil food web between the beds, we do not like the amount of time we were spending mowing this grass with our manual-powered reel mower. It gets pretty wooly, pretty quick:

So, until we can replace some of these grass strips with something more maintenance free, enter the beast (It's our new rechargeable battery powered push mower):

We thought we might try and support the unfolding battery technology movement while also getting the grass mowed more quickly (so that we can actually spend time gardening):

We've only used it once but, so far, it gets a very high rating. It mowed our whole garden area and still had 75 percent of its charge. It's built well, cuts great, is essentially silent and requires no gas, no oil, no spark plugs, no filters, no nothing except plugging-in to charge. Our only fear (unfounded) is that we won't be able to find a replacement battery when we need it. Again, an unfounded fear.

We used the bagger so that we could apply the clippings to our garden plants as mulch and as a nitrogen source.

Look at this green gold:

Here's a few shots from the roof:

If you don't have a whole lot to mow, consider a rechargeable mower (and charge at night, during off-peak).

Garbage Day Screen Door

2011-06-14T20:58:00.000-04:00

Last year when we lived in a rental in Grove City, OH, we used to scan the trash all the time because people would routinely throw out some pretty excellent stuff. One day we saw the screen door pictured below and threw it into the back of the truck "just in case". Of course, "just in case" is now and if anything could use some dressing up with a refurbished Garbage Day Screen Door, the back of our house could:

Jennifer removed all of the old torn screen and thoroughly washed the entire door in preparation for a new paint job:

We get lucky and the install goes quick...

...and here we have quite an improvement!

Here's the "before" pic looking up from the basement to the only view we had prior to the screen door:

And here's the "after". Lots more light, ventilation and a view to the outdoors (which the cats especially appreciate!). Keep your eyes peeled on garbage day!

What to do with an an old bucket milker

2011-06-08T18:01:00.000-04:00

We found 3 bucket milker's in our chicken coop. Probably for baby calves? Thinking the buckets were cool we held onto them and enjoyed a great brainstorm for a new use. Hanging planting buckets! Check it out...

First, Steve removed the nipples and used some tin snips to cut out the bottoms of some cans we had in recycling to cover the holes left by the absent nipples.

If you look close in the first picture you can see the back of each bucket is equipped with a bent piece of metal to allow a person to hang the bucket from a fence. Perfect.

We used some perennials (black-eyed susan cultivars) in these buckets to see if we can plant them in ground in the fall and enjoy them for years to come.

So far so good - one's flowering. :)

Bluebirds, tree swallows & an unexpected visitor...

2011-06-05T06:00:00.000-04:00

A week ago the baby bluebirds fledged! Look closely at the ground to the left of the bluebird box and you will see...

3 little fledged birds!

We couldn't get much closer for a picture because the parents kept us away. See the papa on the fence.

One adventurous little soul climbed the compost pile within the first hour!

The other two huddled together next to the garden fence.

Eventually all left the nest. One met his/her demise quickly but we are thinking long life for the rest of them!

Tree swallows found our other bird box quickly and are currently incubating eggs. Soon there will be more baby birds here.

And finally, the other morning Jennifer looked out at the bird feeders and let out an excited scream. Yep, we've got turkeys feeding here! Lots of cool wildlife at this place. We're feeling so grateful.

Chicken Coop Exhumation

2011-06-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

Remember this building?

Steve's steadily worked on the exhumation of the chicken coop from beneath this hideous tack-on.

Here's a mid-progress view...

The old shake roof came off easily. Steve saved the plywood from the tack-on and will use it when we re-roof the building with metal.

How cute is this little building? Just needs some paint, a new roof and flowers!

A hanging basket of flowers gets us started. :)

Zoo Brew Compost!

2011-06-02T05:33:00.005-04:00

The soil in our garden isn't too bad, all around, but it could use some organic matter, which would help with not only fertility but also with re-building soil structure. To that end we researched nearby compost suppliers and found Price Farm Organics in a neighboring county and had them deliver a dump truck load of "Zoo Brew" compost (this is a mix of animal manure, wood chips, bedding and facility compost materials from the Columbus Zoo). Here's the pile:

We had enough to fill all of our raised beds plus we added a couple of inches to each of the regular beds.

So far, the seeds like it:

Nice little bean plant spreading its roots in the Zoo Brew-amended soil:

If you are in Central Ohio, look into Price Farm Organics for all of your decomposing detritus needs!

Garden Gates from, You Guessed It, The Junk Pile

2011-05-30T21:12:00.000-04:00

Our fenced-in garden was in need of two gates and this weekend's spectacularly nice weather provided the motivation to get that job done. As with 98 percent of the rest of this project, the materials for the gates originated from the "trash" left behind by the previous occupants. There were two of these gate-like structures in the rafters of our green shed:

A bit of measuring, cutting and fastening....

...fitting, attaching...

...latch installation...

...ornamentation....

...and, like magic, gates!

Utilizing what's laying around couldn't be more fun and also tends to result in creativity rooted in "necessity being the mother of invention"!

Incidentally, the butterfly (above) was made in Haiti from old oil drums and purchase in a fair trade store in Carlsbad, NM. The wagon wheel (above) was pulled from the trash in Grove City, OH.

And the planting begins...

2011-05-19T19:18:00.000-04:00

We've planted the garden over the past week or so in between bouts of rain. The weather looks great for Saturday so the final first round of planting will wrap up then. Here's some of what's went in thus far:

Onion and potato raised beds...

These are onion sets we picked up at a local box store for super cheap. We will compare yields to our...

onions started from seed. (2 trays this size)

We planted 3 kinds of potatoes for eating this summer and storing. The potatoes are planted in the depressions to allow room for hilling as they grow.

The tomatillos grown from seed are happy as can be!

There are lots of flowers; now we need some warmth so the pollinators come out.

Beets are germinating. Mmmmmmm can't wait!

The tomatoes grown from seed are doing well too. New green growth came on this past week even with the cold and rain. Flowers are ready to open this weekend in the sunshine.

We planted ~30 plants. Yep, hoping for LOTS of tomatoes!

Warm hike at Inniswood Metro Gardens

2011-05-17T20:51:00.000-04:00

Just last week we took a lovely warm, sunny hike at Inniswood Metro Gardens (where Jennifer works). It's hard to believe looking out the window at the cold rain that's now settled over central Ohio this week. Thinking good thoughts for sunny warmth asap! Here's a few highlights:

Woods ablaze with Trillium grandiflorum...

Bumblebee nectaring on sweet violets...

A red-spotted purple (butterfly) caterpillar feeding on a young cherry tree (our first butterfly cat of the season!!)...

Pawpaw flowers in bloom. Gorgeous!

And a funny shot of Jennifer checking out the many many tadpoles, frogs and salamander larvae in the pond.

Can't wait for so much more!

More Raised Beds

2011-05-16T09:45:00.001-04:00

After we finished the sod removal....

Steve crafted a new quick raised bed building system...

Utilizing lots more wood scavenged around our place.

The pre-constructed sides were nailed in place in situ...

by one happy carpenter!

Here's the view from the roof our house...

10 raised beds made completely from leftover/scrap lumber. WOW!

Welcome to the Machine

2011-05-08T21:08:00.000-04:00

We finally got a chance this weekend to cut our garden beds with a sod cutter that we rented for a day. While running this beast, Steve kept thinking of that old Pink Floyd favorite, "Welcome to the Machine"!

But before we could cut, we had to mark the beds:

Enter, The Machine:

About 3 passes gave us...

...a bed width we liked:

The cut sod roles up nicely:

Soon we had plenty of sod rolls piling up but also a lot of beds taking shape:

After we made all the cuts we'd planned to make we put the sod cutter away and hauled sod roles (from at least one corner) to a compost pile. Here's a shot from the roof showing about 1/2 of the garden. The circular area is the footprint of a burn pile that will be a big wildflower patch and sitting area.

Next time: six more raised beds and garden bed finishing touches...

Spring migrants

2011-05-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

New birds are showing up at our feeders daily and it's so fun to watch! We took a few photos through our kitchen windows to share so forgive the quality please. Below you see a Baltimore oriole on our suet feeder. A younger oriole is also hanging about, but didn't show up for the photo shoot.

A male rose-breasted grosbeak is dining happily on sunflower & safflower seeds.

If you look in the middle of the photo below on the feeder opposite the cardinal you will see the female rose-breasted grosbeak.

Two male yellow warblers were hunting bugs in our lilac bush a few days ago and those are just the easy ones we've noticed! Time to get outdoors and pay attention.

And the tomatoes are moved outdoors...

2011-05-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

We configured a coldframe out of straw bales and a window panel for the out-of-control tomatoes and tomatillos. They all completely outgrew the light rack, but are unable to go into the ground yet. Tonight we expect a bit of a frost so hopefully our design works! Two more strawbales are added on the west and east sides in the evening (north is straight ahead in this photo).

Happy greenery under the rain splashed glass...

Beautiful plants! We can't wait to plant them once the weather warms and dries.

The kale in the coldframe is growing by leaps and bounds and commonly finds itself on our dinner plates.

Ditto for the lettuce...

Fresh greens, there's just nothing like those first fresh spring greens!

An update of sorts (fence, bluebirds, path)

2011-05-02T20:53:00.000-04:00

We enjoyed an hour or so of sun this past weekend and we soaked it up! The rain this spring is incredible. We've not yet removed the sod due to the moisture, but we did finish our fence. We fenced all 280' with sections of fencing left from the prior owners. Amazing! We attached chicken wire along the bottom of the fence to help keep hungry four legged critters out. Jennifer watched Groundhog emerge from his whole north of the garden and skittle quickly along the edge and around the corner to head for the compost pile. Let's hope this keeps up. Two fence gates are on the agenda for this upcoming forecasted rainy weekend.

The bluebirds aren't super fans of our garden work since their box is so close (it's just outside the fence in the above pic), but they tolerate us and are currently incubating 5 eggs.

Slowly but surely we are digging in flagstone we unearthed from our back door area. The house shades much of this area so we are planting woodland shrubs, flowers and ferns. Hopefully next year this time there won't be near so much mud.

Relaxation is always built in at some point of our day! The calling wood thrushes and gray treefrog made this time perfect. More soon....

Big Bertha, Free Lumber and Elbow Grease: Garden Fence Building, Part 2

2011-04-25T20:01:00.000-04:00

The fence we started in "Big Bertha, Free Lumber and Elbow Grease: Garden Fence Building" has been taking more shape lately.

We'd already used up all of our throw-away 4x4's and 2x4's so now we turned to our stack of throw-away fence sections. Take 'em apart...

...cut to length...

...sort...

...lay out fencing...

...tack in place...

....and install bottom and middle rails:

Once we rounded the corner...

...we had a system down and so we whipped out a whole additional side. That's 2 sides done in one day!

Two more sides, some shed fix-up, garden prep. and then planting (we can't wait).

Spring moths in Ohio & Happy Earth Day!

2011-04-22T18:30:00.002-04:00

Happy Earth Day everyone! It's raining and gray here, but the birds are calling, the trees are flowering and life is good. :) Lepidoptera season is certainly back and we're so excited! We spotted some cool moths lately while getting out between rain showers. Someone called the Grapevine Epimenis, Psychomorpha epimenis, moth (Family: Noctuidae) pictured below a day flying mini moth and it's quite fitting.

We spotted a group of these moths mud puddling on a hike just this past week. The sun shone and the temperatures were in the upper 60s and these little moths seemed quite content going about their business. The adult Grapevine Epimenis moth feeds on nectar from various spring blooming plants: plums, cherries, hawthornes, redbuds, etc. The orange-headed black and white caterpillar feeds on various types of grape.

The green beauty below clung to a fence post on a cool spring evening this past week; Steve spotted him while we walked by looking at spring wildflowers and listening to the calling birds. We know the moth is some type of Emerald in the genus Nemoria. (Family: Geometridae) Anyone know more to share?

We're so looking forward to this gal's moth book coming out in 2012!

Spring Tree, Shrub and Forb Planting!

2011-04-19T05:16:00.001-04:00

On Saturday we planted a bunch of trees, shrubs and forbs that we purchased from the Franklin County, OH Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD). Most counties of all states across the whole country have SWCD's - visit them to find out what conservation programs and events they have going on.

We employed our favorite auger, Big Bertha, to bore holes for the trees:

White pine, Ohio Buckeye, etc....

We used water from our cistern (that was nearing full from recent rains) to make sure our trees got a good initial drink.

Good friend, Tim Gerardot, gave us a submersible pump as a house-warming gift (now, that's a house warming gift!) and that baby really cranks the water out:

Watering a White Pine (Pinus strobus Pinaceae). Sure, they are not native to this particular piece of property but they do o.k., are not invasive and provide good cover for migrating and nesting birds.

We put a few stones around each tree to a) make it easy to re-locate them and b) improve water infiltration.

We have another 30 trees to pick up soon from the Morrow County SWCD but here's what we've planted so far (just the beginning, of course!). Our focus is providing food and shelter for critters and beauty for people:

Forbs:
2 Virginia Bluebells
1 Butterflyweed
1 Cardinal Flower
1 False Sunflower
1 Blue Flag Iris
1 Cardinal Flower
1 New England Aster
1 Purple Coneflower
1 Royal Catchfly
1 Showy Sunflower
1 White False Indigo
1 Wild Quinine

Shrubs:
5 Spicebush
2 Elderberry
2 Highbush Cranberry
2 Washington Hawthorn
2 Pagoda Dogwood
2 Serviceberry
2 Hazelnut
2 Pawpaw

Trees:
2 Pecan
2 Butternut
2 Persimmon
2 Sugar Maple
2 American Beech
2 Kentucky Coffeetree
2 White Pine
2 Witch Hazel
5 Shingle Oak
5 Paper Birch
5 Redbud
1 Ohio Buckeye

Bluebirds!

2011-04-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

So our bluebird box attracted a male and female bluebird within a day or two. We expected this since we saw a pair inspecting our wooden bird feeder.

They spent much time going in and out, but built no nest.

Suspecting some dissatisfaction, perhaps due to the shallowness of the box we added another bluebird box.

We built a baffle out of scrap aluminum left here in one of the many piles of junk.

Steve made a fancy cap for the baffle...

and we placed the baffle on the new nest box location west of the garden.

We didn't walk five feet away and the male bluebird landed on top of the box...

and began scoping the new digs.

He brought his lady friend right over and the two began a long morning of back and forth trips, with you guessed it - nesting material.

Here's a peak at the partially completed nest.

The male is now starting to defend this space. He needs to: that same morning a male and female tree swallow and Carolina chickadee checked out the box. (We need to add more boxes!) Check out his perch below.

A pair of American robins are working on a nest in the green barn too. We're hoping for successful nesting!

Big Bertha, Free Lumber and Elbow Grease: Garden Fence Building

2011-04-15T08:00:00.074-04:00

Sometimes motivation comes naturally and other times you have to get the bait and switch from the tool rental place. Today it was the latter - when the tool rental place told me that the rental price doubled from what it was a couple of days ago I bet you can guess what I told them to do with their power auger! Well, as luck would have it, we had our own auger (Big Bertha) and our own power (muscle power). Add to that a huge pile of the previous tenant's throw-a-way lumber and we had a project in the works!

A fence can go up quick - all you have to do is set the corner posts and then run a strait line from one to the other....

...drive marking stakes every 8 feet on center....

...auger your holes using the strait line and stakes as guides...

...do this several dozen times down to 30 inches or so...

...set your posts...

...tamp the posts in....

... run stringers on the top row and then cut off the posts to all the same height....

...and you've got a good start on a fence.

Here's a view from above. We spent literally nothing on this fence and got a lot of good exercise to boot! Now we just need to scavenge a bit more wood for the other 2 rows of stringers, attach rabbit fencing about half-way up and we'll be ready to plant!

The warmest day of the year!

2011-04-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday we hit 80 some degrees! The kitties loved, loved, loved the open windows. So did we.

We watered our new orchard in t-shirts...

And a bit later in the day laid out the garden beds in shorts!

We opened the cold frame up so the many little seedlings could also soak up the balmy air.

Most of the rest of the day we spent working on the garden fence - more on that the next post. Hoping for much more of these warm temps soon!

Seedlings

2011-04-11T08:00:00.002-04:00

We have plants! Tomatoes are developing their second set of leaves:

Chiles are sprouting and a few are developing their second set of leaves too...

Onions are growing like crazy...

And the basil is quite happy too.

We had 100 percent germination with the basil. We reseeded a few chiles, tomatoes, and tomatillos. Still no germination on the weld or indigo so we keep watching and waiting.

It does a mind-heart wonders to walk into a room with hundreds of little sprouting seeds. :)

Fruit Trees & More

2011-04-09T08:00:00.003-04:00

Our Fedco tree and plant order arrived this week! We're not ready to plant the asparagus and rhubarb yet so we pulled them apart and laid them on paper to dry until planting time.

Happy farmer Steve....

Asparagus crowns...

On a cool evening we planted our fruit trees.

5 trees are planted north of the green barn and one grapevine. It makes us giddy with excitement!

We planted 1 Montmorency Cherry, 1 Bartlett Pear, 1 Seckel Pear, 1 Grimes Golden Apple and 1 Milden Apple. Hopefully in a few years we will enjoy some tasty fruit!

Signs of spring!

2011-04-07T09:01:00.002-04:00

A hike at Highbanks Metro Park on a sunny afternoon reminded us that the warm season will soon be here!

White oak acorns are germinating:

Ohio Buckeyes - Aesculus glabra, Horsechestnut Family (Hippocastanaceae) are leafing out:

And, the early spring ephemeral wildflowers are gearing up for quite a display.

Bloodroot - Sanguinaria canadensis, Poppy Family (Papaveraceae)

Spring Beauty - Claytonia virginica, Purslane Family (Portulacaceae)

SOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!

Bluebird Box

2011-04-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Jennifer's sister Lori gave us a bluebird box (and the bat box we posted about earlier) for Christmas which we finally put up this past week.

We had a male and female bluebird checking out our wooden bird feeder so we're hoping they might utilize our box if they need a place to nest. Cavity nesters face quite a challenge to find an empty cavity so these human made boxes can be quite helpful. If you have experience with bluebird boxes, we would love your tips.

We'll keep you posted!

Weekend Clean Up

2011-04-03T20:13:00.000-04:00

This past weekend we enjoyed a nice visit with Jennifer's parents and benefited from two extra pairs of hands! We've cleaned up most areas of the property but had one last major area to clean up near our green barn. Prior residents pulled a trailer onto this property at some time in the past and left the walls laying on the ground. A neighbor scraps metal for us and he removed all the metal from this trailer this past week. That left us with lots of plastic, insulation and wood to clean up. Here's Jennifer's mom, Linda, raking up the last bits of trash.

After trash removal comes seeding! Jennifer and Linda broadcast wildflower and prairie grass seed:

Raking those seeds in!

Inside the green barn Steve and Kurt, Jennifer's father, removed loads and loads and loads of extra topsoil. We spread the soil outside the barn and raked the trash out.

You can see what the extra soil did to the barn wall:

Rot is not good, but now it's exposed and Steve can install a new sill plate and brace the wall. We may play with some alternative construction on this building. Think cordwood!

Look how great the even laid soil looks! We forgot to take pictures, but as Steve leveled out this soil on the north side of the barn, he unearthed at least 5 bumblebees. Bumblebee queens are the only bumblebees that overwinter (in the soil as we discovered) so killing bumblebees early in the season before they have time to reproduce can wipe out an entire colony. That's VERY BAD for not only the bumblebees but plants that depend on them for their pollinating services. Bumblebees are able to "buzz pollinate" tomato blossoms providing us with many more, larger tomatoes. So we want those bees to live! The queens were uninjured so we picked them up and moved them to an area under a log and tussocks of grass. We watched them slowly crawl down to the earth and begin to dig their way in. We saw no sign of them later so our fingers are crossed these gals survive. We never underestimate the impact every action we make has on other living creatures. It's pretty humbling.

Steve seeded this area with native wildflower seed too.

Beautiful seed!

The green barn is far from finished but we were able to move the mower down to this space and clear it out of Steve's shop.

Here's a view of the rot from the inside.

Breaks are necessary...here's everyone enjoying our last large burn pile.

No more trash. No more trailer. Just nature. Nice.

A new feeder bird!

2011-03-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

Look closely at the finch feeder in this picture and see if you can find the bird that doesn't match.

See the gal on the top left? That's a Common Redpoll! It's a first for us at our feeders and quite exciting too. She fed briefly and moved on, perhaps toward her breeding/nesting ground in the Arctic/sub-Arctic. You can read more fun information on redpolls here.

We attended the Ohio Botanical Symposium and Butterfly Identification and Monitoring Workshop here in Ohio last weekend and are ALL fired up to learn more plants, more birds, more butterflies, more dragonflies, etc! It's so great...this world we live on and amongst. :)

New Soap!

2011-03-28T19:19:00.000-04:00

Our Etsy shop is filling back up with lots of wonderful handmade soap! The house smells soooo good!

There's more to come soon. Stay tuned!

Seed Starting

2011-03-26T08:00:00.000-04:00

We're a little late for some seeds, but we finally got all the ones started that required early indoor planting and that we had room for. We dug into our seed starting bin and found an assortment of collected containers to use. Remember the homemade toilet paper pots? We used up our whole stash!

We prepared all the pots and filled them with a seed starting mix from Garden's Alive.

Then we wet the soil and planted the seeds! We started: tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, onions, basil, nicotiana,weld and indigo. We started a lot of each of the vegetables so we had no extra space for plants that don't require indoor starting but benefit from it, except for the basil.

Our collection of seed starting pots included old yogurt containers, leftover peat pots (which we won't buy again due to wetland degradation/destruction for this material), packing materials and of course the toilet paper pots. We had two trays to hold the pots, but made the rest out of clear salad containers we kept.

Here's the final setup:

We found the two additional shop lights at Home Depot for around $10/each.

Think good germination! :)

A Warm and Sunny Day Provides Much Motivation

2011-03-24T06:56:00.021-04:00

Wow, this past Sunday was spectacularly warm and sunny so we did a bunch of fun yard stuff such as putting up a bat box...

...planting wildflowers where we had a burn pile...

...putting up another bird feeder...

Mowing our garden footprint down and...

...wind-rowing...

...raking...

...and composting the grass....

Here's a view from atop our roof showing the mowed garden footprint and the raised bed frames (far corner) we'd made recently too:

We also did yet more clean-up around our little green shed. Soon this will be ship-shape and ready to store the mower, extra wood and misc. items:

We also got a start on laying out a set of stone pathways behind our house. For us, sun and warmth equal motivation!

Raised Beds From Scavenged Wood and Free Rusty Nails

2011-03-22T06:37:00.003-04:00

The unbelievable amount and variety of lumber left behind by the previous occupants of our place has come in handy for many free projects so far. Today we used this free lumber and a box of free old rusty nails to build 4 raised bed frames. Here's Jennifer laying out some boards. Our strategy was to minimize cuts (to save time) so we matched up like-size lumber to that end.

Who cares if they are bent and rusty, these nails were free!

Steve nailing up an end.

Jennifer laying our another bed frame.

One more down.

Jennifer using plenty of nails so these babies with hold a lot of soil without falling apart.

Laying out boards for the last of 4 raised bed frames.

The final nail. We were as excited as the person who got to drive that gold spike connecting the trans-continental railroad! Jennifer has been researching nearby sources of decent compost to use in a mix to fill these up. Soon we will be planting root crops such as carrots, potatoes and beets! Free materials make for a satisfying project.

Planting Greens and Re-Connecting the Cistern

2011-03-20T20:36:00.002-04:00

Cold frame is finished so time to plant the first seeds of the 2011 growing season!

We planted various greens including spinach, mixed greens and chard.

A moist seedbed and soon we'll have the first sprouts of 2011...

The sun was kind to our soil today...

Another quick project was to re-connect our downspouts to the cistern. We simply cut a hole in the cistern lid and inserted the downspout (wrapping it in foam to fill any gaps that might allow small critters to fall into the water).

Here's the set-up, all ready for the next showers. We plan to install an overflow as well. Once the cistern is full the overflow will transmit extra water to another location (perhaps a constructed wetland or something along those lines).

Cold frame from salvaged windows and lumber

2011-03-16T08:00:00.009-04:00

The soon-to-be garden is still quite saturated with water so removing the sod is not feasible yet. We've got loads of greens and peas to plant and the stress was mounting, mostly for Jennifer. Steve said: "well, why don't we plant them elsewhere?" The man of clarity. We've wanted to build a cold frame for quite some time and figured this would solve our seed planting issue too so we got to work.

First, we gathered the extra windows we had around the property. (All left from some prior owner.)

And came up with a design....

We measured the full length and width of our windows and found salvaged boards long enough to cut our needed sizes from.

We framed the base first, joining the boards with screws...

Cutting the angle came next. I want to note we built this as we went. That's Steve's preferred method for building and it's great! The cold frame structure completely evolved as we went along. To determine the angle, we held the window at the angle we wanted, found a wide enough board and drew a line on the board from bottom corner to top corner. Amazingly, it provided us with two right sized pieces - one for each end.

We made the angled boards for the interior supports in the same way. We then thought about window attaching. Steve recalled a box of hinges he saved from removing an old storage bin at the front of our chicken coop so we put those to use.

6 hinges - exactly what we needed for this cold frame! A few were bent so we pounded them back into shape.

Next, we attached the windows!

Check out those hinges!

We cleaned the glass so the plants can get maximum sunlight...

Then, we moved the cold frame to the south side of our house and prepared the soil...

We're pretty excited about this! Imagine Jennifer squealing. :)

Ready for some compost and then seeds!

Ta-dah! If you look closely, you can even see the little wire pulls Steve installed to serve as handles.
The handle on the side of the box was left here by a prior owner.

We spent not one dime on this cold frame, but will harvest hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of greens no doubt. Pretty cool.