Making a house into our home.
Our House
Vera likes to spend most of her days outside, but she’s constantly coming back in for food and water. We would put out some bowls for her to eat out there, but we’ve got a lot of stray cats and pretty big raccoons in the neighborhood. No need to feed them too! The natural solution was to put in a pet flap in the storm door:
The installation was surprisingly easy - all you need is a drill to put in some starter holes in the four corners, and something like a jigsaw to cut the rectangle. We were a bit surprised to find that our door was solid wood inside - it always felt so flimsy, like it was hollow.
Once you’ve cut out the wood, the door just screws together around the hole - and it even overlapped the edges enough to hide our uneven lines!
Our neighbor is in the middle of a yard project - and he accidentally found the stake that divides our property! Very cool, and there’s another just like it in the backyard… somewhere!
A few months ago the Union Park District Council in St. Paul offered compost bins for only $25, along with an hour training on best composting practices. We’ve been meaning to start composting our food scraps for a while, but didn’t want to put it all in with our leaf waste (well, some of it has been going in there) to avoid stinky food compost. So it was a great deal! We sent in our check, and then waited out the winter.
And there it is! We’ve started putting in scraps already, and are excited to start using compost in our garden in the next few years! If you’re looking for similar deals, we definitely recommend getting on any neighborhood listservs you can, and becoming a fan of neighborhood groups on Facebook. It’s hard to track all the wonderful things going on in the Twin Cities, so it’s good to cast a wide net!
This weekend was the Friends School Plant Sale, so we stocked up on all the plants we needed for our garden! It did mean getting there at 7:45 to get a wristband for the 10am opening, but it was worth it to avoid the huge crush of people later in the day.
We had started a bunch from seed indoors this year, but unfortunately last weekends thunderstorms killed most of the tomatoes and peppers we had put out. So thankfully we’ve got sunny skies and no rain this week!
First we put in an entire bed of kale, almost all dino kale:
As you can see, where we didn’t put down weed blocker under the mulch, the grass has popped back up. We’re in the process of raking that back, putting down weed blocker, and raking back over the mulch. Blargh.
Next came all of our various herbs, in pots:
All three beds ready and full:
We bought way too many plants this year, and have about 6 tomato and pepper plants left over - and a bunch in pots! We probably won’t be putting in a fourth bed anytime soon, so we’ll stick these extras around the yard and hope for the best!
Also, you’ll notice we pulled the chicken wire off of the planter in the back, and just enclosed the entire back corner with chicken wire. That way we can hop over it once, and work freely in all of our boxes. It’s much more convenient.
