Compostin' with the best of them

This is post is dedicated to my lovely stalkers friends Christy and Amanda. Maybe someday they'll actually make a comment! :P

If I'm really very honest with myself, I'd love to be a true blue living off the grid, growing my own food, dying my own handwoven cloth Earth Mother-type chick. Unforutnately I'm also incredibly lazy, and like McDonald's a little more than I should. At any rate, I do the best I can.

We have a little garden going, with plans for a bigger one (eventually)


Remember Madeline's cabbage from last year? Here's Bella's cabbage:


My next step on the path to Earth Mother-hood involved a bit of the wood James brought home. I've been wanting a Composting Bin for awhile, and a few months I ago I came across this blog post. I loved that this family had used recycled wood to build their bin. When I showed it to James, he said he could build it, no problem.

And he did!

James assembled the sides and laid everything out


while I pulled all of these dandelions out of a square foot spot in the yard. Is it just our yard or is the dandelion population out of control this year?


It was about at this point that we realized just how big this bin was going to acutally be.


And it was. BIG


Since I was taking pictures, I told James to get inside and lay down so we could show the scale. He said it was wrong that I made him lay down in his own coffin. Hee! Notice the dandelion weeds in his cold, dead hands. :P


It was right after I snapped this picture that noticed our next door neighbor had wandered over to see what we were up to. He could only shake his head when he saw James laying in the bin. I told the neighbor it's wht we did to keep our marriage exciting. ;)

And here's the finished product!




CAUTION! Manly man pumped up on testosterone!


So now you're probably asking yourself what our next project is. Well, it's something that James has been promising me since Valentine's Day 2003...

I've been missed...

...or so I've been told.

Life is plodding along here in south GA. It's a never ending cylce of work, school, cook, clean, sleep, church, meetings, sleep, school, lather, rinse, repeat.

I continue to rue the day I ever chose CHALLENGE as my word for 2009. It's only March and I think I'm pretty much ready for 2009 to be over and done with, if for no other reason than so I can choose a new word (something like LUCKY or FABULOUS). ;)

The weather continues to be weird around her. Gorgeous one moment, ugly and yucky the next. It's very bipolar, this weather.

I've also started four different books (American Lion, The Westing Game, A Murder is Announced and My Booky Wook) but sadly have finished none of them yet. That should tell you all you need to know about my mental state these days. ;)

On the other hand, there are things to look forward to.

- My friend Adriana is coming to visit in TWENTY days!
- Our beach trip in June
- A visit from Melanie and her crew
- The release of the sixth Harry Potter movie on July 17th

I did get my garden planted the other day. We had plans for expanding this year, but things have conspired against us. So we're making do with three tomato plants, one jalapeno plant, one cabbage, two basil, two cilantro, and one each of thyme and rosemary. We still have a little space left, so I might put in a bell pepper plant, even though they were a dismal failure last year.

And with that, I'm off to finish a fifth book (Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw).

Six days and counting...

I'm pretty sure I'm ready for January '09 to be over and done with. This month has been way too eventful for my liking! However, it seems like life is headed back to normal (whatever THAT is!).

Things were turned a little topsy-turvy as the repair work on the house commenced. We are SO LUCKY to have good friends who were able to do everything that needed to be done: Jason, who called James up and said "Let's take care of that trampoline!" and Nick, whose company actually did the roof replacement, porch repair and took care of the tree. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

Nick and his crew pulled up bright and early Monday morning and started ripping off the old roof, making way for the new, much improved(!) roof!







Within a few hours, the whole roof was stripped and ready for the new roof! I couldn't believed how FAST they worked. They almost got the new roof on by the end of the day, but they ended up having to come back the next morning a finish up.





While all of this was going on, James decided to get going on a project we've been planning for awhile- doing something about our bathroom AKA The Pit of Despair. Here it was before:




Here's what it looks like NOW:




This is the area behind the door. There used to be a full-length mirror there. (Aside- somehow we didn't notice this mirror until AFTER we were all moved in. The open door always covered it. The first time James took a shower in the bathroom, he started the shower with the door open. I shut it at some point during the shower, and when he was done, he drew back the shower curtain and was greeted with a shot of himself in the mirror! To say he was a little startled would be putting it mildly. Good times!)


Anyway, there was a bit of mildew behind the mirror, but more importantly we discovered the home of all of the ants that seem to invade our bathroom every spring and summer!

All of those dark lines are ant tunnels. There doesn't seem to be any ants in residence at the moment, so James is going to whatever needs to be done to insure they don't come back!

So at the moment, we only have one bathroom in livable condition, but at least everything outside is shipshape and shiny!

The new roof looks lovely...



The part of the tree that was on our property has been removed...(After five attempts to talk to the weird neighbors about the tree we washed our hands of it. I predict the tree will still be there a year from now!)



...and now instead of three columns on the front porch (The one to the far left was completely knocked loose in the storm- it fell off a few days later! Luckily it wasn't structurally necessary to the porch!)...


...we now have two! (Which James still needs to paint.)


Now that all of THAT is over and done with, I'm ready to think about other things...paint colors for the bathroom...finishing a book on the physiology of sex that I started a week ago...our garden...Valentine's Day...what I'm going to make for dinner tomorrow...you know, the normal stuff!

Lush and Verdant ( AKA Channeling Nigella Lawson)

A new pearl of wisdom:

When Life Give You Loads and Loads of Basil...


...Make Pesto!




(Anybody want any basil?)

Gardening

Three plants fell victim to Isabella's overzealous weeding tonight- a bell pepper plant, cilantro, and a marigold.

Oops.

In her defense, these plants were quite small and weed-like looking. Luckily we have three other bell pepper bushes that are about ready to start bearing fruit and another small thing of cilantro (I just put it in a week ago).

We harvested Madeline's ginormous cabbage last week, and reckon it came in close to 20 lbs. As it got bigger, we kept breaking off the bottom leaves because they kept crowding the tomatoes and peppers. The root stem was at least three inches in diameter. Madeline actually had a hard time holding the cabbage, it was so heavy! I plan on cooking it some time this week for dinner. Hopefully it will be very tasty!





I'm really proud of our little garden. We've already picked a few jalapenos and cherry tomatoes. All of the herbs are doing great. All of the tomato plants are loaded, and I can't wait to eat them!