We finished the compost bin last weekend which is a nice weight off our shoulders. Slowly, slowly, the gardening side of the yard is coming together. Our next big projects will be amending our future flower bed and then building our raised vegetable beds out front. Those will take up the next several weeks at which point we’ll return inside to renovate our laundry room and finish putting our baseboards in the downstairs living and dining areas. And then we’re going camping in March and April ’cause I’m tired of being cooped up.

Yesterday our beehive arrived! Yep, we’re going to delve into the world of beekeeping! A couple of weekends ago I went to a beekeeping forum at one of our local nurseries and it really set us off about getting our bees set up for the spring. We put our order in with R. Weaver Apiaries and we can pick them up in Navasota, Tx on April 13th! Chris put the hive together yesterday and will be adding a few things to make it nicer over the coming weeks, including building a stand for it. As for what else is going on around here, nothing that I can think of worth…

Parsley Easter egg radishes Olive leaf broccoli The leaves in the garden are creating a second layer of mulch throughout. I poked around this evening, still dressed in my work clothes. The snap peas are coming up, a few radishes were ripe for picking and found themselves cooked into our stirfry tonight. A day of rain on Tuesday produced good conditions for the fungi to grow. I’ve gotta start learning to identify them better as our yard seems to proliferate fungus after a good rain or several dewy mornings. We’ve had rather warm days lately with a couple of cooler nights interspersed, but my brother is warning of a real,…

The leaves are falling in droves now. When gusts of wind come through the leaves rain down covering the grass in some areas rather thickly. Sometimes there are ducks on the pond, lately there is a lone great white egret hanging out. The feral cats still follow us around the yard, entertaining us with their antics. Our newly planted almond verbena is offering up delicious smells in the side yard. Isis (the muted tortie) and Ruby (or it could be Fred, her dad. They look similar from a distance) on a downed pine log, followed me while I watered the azaleas. Fred Momma makes an appearance every now and then,…

They’ve taken their time getting plump and ripe. But the pink spheres of peppery goodness are starting to come in. Garden happiness.

The luffa we had growing at the community garden was still going strong when we finally left the garden a little over a week ago. There were fruits growing all over the fence and while I had taken some of the fruits throughout the summer to dry and keep the ‘sponge’ part of the plant for later, I wanted to have a few more. Here are three that I had let dry. The one on the far right I peeled when it was green and the fibers were clearly evident once peeled. I set it outside to dry and ended up leaving it far too long causing it to mold.…

Having a compost pile is something we have been looking forward to since we bought the house. For awhile I stopped keeping my food scraps completely. We’d moved further away from the community garden and I was just not in the mood to keep it up. Back in September Chris decided that we could start a makeshift compost pile in a ratty trash can left by the previous homeowners. I rinsed it out and we stuck it on the side of the storage shed/carport and I started the pile by throwing in the weeds I collected from clearing out the vegetable bed area on the south side of the house.…

On Sunday we dug up our sweet potatoes at the community garden, the last plot we had still growing there. It was a bit sad to leave but it felt right to be leaving. We grew a lot there in the year we spent at the garden but I know we’ll be growing a lot more at our garden at the house in the future. The sweet potato harvest was pretty good, though at first we were a bit doubtful. We kept pulling out the smaller, thickened roots but were finally rewarded with good sized potatoes. The smaller roots and pieces we are keeping for ‘seed’ for next summer’s crop.…