Unusual Gift

Last weekend was Nick's birthday.  Making a gift list was easy, as there are so many home-related things that we could use.  I think it says a lot about my husband that he asked his parents for a compost tumbler.

Why, you ask?  We decided a few months back that if we wanted a garden, we wanted to make our own compost.  His mother does it for the family home in Vermont, and in D.C. as well.  We wanted a way to help get our garden growing without having to rely on a bunch of chemical fertilizers.  The solution seemed easy: compost! 

I did some research (there are a lot of tumblers out there) and discovered that by far, the most highly-rated and heavily tested tumblers are Joraform, made by a Swedish company.  According to the Joraform website, the tumblers were tested in "a project comprising 466 households in small houses and blocks of flats and day nurseries. The results have proved most satisfactory as has been shown in the Report No. 4229 by the Swedish Authority for Environment Conservation."  They are very highly rated at websites like eartheasy and Amazon, as well.  The smaller version, the JK125, makes 4.25 cubic feet of compost using two different bins (so you fill the first one and let it do its thing while you start filling the other).  And its insulation means that you can keep making compost even if it's cold and snowy outside.  So we reasoned that if we started this fall or winter, we ought to have several lovely batches come spring, since it only takes 6-8 weeks.  Plus, the powder-coated steel exterior is sturdy and the legs are rust-resistant, and it's supposed to be vermin-proof.  The catch?  Price - all of these terrific features do not come cheap.  So Nick put it on his birthday list, and we made a plan to start saving up for it, so that no matter what, we would eventually have one.

Now we can put our savings towards other items, though, as this evening his parents generously offered to buy one for his birthday (plus a coffee table)!  We are very excited - so excited that we couldn't wait until tomorrow to go find one.  Which as it turns out, was quite fortuitous!  I was planning to buy it on eartheasy, as that was the cheapest site I had found.  Nick asked me to check Amazon, which did have it for $14 less but wanted to charge $45 for shipping, whereas eartheasy has free shipping. Then as I was looking at the Amazon page, I saw advertisements from other companies, such as hayneedle.  Lo and behold, hayneedle does not charge shipping and was running a 10% off weekend sale that ends tonight at midnight.  So we bought it and saved an extra $30!  Now we can afford a pitchfork for the compost.  *grin*

 

 It should be here Thursday!

Nick saw that I was blogging about this and asked how many jokes I was working into the post about turning sh*t into gold for his birthday.  His words, not mine.  For the record.  Although I really wish I'd thought of it first.

Garden Greenhouse

Someday in the hopefully-not-too-distant-future, Nick and I would like to be able to grow many of our own greens and vegetables.  This plan is limited by a) time and b) money.  This year we had just enough of both to put in one raised bed containing (as previously mentioned) broccoli and Brussels sprout seedlings, a baby bell pepper or two, our transplanted basil and tomato plants, and some seeds for lettuce, carrots and radishes.  Planting in late August/early September is not unreasonable in the Mid-Atlantic, with the first frost date generally predicted for mid-October.  We should be able to get at least one crop of the lettuce and radishes.  But in the hopes of prolonging our growing season a few more weeks, Nick decided that we should try making a cloche.  It's also known as a row cover, but cloche sounds better (it's French for bell).

So Nick did some online research and planning, as well as some shopping, and this weekend we put together our first cloche.  It's not perfect and it's not professional, but we think it'll get the job done. Take a look!

Here is the garden bed pre-cloche (photo is a few weeks old but you get the idea:

 Step 1: Cut in half three lengths of PVC pipe.

Step 2: Attach PVC to exterior of raised bed with brackets and wood screws.  Attach on the long sides; one at each end and one in the middle.

Step 3: Go trekking around in the woods that are our backyard to find tall beech saplings or pliable branches no wider in diameter than the diameter of the pipe opening.

Step 4: Trim such branches/saplings of branches and leaves and cut them at their base.  Feel slightly guilty about it but realize that the woods are chock full of beech trees and that there are new saplings coming up constantly.

Step 5: On the way back to the garden with said saplings, be very confused by the proliferation of weird little insects with fluffy white waving bits that have taken over one of the trees.  Make mental note to figure out what the heck they are (other than reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss book).

Step 6: Insert saplings into PVC pipe and twine together saplings from opposite sides of the garden bed.  Secure with twine.  Cloche frame complete!

Steps 7-9 have been summarized/oversimplified so as not to bore you with the details of how many times things had to be adjusted and readjusted.

Step 7: Drape plastic sheeting over framing and attach by making very small holes (with a tiny screwdriver used to adjust eyeglasses) and threading twine through them.  

Step 8: Make two slits on the near side of the long end of the cloche, to allow access to the plants inside.

 
Step 9: Attach Velcro to the edges of the slits and a few extra pieces to allow the cloche openings to be sealed shut or held open, depending upon the weather.

Step 10: Celebrate teamwork and a job well done with a cup of Earl Grey tea.  What, you were expecting something fancier?


Now it's time to cross our fingers and hope it works!

Food, Glorious Food

This post is about food, or about things which will one day become food. 

Our baby plants are growing!  The radishes and lettuces came up right away - the carrots started growing about a week later.  I'm so excited!

Radishes at the bottom of the photo, then tiny carrot seedlings
(you might have to squint to see them), then baby lettuces.
This photo is actually a week old.

In an effort to extend our growing time into November to actually give our plants a chance to finish growing, we are building a cloche (like a mini-greenhouse).  Nick spent some time researching and planning how to do it effectively and cheaply, and so far it is coming along nicely.  We hope to finish that tomorrow and I'll put up photos.

~    ~    ~

We got a little excited about the meat offerings at the Farmer's Market today.  Nick is trying to plan ahead each month by stocking the freezer with meats and then using them gradually, rather than having to buy it at the supermarket constantly.  We were delighted to see all sorts of lamb and pork offerings today (no beef, though).  So now we're stocked!

You know you want some.

Lamb kabob/stew meat, ground lamb, sage and maple pork sausages, and ham hocks (I want to experiment with bean soups).   At a reasonable price, as well.  The farm is having open-to-the-public celebration weekends next month and I think we'll go.  I'm curious to see how the operation is run.

~    ~    ~

At the market today, we also purchased a lovely-looking butternut squash and some green tomatoes.  The lady who sold us the tomatoes suggested that we use them to make fried green tomatoes.  I had never tried cooking them before but it turns out that they are both easy and delicious!

Dinner tonight was a vegetarian feast: butternut squash soup with ginger, fried green tomatoes, and sauteed Swiss chard (I bought that last week and forgot to use it).  Plus, when I realized there would be soup I plugged in the breadmaker and put together a loaf of three-seed whole wheat bread.  Dinner was mildly labor-intensive but delicious!

This house blog is spilling over into the realm of food and such, but from my perspective it's not really much of a stretch.  For us, a big part of owning our own home and living in a small-ish town is the chance to become part of a community, which entails things like going to the Farmer's Market.  And we have access to such beautiful and delicious local foods that it has become a not-insignificant part of our lives.  So there you go.  Besides, we ran into our neighbor from across the street at the market because she is a Master Gardner and was volunteering as part of the Virginia Cooperative Extension.  We're just getting started and there is an expert across the street?  Lucky us!

Mailbox Makeover

As mentioned in my previous post, there are a lot of relatively minor things in and around our new house that could use fixing or updated.  The bubble-gum pink guest bedroom, for instance.  Or, in this case, the seriously disgusting, rusty old mailbox out in front of the house.

Lovely, no?  Very classy, what with the giant patches of rust and peeling paint.  Plus, the chipped old sign with our house number on it looks very elegant.  For some reason, once I took stock of how icky the mailbox was, it started to really bother me, and I decided that it must be my next project.  Then I found these pretty mailbox vinyl stickers on Etsy and I got a little bit obsessed.  Never mind that the bookcase is in the garage ready to be primed and painted (I keep finding more spots that need to be filled with wood putty and then sanded before I can prime it).  I was absolutely positive that I could refinish this crappy mailbox for less than the price of a new one.  I was right, but I did encounter a few pitfalls along the way.

Painting a mailbox while it is still on the post is very difficult and messy, and cleaning it on the post is just about impossible.  So last Sunday morning after Nick left to go to the Redskins game, I set to work removing the screw that attached the back of the mailbox to the post.  Easy-peasy.  Then I tried to remove the screw anchoring the bottom interior wall to the post.  Except that it wasn't a screw.

A nail?  Seriously?  Who the heck nails a mailbox to its post?  Apparently someone who doesn't plan to ever repaint their mailbox and wants to make life difficult for the next homeowner.  This nail rapidly became the bane of my Sunday afternoon.

We have two hammers.  The back of the small one (you know, the back - the part that is supposed to remove nails) was too small.  The large hammer fit around the nail but the stupid handle was too big for the mailbox.  So after 15-20 minutes of careful maneuvering so as not to hit myself in the face with the hammer when it slipped off the nail, I had accomplished this:

 

This is the point where I called Nick (en route to the football game) to vent and ask for advice.  He suggested trying to loosen the nail+mailbox by hammering on it from underneath.  I tried that for a while and made minimal progress.  Went back and forth between the two different approaches for what felt like forever but was probably no more than thirty minutes.  Eventually the mailbox was loosened enough to freely rotate on the post, but the nail remained firmly in place.  Witness:

 

Are you not amused?  I sure was.  Also, tired - I was tired.  Eventually I fatigued the metal enough that the mailbox actually pulled free of the nail altogether.  I wasn't about to argue.  So then I carried it over to the lawn and rinsed it thoroughly inside and out with the hose.  There were years-old bundles of spiderwebs underneath - ick!  Once it was clean, I laid it out in the sunny driveway to dry, and went to Lowe's to buy my supplies: a wire brush (for scrubbing off paint and rust), two spray cans of Rustoleum (a primer for rusty metal and a matte black), and a small can of red paint plus a foam brush to repaint the rusty "we're sending mail out" flag.  I had already ordered the vinyl sticker and was awaiting its delivery.

The mailbox was dry by the time I had returned, so I scrubbed off as much old rust and paint as I could with the wire brush and cleaned off the debris.  Next came two coats of Rustoleum primer:

No, I don't know why I shot this like a Rustoleum ad.  Don't ask.
Looks better already, though!

After the primer dried I applied two coats of matte black, and repainted the red flag, like so:

I left this to dry overnight and updated my terrific husband on my progress when he returned from his football game.  I also let him know that the mailbox post/nail and I had exchanged some rather unpleasant words, and therefore getting the mailbox back onto the post was going to be his job.  *grin*  Trooper that he is, he agreed without complaint.  Apparently he spent hours the next morning working on this, because my efforts to free the mailbox had loosened the post, so he needed to resecure it.  He was also unable to get rid of that stupid nail, so he hammered it back into the post in a location that would not interfere with reattachment.  Between the two of us, the neighbors must think we're nuts.  But I don't care, because now my mailbox does not look like it's older than I am.

When I got home from work last night I discovered that my mailbox stickers had arrived, much to my delight, and looked every bit as good as I had hoped.  With the minor exception that whoever packaged them folded them, creating some creases in a couple of the stickers.  So this morning I carried them outside and carefully applied them to the mailbox...

Then slowly peeled them off to reveal the final touch:

Ta-da!  Pretty nifty!  Not perfect - the paint job on the backside of the mailbox needs a touch-up.  But we live at the end on a cul-de-sac and the only people who will see it are us, the postal worker, and one set of neighbors.  So no biggie.  I could have spaced the lettering farther from the numbers but I had to clear the screws at the bottom of the box and I didn't want to deal with the curve at the top.  I will probably remove (or at least) update) the tacky little sign but the screws are rusted in.

So let's recap.  For less than the cost of a new mailbox we have one that looks nearly brand-new and is almost swanky.  In a few years the post will need replacing, but that should be doable because Nick used screws for attachment.  Now when folks approach they will know for sure that they're in the right place!

Before and After.

Quite an improvement, if I do say so myself!

Bathroom Update

One relatively minor yet annoying quirk of our house is the teensy master bathroom.  It's adorable yet slightly cramped, with absolutely no storage space to speak of.  I'm not sure how the previous owners managed with no towel racks, no toilet paper holder, and only one tiny glass shelf.  We have managed for a couple of months so far, but it was starting to get on our nerves.

Enter...Target.  We went shopping for cat litter and decided that while we were there, we would browse for bathroom storage items.  We have thus far been quite disappointed with the meager selection of flimsy towel bars and toilet paper holders for sale at Lowe's and Home Depot, and we did not expect Target to fare any better.  We were wrong!  We found a pair of nice-looking (and reasonably sturdy) towel bars, a hand towel holder, a toilet paper holder, and a good-looking wall cabinet, all for a reasonable price (especially given my 5% discount card).  We spent a few hours at home putting it all together and installing it, as well as the curved shower rod we bought last month that hadn't been installed yet.  The hand towel holder had some issues with regards to screw placement, but we were able to remedy the problem.  We then moved the glass shelf over to the inside wall, above the newly-obtained hand towel holder, and installed the wall cabinet into the vacated space, Voila!

There is no good way to photograph this bathroom (too small), but you get a rough idea.  We really like it!  No longer do we have to rely on storage bins under the pedestal sink to hold necessities.  Plus, we were able to move my hair and makeup items and Nick's shaving things into this bathroom, which freed up the hall bathroom countertop to hold things guests might actually use  We also hung artwork in the hall bath, as you can see reflected in the central mirror below.  Framed photos from our trip to Sicily seemed like a good fit.

Now we just need to paint our bubble-gum pink guest bedroom and we'll be all set!  That's a whole other story, as I wimped out on picking between the Prescott Green and the Kittery Point Green, and today put a Hollingsworth Green swatch up on the walls.  It's a lighter version of Prescott.  The Prescott is lovely in the daytime, but I'm finding it a bit much at night and I think a lighter color might work better.  We shall see.

Challah-Back Girl

Rosh Hashanah begins tonight.  The New Year, celebrated in our new home.  What could be better?  So, in a classic fit of culinary over-ambition,  I decided to try baking my own challah bread for Erev Rosh Hashanah.  Not just "put it in the bread machine and push start" challah bread, which would have been the easy thing to do.  But Rosh Hashanah challah bread, which is supposed to be baked in a spiral or circle, and thus must be shaped by hand and baked in the oven.  Rosh Hashanah challah bread, which is also supposed to have raisins in it.

Yup.  Overly ambitious.  But with King Arthur guiding my steps, I decided to give it a go.  Take a look!

Dough after the bread machine has finished with it, and after I added raisins.

Dough rolled out to 32 inches on my countertop -
the recipe said between 30 and 36 inches.
Note the raisins everywhere - they did not adhere to the dough well.

After the rope has been coiled into the pan.

The aftermath.

 

The same pan after 75 minutes rising time.

 

 Halfway done baking...almost there...

Voila: Rosh Hashanah Challah!

Was it any good?  I don't know - haven't tasted it yet!  Not stealing a bite is the hardest part.  Stay tuned...


Update: It was delicious.

Fall Has Arrived

With last weekend's rainstorm came cooler temperatures, and thus far those temperatures have stuck around.  In the mornings it's in the 50's and 60's instead of the 70's and 80's, and the temperature generally hasn't climbed much above 80 or so, whereas two weeks ago it was 90 and up.  Plus, the humidity has dropped markedly, so that one no longer feels like breathing outside is a chore.  It looks like fall is here!  In celebration of the season I purchased a few small decorative gourds and pumpkins (actually called "pumpkemons") at our local garden place, and I'm very pleased with the result.

Huzzah for our Simon Pierce bowl!

The cooler weather also makes working outside more pleasant, and we've been looking forward to getting some yardwork done this weekend.  Today I weeded our front walkway and daydreamed about when we will have the extra cash to re-mulch the front of the house, as the old faded bark mulch currently there is looking kind of ratty.  Next spring, perhaps.  Still, even the weeding made a huge difference.  Nick played lumberjack today and took down a beech tree with a combination of ax and saw.  His ultimate goal is to take down all of the smaller and medium trees in the front yard (except the dogwoods and the holly trees - those can stay).  With just the larger trees there, it will still look pretty and wooded but not so dark, and it will open up the space more. 

View of our house from across the street -
you can hardly see it for all the trees!

He also plans to clean up that scrubby slope next to the street, and you can see on the far right where we've already made some progress thanks to help from his parents.  I have been barred from that project since the slope is loaded with poison ivy (as Nick's dad found out).  That's fine with me, and I have plenty of other projects to do, such as getting our dinky little back patio clean.  It's an old brick patio that was once pretty, but is now overgrown with moss and weeds.

 

Not exactly attractive.

I weeded the patio a few weeks ago, but the weeds are regrowing and I hadn't tackled the moss yet.  The moss is actually dangerous because it makes the bricks slippery when wet, and I've already nearly fallen on my behind once.  So today I spent an hour or so (maybe less?) with a putty knife scraping off the moss until the bricks looked like this:

Better already!

I didn't finish, but the scraping will be easy enough to finish tomorrow.  Peeling off giant sheets of moss is rather satisfying, I admit.  Then I will spray the bricks with a dilute bleach mixture to kill the weeds and moss in the cracks and enable me to clean the bricks more effectively.  The bleach is supposed to keep moss from coming back as readily, too.  The catch is not to get onto the lawn, where it will kill what is already pitiful grass.  We might have to get some paving sand or pea gravel to fill in the cracks between bricks, because when I peel up the moss in the cracks a layer of mud comes with it and there is a gap left behind.  The bricks are starting to crumble too.  Eventually we hope to completely redo and expand the patio, but that will be a big expensive project for another year.

And the Garden is a Go!

As fall begins, we have remained optimistic that if we pushed ourselves, we might be able to get a little bit of growing time in this season before the weather gets too cold.  This week, I can proudly announce that we have veggies planted in our fenced-in garden plot!  Whether they will grow successfully is another story - one victory at a time for now.

Since our soil is so poor, our plan is to use 4 or 5 raised beds, each 4' x 8'.  Untreated cedar is the wood of choice for this since it is naturally rot resistant and doesn't leach chemicals into the soil.  Nick's original plan was to build all of his own garden beds.  However, the cedar wood we need would have to be specially ordered and is a bit on the pricey side.  It's doable, but not right now.  As an alternative, he settled on a raised bed kit from Home Depot.  Two 4' x 4' adjacent sections, one ten inches deep and the other seven inches deep, separated by a partition.

Not ideal, as the cedar is only an inch thick instead of the two inches we would prefer, and we'd prefer two deep sections instead of one deep and one less so, but it was a place to start.  But then, last night my "wicked smaht" husband realized that since the boards simply slide into slots in the posts, he could pull the three divider boards out and slot them in on the edges of the shallow side to make its walls just as high as that of the tall side.  Voila!  A 4-ft by 8-ft raised bed that is ten inches deep all over!

 

L to R: bell peppers, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, broccoli, basil

It may not look like much, but this is our first real garden in years (since living in Massachusetts), and our first raised bed garden ever.  Nick transplanted our tomatoes and basil plants, and bought some young bell peppers, brussel sprouts, and broccoli plants.  I have planted seeds for lettuce, radishes and carrots (things that grow quickly and should still grow in the fall).

Our rosemary and mint will stay in their pots, where they are both pretty and doing well.   I'm excited about my garden markers too, though they're not actually done yet.  I spray-painted wooden paint stirring sticks (free) with Rustoleum chalkboard paint (five bucks) and am writing plant names on them with chalk ($1.50).  Ultimately I plan to use a China marker since they won't wash off in the rain, but Nick finished the raised bed faster than I got the markers ordered on Amazon, so it's chalk in the meantime.

Apparently our gardening was not terribly scary, either, because there was at least one doe standing in the woods nearby, just far back enough that we could barely see her.   We see them every day now, sometimes two or three times a day.  Hope they leave the garden alone!  Our bird feeders are attracting black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, and at least one tufted titmouse, plus some really scraggly-looking juvenile cardinals who eat the seeds on the ground that the other birds scatter.  No finches so far but we do have at least two species of hummingbirds at the hummingbird feeder!  Now if only we could have all that nature without the mosquitoes...