Saturday, February 16, 2013

Settling In and Moving Dirt

Yesterday, we finished moving our daughter, Kait, and her boyfriend (...soon to be, fiance?), David, into our home, now "their" home too. They had much of their day-to-day stuff moved, but they were able to secure a truck and trailer yesterday and move the larger items in. It means that they will soon set up "the death room" (AKA ::  a room that sits off of Cora's old room, now Kait and David's room - big enough for some storage, a couch, a computer desk etc. In no time at all, they'll be able to set up their space like a little apartment with a bedroom and sitting room. It'll will be nice for them, until they are ready to venture back out on their own.

Today, we got to get dirty...really, really dirty. We readied the raised bed that is closest to our front porch. We put in a layer of alpaca poo and compost, over the existing good dirt from last year. We all took turns mixing the soil in with the compost/poo mix. After everything was fully mixed and spread out, we put garlic cloves into the mix. 53 cloves in all were planted into three rows - hoping that all of them will grow into beautiful new bulbs. This will be enough to get us through, until next planting season, and still be able to make spaghetti sauce etc. DELICIOUS!
53 garlic cloves, ready to grow into new garlic bulbs

Our overachiever, already on its way to a knew bulb!

In addition to planting all of our garlic, we took our saved toilet paper rolls to create seed start pots. Yes, we save our TP rolls - I guess we knew that we'd find some sort of amazing project for them. We were right! To make the "pots" - you make the roll flat in two directions, to square it off.

The roll will now look something like this.

In the corners, you cut slits in the roll, approx 3/4" long.

Fold in the flaps, crisscross, like you would a box.

Overlap the last flap.

We put ours into a plastic shoebox, you can see the crisscrosses in the bottom.

28 rolls ready and waiting for seeds. I really hope these will work.

If anything, they look kinda cute all squished in there.

Garlic, resting now, will hopefully grow so beautifully in this southern facing yard space.
Off to get cleaned up and head into Dayton to see Mark's side of the family, in celebration of Mark's grandmother's life. She passed a year ago, a wonderful lady, indeed. She is deeply missed in our family.

3 comments:

  1. The family that mixes compost and poo together stays together LOL. My Bestie has done a similar thing with her daughter and boyfriend. It was let them go on their own and struggle with nothing or bring them into the family home where "Nick" now makes 5. Yesterday, they were married and i will do a blog later today showing pictures. Nick is from Persia and they have been together about 8 months. I have known the family since the children, and my son, were in creche together as 2 yr olds and Mirandah considers me her second mum. Gosh there were some happy tears yesterday. I am sure that with your guidance they also will get there. I've not planted garlic yet. Im kind of running out of space, unlike some!!!. Goodness, another family project, making loo roll pots. Yes, i am up early on a Sunday morning, getting ready to take Tom to work. The poor kid has been scheduled for 4 weekends straight without a break. Im definetly talking the the Manager today. He needs a rest. Enjoy your day with Mark's family. How wonderful that even though she is gone from this earth she is remembered with fondness. Now that's a good life lived. Well Done Grandma!

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  2. Four straight weekends of work, surrounded by school is just too much. Kids need to be kids too.
    Grandma Schimer was a neat lady, feisty, hilarious, complete lack of a filter...just the way I like it lol.
    I'm excited to see how this garden grows. I've neve grown garlic before si hopefully it is successful

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  3. I ran into one of the other kids from church that works with Tom and he had two week nights that he couldnt do, so we organised ourselves for Tom to do Wed night & Sunday and for him to do Thursday & Sat. Not that hard so why couldnt they do it! Yes, he's tired but i am so proud of him for not just giving in. Here i was wondering whether he would be capable of working full stop and now they are relying on him and he is training others. He's very cuddly lately, mostly with Dad but sometimes with me, its nice. Its still a case of taking not giving but i get to hug him, so im not complaining. Did you take a look at Slow Living Essetials about the Alpaca fibre post. Today its all about Hugelkultur beds. You could do this. Its very hot here, a week of over 35C. It tiring and so its off to bed - a week of work ahead for both of us.

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