God Made Dirt, and Dirt Don’t Hurt

Finally we have dirt, or compost and top soil to be precise, but we have it. Now our garden can go ahead with out further delay. We will be putting our plants in the ground on the first of April, our friend Andy (and hopefully his wife Leah) will be coming down to help us move our 140 plants into their new home. This first picture is of our raised bed (s) I calculated (with my advanced maths) that it is about 190(ish) square feet. It took 2 and a quarter tons (4.5 thousand pounds) of compost and about a ton of top soil to fill it out. I spent about 4 days filling it up (it would have taken one or two if I didn’t have to go to work), and now it is satisfyingly full.



This next picture is where we will be planting our watermelons, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and possibly our artichokes. I gave it a layer of compost to amend the soil, and in hopes that it would kill the grass and weeds. But to my astonishment grass and weeds like nutrients too, and they quickly sprouted up through the compost. So we decided to cover them up with plastic and cardboard boxes in hopes that this will kill them (our thoughts were that it would block the light and get too hot for them). We will see how well it works next week.



This final picture is of where I will be planting my 40 sunflowers. I’m hoping that the fence will provide some support (and I can tie them to the fence if necessary), and be a wind break as well.



And the news you all have been so patiently waiting for…I finally bought a pottery wheel!! It should be here early next week, and I can get started throwing some new stuff. But more on that later…

Artistic Jealousy

So as I was sitting listening to (great) music, surfing the webs, and generally being bored enough to do some cleaning. I was really wishing I could do something artistic –my ideas ran from making pottery, printing tee shirts, video blogging, and printing books (one day soon). I was remembering a link our good friend Andy posted to his wonderful wife’s new photography project. The idea is that she will post a picture once each day for the next year. I am secretly jealous because I wish I could take pictures like her (because she is really an amazing artist/photographer) and thinking I could do something like that, right? But then realized I should probably just let the people who are good at it do it (instead of me doing it badly –similar to my wishing I could play the guitar… “Wish in one hand and pooh in the other and see which one gets full faster” my dad says). So I will promote her website (via this link here ---> Leah’s Cool Website) instead. Check it out, leave comments, and order a print or three.