A Stained Fence

We've been meaning to do this for a while. However, painting is easy to put off, and stain is expensive. Thanks to Bec, the project happened this weekend. Without her prompting, we probably never would have done it.

We went through 13 gallons of Penofin Sierra stain, but the results are satisfying, and I am hoping this will protect the fence for years to come.

Three Months

90 days till we break ground on the kitchen remodel! 30 days until we begin to engage in talks with contractors.

We are getting more and more encouraged as our milestone nears. The plans are firming up, we are pretty sure on what we want, and how we will get there. I won't get into the details, Bec has already blogged several posts about plans, but 3 months is worth celebrating!

I just can't wait to see the room gutted and the slate blanked.

Of course, if you know a good kitchen remodeler that we can trust, do tell.

Stake Cover!

So, before I get into the meat of this post, I want to acknowledge a very cool fact. This weekend is our garden's first birthday! Last year Chris traveled with some friends for a Memorial Day weekend mancation. The previous weekend we'd gotten the lumber in the ground for our garden beds, so this weekend last year I did our planting. It's amazing to think that was only a year ago. We've already been enjoying the fruits and veggies in our garden, and this time last year I was just getting our beds filled with dirt and planted. So amazing! 

 

 

So, last year we had few strawberries, but the plants just kept reaching out and sprouting. This spring we've been absolutely LOVING the berries. They're incredible. They taste so different than a grocery store berry. They're red all the way through, and drip juice down your chin when you take a bite!

 So, the other day when I went out into the garden, I saw a very tragic sight. All around the garden bed were half eaten, rotting berries. I've heard about birds bothering berries and figured this was the case.

This is especially insulting considering I keep the birds (and unfortunately the squirrels too) very well fed and watered on the other side of the yard! The nerve!

 

So, in emergency mode, I went to our local nursery today and looked at what I could do. Here's the gear I ended up with. What's great is, I only had to purchase the net, which was $4.99. We had everything else. 

I drilled holes in our old landscaping stakes, which we originally purchased to lay out the garden area last spring.

I ran old gardening stakes through the holes, then cut the stakes to length. 

Finally, I stretched the nylon mesh over the stakes and tucked them in with more old gardening stakes.

While this isn't the fanciest arrangement, it cost only $5 and will keep the birds out for now. I'm devising in my head a structure Chris can be kind enough to build me for the long term, with screens and hinges. For now though, I think this will work.

 

While at the nursery, I also grabbed some stakes and ties for my tomato plants, which have really begun to grown with all the rain in the last week. Last year I used tomato cages to contain the plants, and felt like they interfered with the branches as the plants grew. So this year I've been looking forward to trying using stakes and ties to keep them upright.

The ties are really cool. They're a nylon-coated wire, like a very soft twist tie, that won't cut into the stems of the plants and that I can easily move as the plants grow. 

The plants look much less huge with 5' stakes in the ground, but I'm sure they'll catch up before too long. 

Happy Friday Eve from our garden!

Creepy Crawly Garden Helpers

"I got worms."

When I used to watch Dumb and Dumber as a child, I never thought that 1) there might actually be worm farms out there, or 2) I would one day make a purchase from one. I guess you just never know. Yesterday I went to the local nursery and purchased 100 earthworms. They will arrive by mail sometime next week.

Why, you may ask, did I purchase 100 earthworms? I'm not going fishing (although, that does sound kind of fun . . . ) My new pets will soon be at home in the compost bin Chris built me last year. They will help all the old food and yard scraps we've been collecting over the past year become nutrient-rich soil for future plantings. Isn't nature amazing?

What's even better . . . in placing the order for my worms I learned that there are LOTS of bugs that people buy for their gardens to reduce harmful pests naturally. For example, people buy ladybugs to get rid of aphids and mealyworms, or green lacewings to get rid of spider mites and whiteflies. But those don't appeal to me nearly as much as this guy:

That's right - you can purchase praying mantis eggs for your garden, and I'm totally excited about it! This HGTV article fully outlines why you want praying mantises to live in your garden, but the long and short of it is if it's a bug, the mantis will eat it. Plus, they're just pretty cool! 

For now I'm just waiting for my worms to arrive, but I think some praying mantises are in my garden's future!

Things are Looking UP!

Porch swings are an absolute must on old houses. It's the best seat we have - with a nice spring breeze, surrounded by flowers, sipping a glass of wine . . . . pure bliss.

The summer Chris and I moved in, we attempted to hang our porch swing from the porch ceiling. While this may sound simple enough, the end result was Chris, Wrigley and me crashing down on the porch. Fortunately no one was injured, and no neighbors witnessed what I'm sure would have been a totally hilarious incident to see.

Later that summer, with the help of my dad and brother-in-law, we managed to get the thing up. In doing so we found that our porch beams are really weird and run diagonally through the ceiling, rather than in any sort of logical, linear fashion so that's why we missed them the first time. So, we drilled HUNDREDS of holes to find the beams, leaving the ceiling looking like this.

Fast forward two years, and we've finally sanded and painted. This is one of those things that, once it's finished, we ask ourselves why on earth it took two years to do. I'm not exactly sure, but we're happy with the nice, clean end result, even though we're still not fans of this drab color.

And here's the best part - we realized while we were sanding down the putty that the previous color of our porch ceiling was . . . .  light blue! That's the very color I want to paint the ceiling when we attack the entire exterior next summer. Talk about a good omen!

Lovin' the Spring!

Spring is in full force in Kansas City, and we're loving it. We spent yesterday walking around the neighborhood and hanging out on the porch. Fun times were had by all, by we think most of all by Hazel, who spent the afternoon hunting bugs in my primrose.

Can you see Wrigley and Hazel in the picture above?

That's what we've been up to. We hope you're enjoying the nice spring weather as well!

We Have Strawberries!

 

 Yesterday morning I picked the first two ripe strawberries from our strawberry patch and each ate one. Amazing! And lots more to come!