I'm down with a cold today and not feeling like doing anything very physical. It's been a good opportunity for me to catch up on my favorite blogs, explore a few new ones and admittedly, to spend some time playing Farm Town on Facebook. I'm seriously thinking of deleting my Facebook account because I let it suck up too much of my time, and I don't seem to have willpower enough to leave it alone on my own.
Over the weekend, Shane was able to finish the last of our raised vegetable beds. We may have made a mistake with the beds, but I don't think it will kill us. At least the University of Missouri Extension says it won't kill us. You see, we made the beds from MCA-treated landscaping timbers that we had purchased for a different project. We knew not to use the older CCA-treated timbers for food gardening, but Shane was halfway through this project before either of us thought to research MCA. Ideally, we should have made the beds from cinder blocks or a naturally rot-resistant wood such as redwood. Still, according to MU, the newer types of pressure-treated wood contains no arsenic and show "insignificant movement of compounds to the soil".
I guess this mistake can be filed under live and learn, but I seriously doubt we're going to be in any more danger eating our homegrown produce than we would be eating grocery store produce.
Anyway...here are a couple of shots of our gardens. They are small; two of them are 15' x 3' (interior box measurement) and the other is 15' x 2". Regardless of their size, they should not only provide a good deal of produce for our small family, but should give us a good idea whether we want to expand our gardens next year.
What's in them? Well, we decided to plant either produce that yields abundantly for the space it requires, or produce we know we love. We have green beans, onions, radishes, green leaf lettuce, mixed lettuces, zucchini, cucumbers, rainbow chard, collard greens, green bell peppers, sweet yellow peppers. We also have both Roma and beefsteak tomatoes.
All but one of the seedlings I started indoors transplanted successfully, and most of the seeds I sewed outside are starting to germinate. So far, so good.
If you're wondering, the brick red stuff between the gardens is some kind of artificial turf or track surfacing. Shane is currently working on a large university's sports complex project and he rescued it from a trip to the dumpster and eventually, a landfill.
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Did you notice our pop-up camper in the first garden shot? We moved it from the back of the yard to it's summer parking spot. Very soon, we'll need to set it up and make sure it overwintered well and get it ready to go for our first camping trip on Memorial Day weekend.
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Our school is having Staff Appreciation Week and today was the day for Kindergarten parents to take in goodies if they liked. I made some cupcakes yesterday and sent a dozen of them to school. I didn't feel up to baking from scratch, so I used a mix (strawberry) and some homemade cream cheese frosting I had made up in the fridge from an earlier dessert. I opted for simple decorations for the dozen I sent to school -- just an edging of multi-colored sugar crystals.
Kat decorated the other dozen we kept at home with sugar sprinkled lightly over the top with SweeTart candies added. This idea came straight from the cake mix box, and I thought it might be cloyingly sweet, but the candies actually add a nice tart touch.
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Now that the camper has moved from it's winter parking spot (under our clotheslines) I can begin hanging laundry out again. I've already missed some beautiful laundry days in between all the rainy days we've been having here.
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Saturday morning we went to city-wide garage sales in a neighboring town. For a dime, I brought home this double-sized mug. Filled to the brim, it will hold a pint of hot tea or coffee, but because I'm klutzy, I only fill it with a meager 12 ounces! You can see from my fingers how heavy the full cup is in my left (weaker) hand. That's a lot of coffee or tea to drink in one sitting! But I've already gone through two fill-ups of tea this morning. It gets cool before I'm done, but I don't mind.
7 comments:
The cupcakes look great! As do the gardens...it's so cool that Shane can salvage some things & re-use them!
Hope you're feeling better... I still refuse to join facebook. ;-)
The raised beds look great, it woould be great if I had a big garden like that and could put a few in. That's my job on Wednesday, replacing the seedlings stunted by a late frost:( Oh well.
I hope you get over the cold soon, a cup that size can only help, right?
Nice updates - can't wait to see how your gardens grow!
Your raised beds look great!
I love your veggie beds! my garden is all planted this year but next year I am thinking about doing the same thing.
Awesome raised beds! That looks great! I like the idea of using the recycled material between the beds...that was a good idea. Those cupcakes look beautiful! I bet they were a big hit!
I hope you feel better and that the cold is history by now. Just keep drinking a lot of liquids; that new mug of yours should do the trick :)
I hope you feel better soon. My husband has been struggling with a chest/sinus cold that has been very stubborn as well. I love the way you just edged the cupcakes with sprinkles, very pretty!!
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