Wordless Wednesday: Spring!

 

Mushrooming

 

Let me start off with the fact that I'm not getting paid off by the mushroom people.

Sometime in February, I picked up a mushroom kit from a big box store.  As soon as I opened it, I realized two things: 

1.  It looked nothing like the other two kits I've bought in my life.

2. The store had left it outside so that it had frozen and  thawed most days of the past two months.

It did say on the box that the mushrooms were guaranteed to grow, so I shot them an email.  To my surprise, after getting the information about the box, they simply sent me a new kit, completely free!

And boy, did it grow!

One reason I wanted the kit was that the last time we had grown mushrooms, they convinced Choclo that he didn't hate mushrooms - he hated button mushrooms, but oyster mushrooms are delicious!

I was reading the information that came with the kit, and they said they grew the mushrooms in used coffee grounds.

I decided to experiment with our spent kit by burying the mycelium in some of our own spent coffee grounds (in a large plastic container.  

To our delight, over the course of a a few weeks, we saw the mycelium grow to turn all of our coffee grounds white.

I popped the whole thing out of it's tight fitting container and started giving it extra water.

On the left is that mycelium, now budding new fruiting bodies (mushrooms).

On the right is the older plastic container.  Some of the mycelium stuck to the sides, so I've started filling it with more coffee grounds, and you can see the white patches growing along the sides.

Where will it end?  I have no idea!

But it's been a super fun experiment while it's still too cold to garden, and, the fact is, we all love oyster mushrooms!

Wordless Wednesday: First Frost

 

Wordless Wednesday: October Beauty

 

The Concrete Garden

 Six inches of concrete over the course of 30 feet of sidewalk adds up to a lot of concrete.

Also, it turns out that getting rid of concrete is difficult, expensive, and requires special permits...

I had been thinking of adding a garden on this corner in the fall.

 And I had always liked the idea of a garden berm.

And I don't mind when my entire family collectively rolls their eyes at me when I suggest a new garden.

So I spray painted the outline of a garden, and we dumped the concrete there.

Then I ordered a couple of cubic yards of compost and had the truck dump it directly on the concrete.

 July is a horrible time to start a garden here because it's so hot and usually so dry.  So I mostly put in some annuals in the hopes that they would grow quickly and hold the soil in place.

I knew already that the plants all need to be fairly low growing so that drivers can see around the corner, and I already knew a few of the plants I wanted there.

When my local Home Depot had peach Drift roses on clearance, I nabbed two of them!

Come fall, I'll separate a bunch of my perennials, from other gardens and plant up this corner garden properly.

I'll probably add a few new bulbs and other plants, because I just can't get enough of the family collective eye roll really love plants!

Where the Sidewalk Ends

 We had been having problems with the little sidewalk that ran from our driveway to our house.  It was cracked and it flooded badly whenever it rained.

What a great summer project!

It's only 30 feet (10 meters) long, so not too big a job.

 Ha ha!

The first problem was that the original concrete was six inches thick.  That's at least double what I had expected.

And, while hard on the surface, the interior was crumbly, which turns out to be difficult when you are using a jackhammer (you only get little bits at a time instead of big chunks).

Honestly, we ended up out sourcing that part of the job after a frustrating half day.







Next up was laying a sand base.

Then tamping to flatten and smooth it.

Then it was time to mix and pour the concrete pavers.

 We decided to do pavers to give us better drainage, but an extra bonus was that it looks great with the garden!

And lastly we filled in the spaces between pavers with polymeric sand.

It took the whole week, but we're delighted with the new path!

Wordless Wednesday: Flowers

Down the Garden Path

 It's an ill wind that blows no good, as my mother and grandmother used to say.

With a bit more time on our hands at home, we decided to do some household and garden projects.  So far, inside, we've cleaned the dreaded back basement, the office, the fridge, and the deep freeze. 

Outside, we've been doing a lot of weeding and pruning, but, by far, the biggest project to date was terracing the hill in the side garden so that the path and sitting area are level.



Fortunately, Zorg had some experience building paths on hillsides!  He spent a few weeks at Philmont with the Order of the Arrow building hiking trails for scouts.


 Basically, we used installed landscape timbers on the downhill side, then used the mattock to cut the uphill side down to be level with those timbers.  Then we installed more timber on the uphill side as a retaining wall.



Then we tamped everything down and covered the bath with bark.

It looks fantastic, and I am so happy to have that job done!

I still need to do a bit a of weeding in that garden because I have a number of plants coming in that I want to put there.

Wordless Wednesday: In the Garden

Spring Garden

 Over the past few weeks we put in 3 cubic yards of compost, went on an epic plant buying spree (my favorite garden center is closing), got most of my seedlings in, and finished it all off with 24 bags of mulch.

And I'm tired.

But happy!

This is the garden along the carport.

Foxgloves are my favorite flowers!

The other part of the carport.

The front garden.

 The front shrubbery which is turning into a true garden.

I also love this Sugar Plum verbascum!

The other side of the front steps.

Klenda's Marian garden.

Below, the lilacs that are scenting  everything, my messy kitchen garden, and the shady side garden I haven't even started cleaning up!