Raingutter Gardening

Steph is out of town in Utah this week for her brother's wedding, so it's been just me and the kids.

Today we made a raingutter garden. We had tried making a garden in the yard a couple of years ago, but as hot and miserable as it gets here, it was hard to get out and go all the way down to take a look how things were going.

So this time, I bought a $5 raingutter and some mounting brackets and screwed the gutter to the bottom of the railing on one side of the deck.


The girls took turns hauling buckets of our nice, dark dirt we had mixed up for the last garden and filled the gutter. They had an absolute blast!

We divided the garden mostly between Maysen and Jorja, though I have a small area on each of the two ends. If we get anything to grow, we may add a few more gutters along the other edges of the deck and add a second row near the tops of the railings. We decided to start with the gutter down low so that peas and things can climb up the rails. We can easily attach some kind of climbing net for them there if we need to.



This setup should work out nicely for us, since the garden will be visible from the main living area and it will be easy for the girls to go out to work without having to trudge all the way out and down into the yard.

Jorja went to the store with me to get seeds. She happily planted flowers and peas in her areas, and let me put carrots, and radishes next to her. Maysen planted flowers and strawberries. We really wanted to find some strawberry plants, but there was none to be seen. So, we bought a carton of strawberries from the grocery store and buried about 6 of those. We have no idea if those will actually grow, but it's worth a try.

(Perhaps my lovely wife could figure out a way to bring/send some strawberry starts from Utah? I bet she could weasel some from my brother's yard. Hmm.....)

Maysen let me plant tomatoes and peppers in my area next to hers.

When the seeds were planted, Maysen and Jorja went on a great worm hunt. I don't know how they found so many, but apparently they are good at finding them in the back yard under the leaves. They put 25 or 30 of them into the garden to help take care of it.

Each of them had their favorite worms...but I don't seem to recall what they named them at the moment.

It was very cute to watch them working together, sifting through the dirt to find their new worm friends and placing them carefully in their new homes.

I believe Jorja is holding "lightning" in this picture....

So one might ask what Preston was doing during all this time. I believe I'll let the pictures do the talking...

About this time we headed in for the tub.... (after getting mud out of Preston's mouth)

In case you can't read Preston's shirt, it says: "Mischief is my business, and business is GOOD!". How fitting!

Remodeling a Groovy Tent Trailer

We bought a 1970's StarCraft tent trailer a few months ago for $500 from some friends of ours. So far we've only taken it out once but I'd like to use it more often.



It sleeps 5 - which is one short for our family, and it's decorated in true 70's style - mustard colors, dark wood, yellow linoleum, etc. A bit too retro for my taste. It needs quite a bit of work mechanically as well. The lift mechanism needs to be redone, as raising the tent up is a real chore, and it's got a 2x4 holding part of the tent to the roof.






Lately I've felt the urge to do some remodeling. We've decided to take out the odd fold-up closet and some of the drawers in order to make a second bench/table/bed combination so that it can sit and sleep our whole family. I have left over wood flooring from the bowling alley we made in the basement and that should make quite an improvement. My Home-EC-major sister-in-law volunteered to help sew some new covers for the benches and beds.






I took two-year-old Preston outside to spend some quality time with tools. We're in the process of dismantling everything so that we can redo the floors, replace the dark wood paneling, and rebuild the cabinets. Preston enjoys taking out screws and putting them in a jar for safekeeping.




Here are some additional pictures of the "before". Stay tuned for some "after" in the near future...



Holy 70's flooring batman!

Preston and Stockton exploring the trailer...

There was a old in-wall cooler in this hole. I plan to replace it with a working mini-fridge. Also seen above is a plank of wood flooring to cover up the sins of a past decade.

These cushions are in really good condition, but I think recovering them will add a really nice touch. It will also help make the place smell better...

When I see an Elefun Fly

Years ago we bought our kids an Elefun - a toy elephant that blows little "butterflies" into the air that you try to catch with a net. The problem with this toy, as most people discover, is that it just doesn't have enough oompf to make the butterflies come out without a little coaxing. Thus, we ended up throwing ours out.

A couple of weeks ago I saw one at a thrift store and decided it would be fun to give it a bit more juice by replacing the batteries with a higher voltage power supply. Preston and I decided to work on that today.

What two year old doesn't like using a screwdriver, playing with batteries, and snipping wires? Well, Preston certainly does...