Catching up with Pictures

Except for this sentence, this is a wordless post of what we've been doing since my last post.

Distracted from Sewing

We went to JA's a couple weeks ago and bought some fabric on sale - for sheets!  It's 90-inch wide cotton quilt backing in navy blue, and we bought eight yards for about $40, which is a really good deal!  After bringing it home, I had to cut the length in half so I could zigzag the cut ends and launder it.  Somehow, eight yards of double-wide fabric does not fit in my washing machine all at one time.

I finally got both pieces of fabric laundered three times each.  So far, I have managed to iron around the edge of one piece of fabric and fold it up neatly.  After I iron and fold the other piece, I will inquire about cutting the fabric on the floor of my friend's neighborhood clubhouse, as we did for the red sheets (click here to see).

It has taken some time, but we have also managed to put in a garden.  In addition to two raised beds that DH built last year, we bought and installed a recycle lumber frame, which is shorter and wider than the first two beds.

While weeding the garden beds, I found some chickweed that DH guarantees to be chemical-free - because the whole garden area of the yard has never been sprayed for weeds.  I just finished drinking an apple pie smoothie that I made with chickweed instead of spinach (click here for the recipe).

Besides the normal plants - tomatoes and lettuce (actually a salad mix) - we also put in some squash and zucchini!  There will be filler plants, too, such as carrots and onions.  I plan to sow some marigold seeds to help deter bugs.  The stevia plant and the sweet potato vine were moved, since we had to allow for rotating certain crops.

We placed the home-made cover over the lettuce, and realized that it is worse for the wear.  Basically, we will have to make a new fabric cover for it.

Also, DH - who is very tall - ran right into a bird feeder in our yard.  He was so ticked off that he pulled that sucker! out and you will see it on the ground by the fence.

My fern "moved house" from the original cheap plastic container to a decorative pot I found while shopping one day.

Here are some pictures of our garden:

Spring in Florida - Pictorial

Spring in Florida means orange blossoms.  Oh, they smell so good!

Spring in Florida also means new growth:

Catching up to my Shadow -or- what we did to the garden

I was such a blogging slacker the first part of this year, and it seems that I have much catching up to do.

In the middle of July, we added top soil and cow manure to the garden.  We also added diatomacious earth (DE), and hydrated lime, but it didn't seem to help much.

By the end of July, it got so hot out that the garden seemed to be dying off.  We decided to give it a rest, so we tore out the tomato plants and anything else that was failing in the heat.  Really, why not just give it a rest for a while?

We are hoping that the sun will "cook" the garden so we can start fresh in September.  Also, we put together a tumbling compost bin, and have been adding to it almost every day.

Click on the picture below to enter the garden picture album at mid-July, and proceed to the following pictures to get a chronological view.

Busy in the Garden

We got a good start to pulling dead leaves from the tomato plants, and we pulled out the old lettuce, radish, and onion plants.  Then we filled in the garden with four bags of new dirt and layered in a bag of cow manure and some hydrated lime.  As you can see, the back yard needs to be mowed - again! - because it's actually been raining here almost every day:

Under the shade canopy, you can see that three pepper plants and a stevia plant survived the clean-up:


Here are two sweet potato vines that we transplanted from water cups over the kitchen sink:

We have cooked sweet potato leaves in a stir-fry, and they get gummy like okra, although they are supposed to be very nutritious.  I suppose we will have to try that again if these vines grow well in our garden.

I have a friend who has started some seeds from a loquat tree.  Once we figure out where to put one in our yard, we will adopt one of her plants.  I prefer to grow plants that can be eaten.  I'm all for Free Food!

Blogger Returns with Drawing for a Prize!

I am sorry I haven't posted lately.  We sold a house, bought a house, and moved in September and October last year.  That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!  Meanwhile, my sewing mojo ran away in the Winter and came back in the Spring.

Eating healthy food is always a priority with us, and we started a garden in the Spring.  Making smoothies and fruit slushes has been an on-again-off-again thing, and we recently got back to making green smoothies.

I promise to post more often on my blog.  I also plan to post some sewing tutorials occasionally.

I want to celebrate my 100th blog post by giving away some awesome soap that we buy locally.  Here's a link to the creator of these lovely soaps.  Here is a picture of the prize soap collection, which I selected just for my readers:

 Here's how to enter in the drawing for these awesome soaps:

1. Tell me in a comment on my blog that you want to enter in the drawing (only USA destinations please).
2. Include your email address in your comment, and please write it the way you say it.  Use the words "at" and "dot" instead of the symbols if you want your entry to be included in the drawing.
3. One entry per email address with the following exception:
4. Answer these questions to get one additional entry per email address:

• Have you ever used a sewing machine?
• What was the last thing you sewed or mended using a sewing machine?
• What is your current sewing skill level?

The drawing will be done by random number generator at Noon on Sunday, June 19, 2011 (East coast of USA), so enter by Saturday, June 18.

Good luck!

Post 99

I have not posted in a while because of moving and other stuff.  I plan to post more in the near future.

The most recent news is that we have a garden, and I hope to tell you more about it soon:

Garden

My next blog post will be my one-hundredth blog post, and I will be drawing names to give away a prize related to natural health.  Come back soon to find out what it will be!