As I said before, we grew a bunch of veggie plants up from heirloom seeds we got from Baker Creek Seeds. While most of the flower seeds we got from them didn’t do much, the veggies are flourishing. I was really scared that all of the tomatoes weren’t going to survive the chilly weather we had right after we transplanted them into the ground. They stalled for what seems like forever! My boss told me that they’d pick up after it got really hot and sunny for a few days, and she was totally right.

Here's one of our tomato plants.

The squash is getting huge!

Peas!

My borage has exploded! I need to figure out what to do with it.

We ended up supplementing our heirloom plants with a few from the local hardware store, since our hot peppers didn’t seem to be faring too well and I wanted some more herb varieties.

Onions

This thyme smells delicious.

Dill

We’ve also got some volunteer oregano from last year that’s come back with a vengeance, some mint that doesn’t taste/smell very minty (weird), and a few other goodies. In case you’re craving some full-yard shots, here you go (ignore the weeds!):

Here's the coldframe that Kevin built to act as a greenhouse for the seedlings to get them ready to plant.

And here are the seedlings themselves! I'm a proud seed mama.

They're getting so big! Almost ready to go in the ground!

We’re going to have a pretty giant garden this year, including a very large plot dedicated almost entirely to herbs. My oregano and mint from my little herb plot last year actually (surprisingly) came back this year, which is a little magical to me. Nature amazes me.

What are you planting this year?

Here you can see the dual vegetable garden areas on either side of the sidewalk leading down to the garage/alley. We have effectively more than doubled our plot from last year.

Here's Kevin laying down the landscaping fabric between one of the veggie garden plots and the area where I'll have my herb garden (it will be epic). Landscaping fabric is awesome, and Menards just happened to have it on sale this weekend.

One of the trails laid with landscaping fabric, and lined with Purington Pavers, historic bricks and the same kind that several streets in Iowa City are paved with.

The first batch of gravel has been spread. It'll take one or two more loads to get the coverage we want, although I don't think we can finish the gravel paths until the fountain pond thing is completed.

This is not a firepit! It's a planter that looks like a firepit, and which will be dismantled and replaced with (hopefully) one of those whiskey half-cask planters, if I can find one that isn't $40.

Next post: Revenge of the Seedlings!

We weren’t going to be so naive this year, so we ended up ordering heirloom seeds from Baker Creek Seed Company, a business specializing in heirloom seeds out of Missouri. We definitely wanted to go heirloom, since we’re not into Frankenfoods and we like doing things the old-fashioned way.

We ended up ordering a metric ton of seeds (after teasing our friend JoAnn about the amount she wanted, we ordered at least 25% MORE than she did), and last weekend we embarked on the process of sprouting the little bastards. We had no idea what we were doing, but we went to Menards and bought a bunch of setups for growing seedlings, including peat pellets and little biodegradable pots, and we got to work winging it. It’s less than a full week later, and as you can see, we’ve already got growth!

Too bad Mother Nature is taunting our progress.

Sad face.

Catnip blooms!

Herb garden:

Oregano

Rosemary

Chives

Sugar snap peas, with their viny fingers twisting around some fencing

One of several tomato varieties

And veggies!

Squash

My poor dead watermelon

Jalapenos, nrom nrom nrom

The watermelon seems to have been the only casualty in the garden so far, although I was afraid of losing my squash on a few occasions. The veggie garden doesn’t get as much sun as it probably should, so the plants are a little shorter than they might be otherwise, but they still seem to be thriving. I’ve noticed a few nibbles on the jalapeno leaves, and I suspect the bunnies in the neighborhood are trying to infiltrate the fence. My dear friend JoAnn gave me a haircut on the back patio last night, and I took all of the cut hair (there was A LOT, man) and tucked it in close to the outside of the fence to keep the rabbits away.

Kevin sweeping up the back sidewalk

Our pile of apple wood (great for grilling!)

The sidewalk, that I edged by hand with a hook knife

Our vegetable garden plot, about 4'x25'

Ahh, tulips

I promise to get some more current photos of the progress tonight.

This is very exciting! Ever since reading my friend Alice’s LJ posts about visiting her friend Alia and having fresh eggs around, I’ve been dreaming of having a few in my backyard. Fresh eggs! Obviously, we wouldn’t be butchering them ever, and we’d only keep enough to have eggs to eat and share, may three or four. But oh, fresh eggs!

I’ve emailed the city councilman who brought the idea up at the meeting, to see what the process needs to be to approach the board, and also to see if he could put me in contact with the other citizens who brought it up to him, to see if we could form some sort of coalition or something. Self-sustainability is on the horizon, and this would be a big, huge step in that direction.

So, Madison and Portland friends, please let me know if you have any good resources about how your cities implemented their ordinances regarding urban chicken-keeping. I’ll be googling, but if you have any tips on where to look, I’m all ears.

Pictures taken by Alice in Portland, OR.

Kevin has been busy working on the upstairs bathroom, with a lot of assistance from our friend Mark, who has his own handyman business in town. (If you need stuff done to your house and you live within 30 minutes of Iowa City, use him! He’s good!) On Monday night, the two of them got the new subflooring laid in the bathroom, and last night they were able to get all of the concreteboard for the floor cut to fit, spread some wet concrete on the subfloor, and screwed the concreteboard in place. This will allow us to lay tile and not have to worry about moisture seeping down to the subflooring and causing it to rot. Very important, indeed.

While they worked upstairs, I was downstairs painting the basement walls bright white, a welcome change from the ancient antique white that had been on the walls before, and through the mold fiasco had become stained black in places. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of this yet. Mark’s girlfriend Angela was a big help on Monday night, too, and we knocked out most of the basement walls that evening. It’ll take a few coats to cover everything up, but it’s already starting to look great. I’ll take pictures for comparison tonight.

The subflooring has been laid

Lots of screws mean no squeaking floors

Kevin's ready for a bath

Mortaring the floor

Screwing down the concreteboard

Ready to tile!

On the docket for tonight for the boys is to hang the concreteboard for the tub surround and hopefully start tiling that with the white subway tile. I’ll be busy putting another coat of paint on the walls in the basement and finishing up getting the kitchen cleaned up. I’d like to bring carloads of kitchen items over and get it completely moved this week, so that I can start making dinner at night while we work on the house. We’ve been eating out every night, and it’s getting to be ridiculously expensive, and homemade food will be a nice change.

After spending some time in a gardener friend’s backyard, and after randomly finding a picture in the Saucydwellings community on Livejournal that made my heart stop momentarily, I’ve decided that our back patio MUST have a pergola.

It’s a little embarrassing that I never really knew what these things were called, and instead always referred to them as “arbors”. I’ve since learned that arbors are very close to pergolas, just much smaller and not really functional beyond letting viney things grow up them. I’ve since been converted over into knowing and loving them. Here are a few examples of what I’ve got in mind for when we’re able to build one out back:

If everything goes as planned, Kevin should be closing on the house today. How exciting! The picture above is a pretty old one, and one that appears with the house’s listing on the city property assessor’s website. I feel kind of creepy taking pictures of it before we actually take possession of it, so until then, this will have to do.

Over the weekend, I got my first really great look at the innards of the house, and I was really relieved to find that it’s got great bones, and there’s tons of potential. Don’t get me wrong, even if there weren’t I would have painstakingly polished that turd. Seeing all of the things that can be done to it was very exciting, though. I look forward to cataloging all of the ideas that I’ve got for it here.

Yesterday, we let the landlord know that we’ll be out soon because of the house purchase. Kevin let him know that we’d be out by the first of the new year, which was a bit further away than I thought we’d been planning (I was hoping to move by the end of November so that we wouldn’t end up with a double housing payment, but I’m sure we can manage). Telling the landlord is just one more little way that this is becoming a real thing. It’s like, “Hey, there’s no going back now. We’ve given notice to the landlord!” Amazing. We also spent a good amount of time at Menards and Home Depot over the weekend, daydreaming and figuring things out. Kevin also went ahead and bought a heater for the garage so that he’ll be able to get things done out there over the winter (had to buy it now, before the closing, because the sale price was too good to pass up).