Lost Art of Domesticity

Yay! We get to play outside in the dirt!!!! (I mean soil, sorry Professor)

Here are the beginnings of a fruitful summer! Or should I say a "vegetable" summer. I've set up my workshop right outside my back door complete with all the tools you could possibly think of to grow a successful garden. I probably really only need three of the collection I have. Funny thing, once you put everything in one place you see how many clippers you actually have!

Got my bird seed, watering can, fertilizer, a place to mix soil., a sun hat...hey, where's the all important sunscreen? Not to self: Buy Sunscreen.

Garden Loom

Saw a cool magazine "Backyard Crafts" and it featured a Garden Loom. It was much larger than mine but I decided to use what I had instead of building one. We've had this framed, I don't know exactly what it was, thing in our restaurant just because it was cute. It had wire mesh in the middle. So I got to thinking, let's remove the wire mesh and run the war threads along the back of it for weaving...or is that weft. I always forget. So I took the wire off and replaced it with a bunch of tiny nails along the back top and bottom and used yarn I had won at a fiber show to string it. Went on a walk, picked up a bunch of odds and ends and started weaving! What fun. Hope the guests have fun with it as well.

Mom helped and here she is, next to our beautiful creation!

Now for the Square Foot Garden. I can't believe how hard it was to find vermiculite. There are so many confused ideas out there about this great material. When I was taking horticulture classes I was warned to keep it moistened down because the airborne dust can get into your lungs. That was it. I searched the internet high and low to make sure it was okay to use and like everything else it is questionable. I figure it couldn't hurt me any more than airborne peat moss and compost so I went ahead with it. Don't like the white perlite that everyone was telling me to use instead.

So we will mix one part peat with one part vermiculite and a one part mixture of five to six different composts! How fun. Will load pics when we are done! Oh yes, the other questionable issue was using pressurized treated wood for the frame. Again, after much research, we went for it. Mel Bartholomew, creator of SFG, has used treated lumber for, I don't know, 60 years?!! And he looks great!