Fresh Patterns out at stores now!

If you are in the Portland area, I’ve restocked Fabric Depot and Twisted (okay, so Twisted will be restocked sometime this week, but it will be soon!). And I’ve been added to a new store about to open in Belfast Maine! It sounds intriguing, and I’m excited to have my patterns be in the store! Sadly, I can’t remember what the name of it will be, and if thats because I forgot (shame on me!), or if she forgot to tell me in the email I don’t know! I’m sure I’ll find out though, when she re-orders.

So go out and get some! I’m going to be working on embroidering up some dish towels with my new “fifties chickies” on them. When I delivered the order to Fabric Depot I sort of did some shopping too and got a couple yards of some very cool dish cloth material.

Around the little Urban Farm here things are flourishing. The new duck Sammie is-I think-almost done growing. We also think he may in fact be a “he,” and I think I am happy about that. Perhaps there will be some baby mixed-breed ducks next year. Sam and Lou Lou seem to be making friendly overtures, so we’ll see.

The turkey is getting bigger, and its head is getting redder. I don’t think I will get a white bird again next year, they look permanently bedraggled out there in my chicken pen. The young chickens are outside as well, they are in the duckhouse and run, next to the other ladies to get them used to each other, but safe from being pecked to death. I think they need to be a bit larger before I turn them loose.

In the garden, all my five different squash seeds that I potted up in the greenhouse sprouted. Along with some bush beans, marigolds, sunflowers, borage, and corn. I’m pretty excited because most of those seeds have spent at least two years in the back of my refrigerator, and I wasn’t sure they would germinate. and they did, ALL of them. I’m being ruthless with my volunteer sunflowers too, because last year I wasn’t and while I had a very nice sunflower patch, I didn’t have much of anything do well! So this year, I’m pulling them out with my eyes closed, because I hate taking them out!

Gardening!

Hi All!

The weather has been dry for a few days here in normally rainy January, which inspires all us Northwest gardeners to kick the dry mud off our rubber boots and get outside and see whats going on.

And I’m so glad that I did! Last weekend while waiting for dinner to cook (Jonah does the cooking, I do the waiting, its awesome) I started planning this year’s garden. I started with some seed catalogs with pretty pictures, and moved onto veggie garden diagrams. Jonah got into it too, getting excited about the approximately million different varieties of tomatoes a person could grow. He wants a Brandywine, I said as long as the tomatoes actually GROW this year, I don’t care what kind they are! Last year was a sad sad one for gardeners in Oregon. A mere handful of tasteless, pathetic tomatoes.

I got in the garden for a few hours on Thursday, after my wonderful dad and I (hi dad!) installed a new starter in my Subi. It was so pretty outside I almost couldn’t stand it! I mostly just cut things back and threw out random decaying garden art, but it felt GOOD.

Today I got back out there, but this time I was armed with my garden plan that I came up with this morning. I knew what I wanted to move, and where (mostly). It felt great to get a bed cleared out, and everything happy in their new places.

One of the things I am most excited about (and most nervous about) was moving my hops plant. I had planted it two years ago on the trellis that held my espaliered pear trees because I had run out of room elsewhere. It was a stopgap measure, and I was going to move it last spring, but well, once a hops starts growing it doesn’t stop, and it got going before I got around to moving it. So it stayed were it was planted, and grew HUGE, and threatened to take over the pears. It grew from the trellis into the nearby sunflowers, it attacked people as they got out of cars, and it produced three gallon bags worth of hop flowers. It was amazing.

I noticed that had started budding new shoots out of the ground already. So I decided to take the plunge, and dig it up! The roots spread in three feet in all directions. I had to trim it back, I hope the root pruning doesn’t make it too unhappy. Also, some of those roots had budded, so I’ve planted them along the side of the greenhouse in the hopes that they also grow. We’ll see. I just hope I didn’t kill it!

So yeah, I’m really excited for the garden this year. I have the feeling that its gonna be good! Also, teaching an interested and untrained boyfriend in the arts of vegetable maintenance will be fun!

Spring is here in the Northwest

Ready or not, Spring is here. Now, I’ve been ready for about a month, circling my favorite sounding squash, picking just the right type of sweet corn to grow (last year my trial corn was indian corn so that I wouldn’t be disappointed if it didn’t grow, instead I was disappointed that I couldn’t eat it, I had so much!), and planning out the few new bushes I’d add to the yard. Also, drawing up the list of home and garden projects I’d like to complete this year. I’ve come to realize why it took my Dad 28 years to complete his list of projects on their old house! The list keeps growing!

I feel that this year’s warm weather project list is a bit more manageable that previous years. The big one is replacing the kitchen countertops, which I know will mean that I also sand and repaint the cabinets the counters sit on. Thats fine, and really, great, cause they are in bad shape. We would have already done this, but silly Ikea is currently out of the countertops!

There is also the addition I want to put on the henhouse. This will perhaps make it so I can have more chickens (please Brandon? I want a polish and a silkie!) but the real reason is that I am tired of the chickens roosting on top of the henhouse, causing me to have to clean dried chicken poo off it once a week. Ick. If i build a second story, they will have to sleep inside of it!

More water barrels everywhere! Got one started this week, I WILL finish it today! I swear. If I don’t make it down to visit the Saturday Market, that may take up all my free time today.

Keep that lawn I started growing. This one will be hard, I may actually have to learn something about lawn maintenance! Between two dogs and some Doug Firs, its hard in the hot summer months.

And, of course, all the little projects you think up for yourself as the season progresses: canning, brewing beer, and moving plants around. And fun larger projects at my parent’s new house: Building fences, gardening, painting. Its a good thing I love having stuff to do!

Hope you have fun with all your home projects this summer too!
Maggie

Quick update

So I’m supposed to be working, and I guess I am, but I am taking a short break before painting a cabinet orange (yes, it is work, its not for me, but will be freaking awesome when its done) and starting my bookkeeping (ugh, should have started it in January like I ment to, but whats six months…?). The update:

The two remaining ducklings are growing like weeds. One of them died last week due to a accident on my part. I won’t make that mistake again. But at least it didn’t die from being killed by a chicken or a dog, and that would have been MUCH worse than my being an idiot. I’d hate for my dog (or any of his friends) to get a taste for poultry killing. And that upstart Almaletta is much better off not knowing that she can kill baby birdies. Not that she wasn’t trying. I don’t understand that chicken, most of the time. Fortunately, the babies are big enough now that I think she doesn’t feel tough enough to take them on.

We still have darling Opal, who is growing like a weed into a darling little dog. She loves her Marcus, and snuggling, and is trying really hard to be friends with the cats. Who of course, won’t have anything to do with her. Shes learning sit and lay down, with the added bonus that Marcus will now lay down when you tell him to, and not just when you lead his nose down to the ground with a treat. Somehow, we never got past that stage at dog school. He is a stubborn animal.

The veggie garden is freaking exploding. The squash are threatening to send runners out into the street, and damn the cars. We had to thin them last week, three of each kind was to many. Now with just two of each (four kinds), you can’t even tell they were ever thinned. Brandon red up of hand pollinating the flowers, and while you feel kinda dirty doing it, it will ensure pollination. We think we have a lack of bees out here. We briefly considered urban beekeeping, but decided that was a hobby we aren’t quite ready for as yet. Instead, we are going to construct some Mason bee houses, and hope to get some to move in. If that doesn’t work, we will be buying some in the winter to release in the spring. Mason bees are awesome, google them and find out! You may want your own too.

Okay, that’s all here at the kearns/wilkinson urban farm for now!

Sunny Afternoon in the Vortex

These pictures were taken last Thursday when it was about 85 outside. It was beautiful, and so I let the animals loose on the yard while I puttered about. 85 and sunny is perfect yard puttering weather dontcha know! Well, they were having so much fun I thought I’d take some pictures! Plus, I haven’t posted any pictures of the ducklings in a while. They are now very much ducks. We will have to start clipping their wings soon, cause they are trying to fly!

So here’s a picture of the completed duck run, attached to the duckhouse. The top of the duckrun comes off, so you can reach down inside to get the water or bird you want. And yep, theres a little shelf with a long wooden planter box on top. Its filled with zinnias, two climbing morning glories (red and pink, I think), and nasturtiums. They are high enough that they should climb all over that chicken coop, but out of reach of the destructive chickens. They’ve already climbed about a foot and a half!

Marcus and the ducklings hanging out in the grass. Marco has his bone, and his sun, and he is a happy black dog. I don’t know why, but black dogs sure like soaking up the sun. You can see those ducklings still have no fear of him, although they sure run fast enough away from us when its time to go back into the duckhouse!

Here they are playing in their water bowl. Its a stand in until I get their swimming pool, they sold out at Freddies over the weekend. They love running through it, its as close as they get to swimming, I guess. Marcus likes drinking it, gross dog.

Prudence is my champion dirt wallower. She is forever taking dust baths. Here she is flinging the dirt up around her, then she settles down for a nap in the sun.

Some Spraxis, my new favorite spring bulb. Do yourselves a favor and go out and buy them. They are so pretty, and they spread pretty well. I got these at the freaking dollar store last year, planted them figuring what the heck-they were a dollar- and now I wish I had bought them out. You can find them in the bulb section at Home Depot, but they aren’t a dollar! These are the ones I planted last year by the curb, where everyone else gets to enjoy them. Come to think of it, the ones I bought this year (must. have. more.) are all planted out by the sidewalk…

A chicken’s eye view of the house. You can see I got the wooden shades back out a bit early, its hot out! And the porch is looking very inviting for sitting and drinking on…

And this picture pretty much sums up the day:

Woo hoo its sunny and nice outside!
Maggie

Everything is growing…

The weather has been sort of horrible for the last week. The last nice day was Thursday, and today is Thursday, so yes, it has been a week. Saturday Market wasn’t fun at all, what with the wind, rain, and hail. I still went knowing what to expect, hoping it would be different. And well, there were moments of sun, quickly followed by more wind, and rain. And they always happened together! My booth did get blown around, A bunch of stuff fell on the ground and two things broke, which made me a bit less than happy. I am really not to pleased with my spot this year. We have a mini allocation happening on Saturday, and I may do it because of the one spot I do want should be open for it, but its not yet because the vendor who is supposed to vacate it hasn’t signed out of it yet, even though he should have a week ago! So I don’t really know what is going on. Anyways, either way, I’d still be in the rain and getting blown around whenever the weather felt like it. And it seems to have it in for us this year! But this weekend is supposed to be sunny and seventy-five, so maybe it will make up for itself!

The title of this post is everything is growing, not bitching about the market, so I guess I should get back on track. The ducklings are getting huge. Both of them hang over your hands now when you pick them up and they are squirmy! Lou is still alot bigger than Mil, and we are still not sure if Mil is younger or just smaller. Martha needs to get back in with the other girls, cause we need her dog crate for these babies!

Martha’s head is healing up. The scary green skin (which i am 99 percent sure was just bruising now) is gone, its pink again, no more scabs and feathers are peeking out. She is also getting alot squirmier, I think that she is tired of me poking at her head, so she must be feeling better. Also, the other girls seem to be a bit more accepting of her again. She seems to miss the Coop. And I know Brandon misses having his greenhouse all to himself. He says its got a bad chicken infestation. I guess it only takes one chicken to create an infestation! I know what he means though, Martha makes her presence known. She bawks, she jumps, and she knocks things over, and well, she smells. It doesn’t take much to make a tiny space like that seem tinier.

And the plants are growing. They don’t seem to mind the constant rain, I think thats what they are going for. There are tiny sunflower seedlings coming up, and I found a nasturtium start by the front door. If it clears off at all I may just head out there and plant some more today. I’ve been slowing fencing off the plant beds to keep those chickens out (so far only Martha has outsmarted the fence, I wish I could see her doing it) so the plants they love to dig up will have a chance to grow without dirt getting dug out from under them, or kicked over them. I think they will recover in a week or so and get back up to speed.

I sent my catalog and samples off to Xcidia yesterday. They are the company of sort-of sales reps that are working with stores in Japan. They think that my jewelry is a good candidate for them to try showing around to their established contacts, and I hope (cross your fingers) that it goes over well. I’d love a reason to go to Japan for business…

And last but not least, my website is growing. I spend two whole days working on the shopping cart for the page, which involves entering information into a cart program and building each item kind of individually. And then pasting web code into your own page, which I’ve never done before but it went kind of smoothly for all of that. Today I will be going over the text on the page and make sure everything is current, and coherent, and then I just need to get my brother over here to upload it onto the net, cause I still don’t know how to do that.

Okay, well, I should go start my day!
Maggie

Greenhouse pictures finally!

Here are the pictures of the finished (in the done being made sense, not the we’ll never stop puttering around doing little things to it sense) greenhouse!

A little bit of greenhouse background first: We mostly built the greenhouse last September, out of gathered free Craigslist windows and bought recycled windows from the Rebuilding Center. It sat all winter unpainted, with just the plastic roof on top, and a whole bunch of ways for cold, cold air to get in. Needless to say, the somewhat tender plants we stuck in there to protect for the winter didn’t really make it, although, we didn’t really expect them to, we just hoped we’d get lucky.

So this February we had that wonderful two week period of warm, sunny days and we got REALLY excited about Spring. REALLY. We started planning the seeds we would plant and we realized that we needed (and wanted) to finish off that darn greenhouse if we were going to be able to start anything. We thought it wouldn’t take to much to finish, hey, just fill in those cracks and slap some paint on it, who needs it to be nice? Wow, were we wrong. We scraped the wood, caulked the seams, primed, and painted the thing, three different colors. Brandon spent a whole day building shelves, and another building the triangle wingy things on either side of the top of the greenhouse, they open for when its really hot outside. It was worth it. It is one pretty greenhouse.

So here is a picture of the greenhouse from the left side of the yard, kind of by the front deck. The roof extends over to meet the Coop’s roof, so there is a protected walkway between the two. That’s the worm bin in front of the greenhouse, we call them the Borg. They are all named Locutis (that is spelled wrong, and for all you not-nerds, is the name Picard was given when he was made into a borg.). We’ve also fenced off all the veggie garden to keep the chicken mafia out of the baby veggies we will be planting. Those chickens will destroy anything that’s tiny.

And this here is the exact front of the greenhouse, the door is that red painted window. You can kind of see Brandon’s orange chair in there, he likes to sit out there and watch the world, as I call it, I’m not real sure what he’s doing but I let him do it anyway, and try not to bug him to much when he heads out there. It’s kind of his room here in the house, I’ve got my studio, he’s got a greenhouse.A view from the front of the yard. You can kinda see some of the starts coming up, and the interior. He picked the sunny yellow, and we agreed on the robin’s egg blue. He wanted it bright and happy in there, and it really is.
A view from the street, this would be before the chicken fence was installed around the veg bed. Just to give you an idea of the size, its a nine by nine square, and the Coop is five by seven.
Through the door of the greenhouse. Brandon got a pink jasmine to climb up the trellis, it smells great. And that cool hanging house plant. You can see we’ve got a place to hang all our tools along the back wall. It makes finding things really easy.
Another corner of the greenhouse. Those are my Fuchsia bushes to the right there, its not quite warm enough at night for me to plant them out back yet. I’m planning on sneaking a few more of them into the yard this year, even though Brandon’s not a huge fan of them. I LOVE them, I can never get enough, and yes, I know that’s kinda weird to say.
Here is Brandon’s project from last Saturday. We call it a hotbox, and yes, I know that most of the rest of the world refers to something entirely different when they say that word. Thank you Peter, for pointing that out. Its got a heat lamp in the top of it, and no, it hasn’t melted the plastic or burned the place down yet. It stays about ten degrees warmer than the greenhouse, and the greenhouse is about ten degrees warmer than the outside world. Pretty neat, huh? We’ve got Peppers that will hopefully start coming up in a few days in there.

And last but not least, the Veggie bed. It’s mostly fava beans and clover right now, but they will get dug in soon for the snow and snap pea starts that are over an inch tall right now. We just planted bunching onions and leeks down at the far end on Friday.So that’s the greenhouse. I think I’ll wait until things get really going before I blog about the rest of the yard, but lets just say that I am pretty darn excited about this year in the garden. Its the third year, when alot of things really start to take off. And we’ve got alot of plans, and hopefully the Chicken Mafia (as I have recently taken to calling them, cause they destroy anything in their way in their constant quest to get what they want) will allow them to come to fruition. Happy gardening Folks!

Spring is in the air

And it is so horrible! Well, horrible in the way that I need to get work done in my studio and get my booth ready for the upcoming Saturday Market, which seems pretty unimportant when it is 60 degrees outside and sunny, and the chickens are scratching in the yard, and the dog is snoozing in the sun under the tree (getting fresh sap on is fur, the sap is dropping from the trees). I NEED to be in the yard with such weather going on! I NEED to enjoy it before the rain comes! Which may be today, the clouds haven’t left yet like they have every other morning this week.

So I spent yesterday priming the greenhouse. Brandon got this awesome primer that also works as a mask on windows! So you just glop it all over the edges of the window glass and on the woodwork, and then paint your paint, not worrying about the glass, and then when you are done, presto! score where the glass meets the frame and peal the rubbery primer right off with the paint! The windows are clean, and no scraping needed. Sounds almost to good to be true, but Brandon swears that it works, and it ain’t cheep, so it better. But I’d rather spend some money on something that works than tape all the windows (which never works) or (gasp!) cut in around all those windows. And I am a pretty good cutter, but damn, that is alot of cutting.

Last weekend I mentioned the bathtub for the bamboo, it worked really well, and looks pretty good until the chickens climb in and stir all the dirt up and uproot the little strawberries planted there. I put up a little edging fence yesterday and that seems to be confounding them for now. Brandon also spent Sunday building shelves in the Greenhouse, and I have to say, they look really good. There are two and a half deep shelves for full flats of seedlings, and then a narrow, five inch deep shelf that runs around about five feet off the ground for smaller pots or radios or beer or whatever you need to set down in the greenhouse. There is also a row of nails for hanging up tools. Its looking like a proper place to grow plants!

We think we will paint the inside of the greenhouse a bright yellow, and the outside a robin’s egg blue, with a red door to match all other red doors in our complex. Thats what one neighbor called our house the other day. He said we had quite the self sustaining complex going, and I said, well, thats kinda the idea, except its not self sustaining, its just more fun and probably more expensive than just buying all that food at the store. But I digress, red doors. We were going to paint it to match the house and chicken coop, but we decided that it would be more fun to introduce more colors to the yard.

I hope I get some freaking pictures up soon, for some reason that has been really hard for me lately! Perhaps when a few more things decide to start blooming. The Daffies are so freaking close, if it wasn’t going to rain I think they’d get there by Sunday, but the clouds will make then less interested in blooming. I can’t wait for fresh cut flowers.

I’ve decided that I need to have fresh flowers in the house at all times. I think I will stick with this non-new year’s resolution, because it is so easy. Last week in a fit of needing flowers now I bought a cheep bouquet at Trader Joes, and it was easily the best thing I bought there (and I love their food!). A week later and the three bouquets I made out of that one are still going strong, and still making me happy. So if thats all it takes to make me smile, I will buy flowers the rest of the year when mine aren’t blooming to be picked. This is one kick ass resolution, and one I know is not original, because I have several friends who always have pretty bouquets, and one of them is NOT a gardener.

I love Blog ramblings, they are the best. I checked out several garden blogs today, and I even found a few from the northwest! I may even add them to my own list of blogs I love, because I am so garden crazy right now its about all I can think about.

Gotta go and get some more coffee, happy almost spring!

I love being a Homeowner

I’m proud of myself right now. This blog is a few days late (aren’t they usually?) because on Wednesday I found and fixed the leak! And it is really fixed. The little leak indicator triangle is officially still.

I almost gave up for a few days. My legs were TIRED. There is really nothing harder on a girl’s hips than the constant up and down off her knees and into and out of holes. I mean, they complained ALOT about each and every move I made that day. But the weather was still good, and I still believed the forecast that we would soon be living under clouds and rain, and I just can’t bring myself to dig in that sort of weather. So after a delightful morning of coffee and donuts and checking out the progress on my friend’s downtown jewelry studio (its pretty great, and makes me sorta jealous in a I wish I had that much space, but I am so very happy working at home sort of way) I decided to get back into that damn trench and keep going.

At this point, the pipe had moved to about three feet down. Why the people who installed the pipe originally felt this was a good idea, making the pipe deeper here than over by the house I will never know. But it is alot harder to get to down there. I extended the trench by another three feet and was about to give up for the day when I hit water. Literally. I didn’t hit the pipe, I hit the tiny underground stream the pipe had created. I was so freaking excited, and nowhere near the pipe. I called Brandon, and discovered to my eternal elation that he was about a minute from the house. Just as my arms were about to give up, a fresh pair showed up!

We had to dig out another two feet, but man, it was a pretty big leak. I shut the water off as soon as I found it, which was a pretty good idea because it was going pretty fast. I would have been wading in muck, and that makes cleaning off a pipe pretty darn hard.

It turns out, that the leak was at the next place that two pipes connected. After I had cut out the bad section and replaced it I looked closer at the leaking part. I just kinda tugged at the two pieces of pipe, and one of them slid out of the connector like it had never even been glued. I poked at it a bit, and it seems like it may have had glue at one point, but it had washed away. I could see some of it still on the inside of the connector, but that was it, it was almost totally clean. My only guess is that they had let the glue set up to much before connecting the pipes so it didn’t bond properly, or heck, never put it on at all. But if they had never put it on, then the leak would have shown up alot sooner. I guess I’ll never know.

All in all, repairing this leak cost me about fourteen dollars. Not bad right? It also cost me about twenty hours of digging, which is I suppose the expensive part if we had had to hire someone. But the weird thing is that I don’t really mind all the time spent. I learned something new, how to fix an underground water leak, which is a pretty amazing thing. When I first learned we had a leak I was kinda frozen in terror. All I could think was how am I going to pay for this? How am I going to find the leak? Where do the pipes even run? Under the Coop? The Greenhouse? The Deck? And I was horrified. I did not know what to do. Now that I have done this, it feels amazing. I rock!

And I think that is one of the best things about being a Homeowner. Sure, its pretty great that you can paint the walls, or refinish the floors and hang up as many things as you want on your walls cause they are your walls and who cares if you put holes in them. But what is really great is having a problem that seems just life-suckingly awful, and then discovering that you can take care of it. You have the power and ability to fix it. That is a great feeling. Its also pretty fun to tell people what you just did and have them oh and ah at your amazing homeowner prowess. But the best part is feeling like you can take care of things, you don’t need to hire a plumber to fix your leak, or an electrician to run a new outlet (thanks dad, I guess I didn’t really do that one to much), or a contractor to build your chicken coop and greenhouse. You just need yourself, and your family and friends who all combined have the skill or at least strength to help you see it through.

If any of that didn’t make sense, I am trying to write this while world war two is being fought behind me, Brandon is playing Call of Duty 2. I think I may have some idea of what war reporters go through trying to write while bombs are being dropped all around you. Except that I don’t have that sense of terror and danger around me, just alot of noise. But it is distracting, just the same!

Today was another beautiful day, I am hopeful that the rain never returns and we have a sunny, sunny spring that brings lots of people down to the Saturday Market, which starts next weekend. I haven’t gotten anything done for it yet, but well, here’s hoping!

We went to Hippo Hardware today and scored a rusty dingy clawfootless clawfoot bathtub to house our bamboo. We got it for $25, for which I have Iris to thank, I mentioned her bathtub score to the plumbing guy and he gave us the same price. We also hit the Rebuilding center and got some odds and ends for the greenhouse shelves that Brandon will be building soon. The tub looks pretty good over there by the fence, full of baby bamboo. We have high hopes for those plants, they should be pretty darn happy in their new home, what with all the dirt being nice and broken up and easy to run their little runners through. I know I’m being silly thinking that all this yard stuff we are doing now will make us have less to do later in the year. Because I like doing things in the yard, I can putter around the garden for hours without any agenda at all! This is just freeing me up for more fun projects later.

Alright I think that I may need to make brownies now, and finish my book. Toodles!

Greenhouse in Progress

Bah! I’ve been meaning to write this blog for like two weeks now! So now it will be a shorter than it was supposed to be before blog, cause I don’t remember what we did anymore. Well, that’s not it, I’m just less excited about it now cause its been so long.

Anyways, in mid September we started building our greenhouse in the front yard. Our front yard is like everyone else’s backyard. Its the bigger yard, and it gets all the sun. So that is were everything is. The greenhouse is a nine by nine foot box covered in old glass windows. It will be topped with clear corrugated plastic this week sometime, we just got it yesterday. So these pictures are of it before the roof is installed!

First picture, the frame: we built this puppy on the last hot Sunday we had in September. It was freaking hot. It kinda sucked.

So that’s the frame and it turns out in that photo it already has some of the windows put up. Whadda ya know. The next picture was of Brandon hanging the door, I somehow deleted the picture and can’t find it anymore so sorry about that. The door, that not two weeks later he puts a hole in with his slingshot that he got for his birthday, attempting to hit a squirrel. I just want to point out that I TOLD him that he was going to hit the greenhouse, and not the squirrel. I can sometimes see the future. The crazy thing is that it doesn’t break the glass, it just puts tiny bullet holes in it. So now our greenhouse looks like it belongs in NE Portland.

And here are just some more pictures of the yard in various stages of disaray with the windows everywhere.


The roof of the greenhouse will overlap with the chicken coop so that there is a covered area between the two buildings. It will make egg getting a little easier. Okay! I’ve got to go eat, and I got this here post finally finished! whew!