Exterior progress, and priming for a start on the interior

The garden is chugging along! We're gathering notes on improvements that we want to make, and are planning for the fall season and for next spring. A few more raised beds, a ground plot, and a greenhouse are all planned for the future!

We're starting to get some small fruits of our labor, but the late start due to a late freeze, and the drip irrigation not being installed until the end of May led to a late harvest. We're hoping to get a bit more out of the garden before the heat kills everything.

On the inside, we're still in a holding pattern, waiting for funding and time to do some more work. We're looking to start with re-drywalling the entryway and dining room (and checking for any termite damage), and then getting new trim up in the living area. We're beginning to formulate a kitchen remodel plan, but don't know exactly when that will happen. Perhaps next spring?

I've been a bit busy over the last few weeks fixing some plumbing issues. The faucet had started leaking in the master bath, and so I had to replace it. As part of that, I needed to replace the drain pipe as well. Upon further investigation, I realized that I needed to replace all of the drain under the sink, all the way to the wall!

Here are a few tips from that experience:

• There is ALWAYS a proper pipe for the thing you need to do... don't compromise and silicone things together (this is why I decided to replace the whole thing... there was a pretty sketchy silicone job on one of the joints)
• Avoid rubber adapters like the plague. If you need to use a flexible line, make sure it's the same diameter at both ends. 
• Also, avoid vinyl flex line... It's practically impossible to get a watertight seal!
• Plumber's putty makes a better seal than silicone, in my experience. The first run-through, the silicone didn't adhere to the drain nor the sink. The second run-through had no leaks using plumber's putty
• Assemble the entire thing outside the sink before trying to install it. You'll find so many issues doing that.
• Get a pile of towels and a bucket or two... water will leak, and it will soak into the cabinet.
• There is a right direction and a wrong direction for the little plastic O-rings between the pipes. If you get it right, it's watertight. If you get it wrong, you can tighten it to Hulk-like tightness, and it will still leak.

One of the big outdoor things that needs to happen ASAP is a trellis structure between the raised beds. Currently everything is growing on the ground, and while that is OK, it would be so much nicer to have the cucumbers, squash, beans, and tomatoes growing up rather than out.

To-Do List for this summer: Indoors becomes a priority again

As of early this year, we had put a hold on major indoor projects, because the outdoor projects needed to be finished before the summer heat took hold. Now that we have raised beds, drip irrigation, no giant pile of branches next to the patio, and producing blackberry bushes, we can focus more on the interior work. The only major exception is a sun shade that needs to be installed over the tomatoes, but that will be 30 minutes' worth of work.

The interior work will consist of a few major projects and a bunch of minor ones. The major projects are
1) entryway/sitting room remodel - The project is almost done in the entryway, but I am not entirely happy with the results. I had bought the incorrect thickness drywall, and it doesn't look quite right. Since we are tearing out the drywall in the sitting room anyway, we may as well tear out the small parts that were installed incorrectly and redo those as well. Once all of that is torn out, I'll take stock of any additional termite damage, fiberglass insulation that needs replaced, and electrical rerouting to be done before closing the walls back up and painting them. Further, there is still a small piece of footer that needs to be removed in the new entryway opening, and a row of wood flooring needs to be added to cover the hole.

2) Trim - Since we tore out the wood paneling, much of the baseboards and the trim went along with it. This needs to be remedied, and will be replaced after the entryway project

3) Cozy Room Fan - I hated that fan so much that I tore it out before having all the materials needed to replace it. We have a new fan, but I want to rewire the outlet to have independent fan and light switches. This will be a relatively minor project, but will involve traipsing around the attic for an afternoon.

4) Mantle - Ever since we ripped out the old mantle, we've been looking for a new one. We'll look to find something to serve as a mantle this summer, and install it once we find it.

5) Paint and resurface various pieces of furniture - Lauren's main solo project this summer is painting and resurfacing a few chairs and cabinets that she has found at sales and flea markets.

Beyond the main projects, we also have some side projects involving plumbing, patching holes in walls, replacing light fixtures, massive amounts of portrait/picture/painting hanging, and rehoming some furniture. We are planning for a garage sale in August, so it's hard to find temporary storage room at the moment. We're hoping to remedy some of that, but it would be nice to hang some shelving, clear out the shed/organize it, and find final homes for much of the stuff in the house.

Traveling and not worried about it!

 

Things are growing well, especially now with the drip irrigation system fully installed and set on a timer. The potato cages have made the potatoes into superstars! They've grown about 6 inches even since the above photos were taken! I'm going to add a shovel full of compost to each in order to promote more tuber growth, but I'm super happy with the results in the potato cages! 

 

The rest of the vegetable garden have similarly grown a bit since the photo, but you can see the little black drip irrigation tubes running through all the beds. They're doing a great job keeping the plants green and growing! We've got some small veggies on the way soon! 

First Bell Pepper of the season!

The kitten got into the compost, trying to figure out why we're throwing all the perfectly good food in the yard!

I got the irrigation done just in time, as we've been traveling, and will be traveling for the next 2 weeks! We went to the Indy 500, and Lauren loved the track tenderloin!

The tenderloin is a meal just itself!

Finally Have Time!

After 8 months of law school, I'm finally free!!! Even in the first weekend, we have accomplished a ton! I got a full mowing of the yard, front and back, even under the brush pile! The brush pile is now two smaller "needs chainsaw" piles, and the chainsaw just needs to be cleaned out and refueled to get all the gunky old gas out of it. We had a good, but very fast and hot bonfire to get rid of the rest of the brush, and may have a smaller one to get the remnants of the chainsaw pile later on.

The garden is looking good! We're already getting tomatoes, tomatillos, and eggplant growth, so we'll see if they stay. Only one strawberry plant has survived so far, but I may try to plant some more dormant ones and see if the late planting will survive the heat of the summer. The berry patch is producing like wild! There are hundreds of blackberries ready to start ripening, most from the plants that came with the house! The new raspberries are too young to fruit, but I'm hoping for a good fall season with a few berries from those plants. My transplanted thornless blackberry was cut way back on transplant, and thus only has one flower on it. I'm looking forward to seeing how that one tastes! Finally, blueberries may form on the blueberry bush, but not too many, as the bush is still tiny.

The orchard is looking pretty good. The nectarine tree got scorched by the bonfire, but not badly enough do to permanent damage, just a little leaf wilting. It should be fine within a few days (especially with the rain we've gotten this week). The only tree without ample leaves at this point is the peach tree, but the tree is alive, and must be growing the roots out this year. We may see some foliage by fall, but my hopes of that aren't super high.

I've got an experiment growing in 3 glass cups in the kitchen. I bought the saddest, most wrinkly little organic sweet potato, and am trying to get a root ball growing out of 3 segments of it. I will then plant those segments in a cylinder like the red and yellow potatoes, and see if we can get a good crop this summer! Hopefully, if all these plants grow to fruition, we'll have too much food come July!

Beyond that, we did some major cleaning, inside and out, preparing for a Mother's Day lunch, which was a fun time! We're going to start focusing on the entryway and interior work again very soon! The next step is to tear out the 1/4" drywall that is currently up on the reframed opening in the entryway, and redo it with 1/2" sheets. Further, we'll tear out the bad drywall in the formal dining area, do any termite repairs that are necessary, and redrywall that area with 5/8" drywall.

I also need to spread more fire ant killer, and spray the house for bugs next weekend, so that hopefully we can keep any future insect damage to a minimum. Also, we've been getting some pretty big garden spiders (half dollar size and bigger) up near the house, so spraying for them is a high priority. Thankfully, the frequent mowing has seemed to cut down on the snake problems, so nothing further needs to be done at this point.

We also got a housewarming gift from one of the neighbors, a cover for the attic entry ladder! That looks like it will be a simple install, and hopefully it helps keep the house cooler through the summer here!

All the work last weekend made for some tired people and tired pets!

It was also quite hot! The shade was the only place to get cooled off!

It rained a ton last week! 3-4" worth of much needed rain!

The kitten, however, hasn't quite learned the lesson to look where you leap.

Crunch time! (Or the leaves are all gonna go crunchy in the heat)

I'm currently in week 2 of final exams to end my first year in law school, and things are starting to heat up in North Texas! It was well over 90 degrees yesterday, and 85 is about average this week.


After the late freeze in April, I gave the plants just under a month to recover and took stock of my losses. We lost everything out of the garden except for 1 strawberry plant, some corn, green beans, and peas. The potatoes were damaged, but appear to be making a comeback. The berry patch is fine, and all the trees but the peach are looking great! The peach appears to be alive (by the green bark test), but hasn't popped out any leaves. Until my green bark test fails, I'm going to treat the peach tree just like any of the trees with leaves, and just hope that it is spending its first year storing nutrients or something.

First strawberry of the year! (We've since gotten 4 smaller ones)

I ran out to the local home improvement store and picked up a bunch of starter plants to replace the ones lost in the freeze, and was able to find direct replacements for much of what I lost. We'll see how it turns out, but we're both excited at the prospect of good food in the next month or so! 

This, however, means that it is crunch time in the greatest sense. The drip irrigation system is still not finished, there is no sun shade ready, and the trellis is not built yet. These plants are weeks or even days away from vegetable armageddon if I don't properly prepare them for summer!

The ducklings in the pond at work getting ready for the summer

In other news, we've acquired another working cat for the yard! We've been getting a bunch of presents from the existing cats in the form of snakes and other creepy crawlies, and we decided that we need a fully clawed cat to patrol the area and help them keep our property clear of snakes, big spiders, and scorpions. She's not much to fear quite yet, but she's got a hunter's instinct, and the razor sharp claws to follow through! She already got me pretty good with a bite (she's still learning the difference between licking stuff off my finger and biting my finger).

Mrs. Claws, our new cat!

Stuff that needs to be done with the garden

I've been taking a break from garden improvements, as I've hit a road block in more than one way.

School has left me quite busy, so I haven't had enough time to devote to getting the garden ready for summer.

There are a few things that need to be finished as of the end of May, or else the garden is going to cook, and I will have no way to prevent it.

1) I need to clear the brush in the backyard. This will involve getting the chainsaw out and processing a bunch of lumber left over from the winter ice and spring wind. Between Lauren and I being busy and traveling, I haven't gotten a solid block of 3 or 4 hours to finish this job. Hopefully I can get to it within a week or two, because the drip irrigation project is blocked until it is done (one of the sprinkler heads that I need to cap is under the brush pile).

2) I need to finish up the drip irrigation system before the summer heat sets in! In order to do that, project #1 needs to be completed, and I need to find some stakes to keep the irrigation tubing in the ground. This will be a quick project once all the required equipment is available and accessible.

3) I need to put up trellises for the vining vegetables to climb! Preferably this will happen by summer, as the plants will need the trellises pretty soon!

4) I need to put up sun shades for the vegetables. As part of the trellis project, I want to build the ability to put up sun shades. Then, hopefully, it will be a simple addition to put the shades up and give the vegetables a little break from the summer sun!

5) I need to get the raised beds set up with hoop houses. Something similar to this will be my plan.

Old house, old car, DIY everything: Why do we do these things?

I tend to post a lot of progress reports and pictures of things, but I sometimes avoid mentioning the motivations behind why we have chosen to live a DIY lifestyle. Perhaps that is because I find it difficult to properly explain the "why." More likely it has to do with the phenomenon that Dave Ramsey highlights here:

By the way, I'm a HUUUUGE Dave Ramsey fan. I think that a bunch of people don't really understand him, but I find him to be so real and true to the principles that Lauren and I adhere to. However, it's hard to fight the good fight, it's hard to espouse the principles that are like a foreign language to most.

Here I am, though, writing a post about my motivations for buying a "fixer upper," for growing a food garden, for planting an orchard, and for not hiring out like our lives depend on it. Our lives DO depend on it!

One of the biggest turning points in my life was when I canceled cable for a year. It was hard to imagine life without TV, but there I was, 22 and TV-less. After a few weeks of emotional retching, a psychological withdrawal that I imagine was a toe in the water of what coming off a drug habit would feel like, I broke through and realized that TV was nothing but mindless cheap entertainment. As the weeks and months passed, I found an even more powerful truth, one that has affected me deeply to this day, one that I required to be shared by my now wife. When you break free from a life separated by 2 minute intervals of greed-pleading (commercials), you become content with what you have. It was the strangest thing. I could go days and weeks without spending money. I could adhere to the budget more closely. I could focus on what is truly important in life, not money, not stuff, not cars nor houses, but bringing a God-led giver's heart to my relationships, my activities, and my life.

What does this have to do with buying old stuff and doing a bunch of DIY things? EVERYTHING! Lauren and I have found it difficult to let go of the materialism and the temporary comfort of money and stuff, but it has been extraordinarily rewarding so far! When you buy for quality, when you do the work yourself, when you generally connect yourself to your consumption, you appreciate life more. I wrote earlier about how gardening promotes enjoyment of the simple things in life. This is absolutely true, and something that Lauren and I are working hard to leverage. Whether it's just sitting on the porch and having dinner together, making the next day's lunch together, hauling bags of dirt to the raised beds together, or tearing down a wall together, we are drawn to one another when we DIY, when we garden, and when we are frugal. I can't think of any better way to start a marriage off than to focus on what brings us together!

God has brought into focus a few core principles that we work to build into our lives: 1) Focus on Him, not on others; 2) Hard work can be a blessing; 3) Appearances are less important than substance; 4) Give abundantly; and 5) Be content with where you are. Frugal, DIY, natural, and personal living really helps us to hit all five principles on a regular basis.

Is growing a garden important?

I absolutely think that growing a garden is an important step to bettering my and my family's lives. There are three major reasons that I feel this way, and don't think that I'm being at all hyperbolic in saying that a garden will truly improve our lives.

1) It's a great way to remind us of some great life lessons. Gardening is sometimes a microcosm of life. You have to practice perseverance, or your crop will wither and die. You must put in hard work, as the garden doesn't just plant itself. You must delay your gratification, as it takes months for the fruits of your labor (pun intended) to come to you. You learn to derive satisfaction out of small things. You connect the hard work it takes to tend and harvest the plants to the food on your dinner plate. God has more control of the outcome than you do.

I think that i've most appreciated the small amounts of sustained work that come with tending a garden. Being in a season of my life where I spend 12 hours a day engaged in intellectually exhausting work, I truly appreciate time every week to shut my brain off and let my hands do the work. Sometimes I literally have to stop myself from over-tending the garden, because I so enjoy the mindless labor that goes into working the soil.

I've also learned that I truly appreciate the small things in life a little bit better when gardening. When the difference between success and failure expresses itself in a nearly microscopic green bud (or even worse, no green bud, but green under the bark), it's easy to miss the signs. Forcing myself to slow down and observe the small things makes me appreciate those things all the more.

2) There's nothing more natural and local than your own backyard. I don't really find myself hopping on the food bandwagons. I'm not "organic-only", and I'm very skeptical of the anti-GMO movement. However, I can absolutely appreciate local, natural produce. It absolutely makes sense to me that when you're getting your apples from Chile, you're making a tradeoff. Either the apple is being bred for the best flavor, size, and quality, or it's being bred to make the trip to the supermarket without spoiling. Similar tradeoffs happen when you're mass farming. Either you can breed for taste and quality, or you can breed for other characteristics that increase yields at the expense of taste and quality. This isn't confined solely to breeding, but also extends to farming practices, transportation practices, and more. When you can walk into your backyard and pluck an apple off the tree with no concern of shipping it 3000 miles or having enough yield to offset farming costs, you can grow your apples in a way that is tasty and high quality, rather than compromising.

3) It has the potential to save huge sums of money. Just like any hobby or interest, you have to be really good at it to make decent money, but you don't have to be nearly as good to save a little money. This year I'm doing an experimental garden to see what grows the best in our climate and soil. Then, next year, I'll focus on what works, and see how much we can save by growing a bunch of the food that we can grow well. Will it save money? I sure hope so. Does it have to in order to justify the garden? I don't think so. However, once we start seeing the return from our crops, I think we'll be much happier to invest time and money into the garden.

Got the raised beds finished and more!

Things have been moving very quickly at the abode, but I love taking a step back and enjoying the nature. I'm sitting at home on the porch, listening to a rooster crow in the distance, and bird song abounds.

The cat is up in the tree, enjoying the sun and the birds!

  The dogs are acting guilty for some reason!

The raised beds are finished and in place, just waiting for a few improvements and some soil!

We finally have a (temporary) place to put our compost.

And potatoes are started in their cylinders!

 On a whim we pull all the ivy off the garage wall, because it was all dying or dead. We like it, but not when it is causing damage to the attic and all brown.

I'm really proud of how the raised beds have turned out! We just need a few small things before filling them in with soil. 1) I want to add small tubes for putting hoops in the future. 2) I want to put some 6' tall beams on either end of the bed to string up some growing twine for tomatoes, viney plants, and melons.

I think we've already outgrown the compost. It's now full to the top since we've added all the vines from the garage! We need to see whether we can expand it, and possibly find a permanent home.