Tiny little flowers Abby and Jess picked for me
What a weekend!
Rhubarb pre- and post-hacking.
This basket is much fuller than it appears. Trick photography. Then, the final gallon-size bag of rhubarb for future goodies.
Abby and Jess ran through the sprinkler on Saturday during our unseasonably warm, pre-rain 90 degree day. Afterwards, Abby wanted to watch her “bee friends”, so she curled up by the hive entrance to watch them all working.
How much do you love those little toes peeking out from under the towel? I didn’t think it was going to get this warm this soon, so I hadn’t bought her a running-through-the-sprinkler suit yet. She’s wearing one of those suits with the floaties built into it, which is why she looks like she has a belt of bricks around her middle.
We have a very thick row of strawberry plants that we moved last fall to be out from under the eaves. They are loaded with little green berries. Their production may actually outpace the kids and the birds this year!
We had a campfire in the backyard Saturday night, complete with s’mores. No, I did not make the graham crackers or marshmallows. We DID use a Green & Black Organic milk chocolate bar though. I’d have to say that I do not have the same taste for s’mores that I used to. Next time I think I will make the grahams because Nabisco isn’t doing it for me anymore. Anybody got any ideas for marshmallow substitutes, or a decent recipe? I don’t know how you’d make marshmallows without processed ingredients, considering I’ve never seen a marshmallow tree nor do I expect to in my lifetime. Well, I guess one shouldn’t underestimate Monsanto’s gene technology, though. So really, there might be a jet-puffed marshmallow tree at some point. But I wouldn’t eat them anyways because they’d be GMO marshmallows. So, moot point.
Richard with his two girls, and his new compost bins he made last week. He got the pallets for the compost bins for $2 apiece on, you guessed it, Craigslist. He has alerts set up with keywords so as soon as any postings are put up he gets an email alert.
On Sunday we called on a craigslist listing for retaining wall blocks. The guy wanted $50 for 75 of them, then $.50/block after that. We ended up with 200+ blocks for $110. We had to disassemble the guy’s retaining wall and load them up on our 8-foot trailer, and it took us 3 trips altogether. We only live about 5 minutes away from where they were so it wasn’t that big of a deal, except it was 90 degrees out and starting to rain, so we managed to get it all done in a little under two hours. It’s such a good feeling to be able to be in such a win-win situation, with reusing materials and getting a great deal on it at the same time.
And…. you’re not going to believe what we else we got on Sunday. We are going to disassemble it on June 2nd with the help of some family and friends. Want to see?
Yes! We found it on Craigslist. It’s a 50′ x 20′ galvanized steel frame greenhouse. The two endcaps are polycarbonate, and it comes with the blower motor for the double-paned plastic walls, and the ventilation fan, and all the wiring. It’s gorgeous. Right now it’s over a pool, but the new owner of the house it’s at wants to fill the pool in and get rid of the greenhouse so we were able to make a great deal for both of us. We are going to grow so much stuff in this thing!
Bonus points if you recognized the post title as the title of a Calvin and Hobbes book.
(This post also shared here on http://FrugallySustainable.com.)
