Home Improvements

Wednesday we got up early and started the "Clean Sweep" attack on the office. About 12 hours later, we pretty much had it done. (We did go out briefly to get some storage containers and a new router with a firewall and both wired and wireless connections. As a result I am blogging from bed.)

Today was garden day -- well, it was garden day for me; hubby was doing battle with the new router ... which turned out to be a problem with our downstairs hub. (Once the hub was replaced, the offending peice of equipment was rudely dropped, dragged, kicked and thrown about until it splintered.) So anyway... the garden. I decided it was way past to get my summer veggies planted. We'll see whether anything sprouts or not. First I had to weed. Then top up some of my containers and my raised bed. I popped out to Capital Iron to buy some strawberry plants and some tomato seedlings (Roma and a cherry variety) and some new mesclun mix and spinach seeds plus I bought a new hose and sprayer (since ours actually got damaged in the week of snow we had earlier this year). Did you know that what looks like one strawberry plant is actually ten? I didn't. So now I have a LOT of strawberry plants (20) and the instructions inside the packaging assured me that they will fill in. Yikes! Good thing we all like strawberries around here. By the time all was done, I had planted mesclun mix, spinach, tomatoes, raddishes, dill, carrots, summer squash, corn, and said strawberries. The kid also planted her own carrots and some sunflowers.

Before I was done on the deck though, I deconstructed some college-style pine ladder shelving which had been sitting outside far too long. Quite by accident, I found that the shelves made a nice "boardwalk" over a muddy patch, so I just took apart the rotting ladders. It looks much better out there... I figure we are half done the deck now, but the rest will have to wait until our next combined vacation (or at least an un-booked weekend -- almost as rare).