Best Smell in the World

You're just lucky I could fend off the hungry mob long enough to take a picture!

The In and Out of Sprouts

Sprouts are lovely, lovely things.

In a mood to grow something during an unusually dark, overcast day, I started the only suitable thing in our pantry at the time. Lentils. The kids certainly raised their eyebrows at me, but were willing to try some. (okay, O.N.E.) Their verdict? One liked them enough to have again, one didn't go near the kitchen for days.

I finally ventured out recently to hunt and gather more suitable seed-sprouting choices and came back with a good supply of five seeds I think my family will like.

We now have yellow mustard seeds, alfalfa seeds, mung beans, broccoli seeds, and red clover seeds. Bring it on!

And as for my kids' willingness to try new foods? This started a couple years ago when we were part of a cooking/geography co-op group.

One month, the selected country was Japan and in one of the cookbooks we were using it stated the belief that the Japanese have that for every new food they eat, they add six days to their life.

Now every time they try something new, they yell, "There's six more days!"

Well-Rounded Lunacy

Lest you think we live a strictly earthy existence 24/7 outside amongst the chickens, water barrels, and garden beds, I wanted to offer a peek inside our life and the wide range of activities in which we engage.

Here are the results of some downtime I had to create handles for the kids' new water bottles. Of course, my youngest wears his almost constantly, which is fine except when his taekwondo instructor objects.

This picture was taken at our Science Co-op when the kids were learning how to un-mix mixtures. That'll make you think!

My daughter's turned out great with the spiral stripes. She now calls it her watermelon bottle. Now I want to make her a hat to match, but that would break the rules. This year I'm attempting to finish ALL of my on-going, in-progress, started-with-no-end-in-sight projects BEFORE I start any new ones. I was down to two knitting, four quilting, and two beading projects when these two mini crochet projects just showed up out of nowhere. They're not my fault, really.

See how flexible I can be? This is the recent result of our daughter's hair highlighting session. We try to tread lightly on the earth, but it seems to get more difficult the older the kids become. Unfortunately, trying to talk a pre-teen (she wanted me to tell you she was 12, but she's really only 11 and 354/365ths years old) out of something that helps pollute the earth when all her friends are doing it is difficult indeed. And since we recycle our greywater (well, most of it) we had the hardest time admitting there was no useful way we could reuse her rinse water. Nasty stuff.

She had to earn school credits to pay for it, which wasn't difficult with such an incentive as this. These credits have been established because they're an easy way to trade schoolwork for "funwork" which usually translates into time on the computer, phone and/or watching television (realizing we don't have cable or even local channels - only VHS tapes and DVDs, mostly from the library). In this instance, she chose haircolor in, luckily for me, a very "natural" color which even Daddy can live with.

And here's one of the coolest things we've seen in a long time. We were the lucky guests of a friend as she celebrated her birthday at the World Famous Lipizzaner Stallions show. What a special day. Very nice.

The Beauty of the Bounty

I think even Captain Bligh would approve of these first-of-the-season delicious morsels.

Rosemary's Babies

One of our home's loveliest features (NOT!) is this monstrosity of a rosemary plant right outside our front door. Luckily for us, we have upcoming plans which involve the removal and utter destruction of this plant. However, since I'm not evil at heart (no matter what my siblings might remember from our childhoods), I have every intention of propogating new seedlings off of the giant mother plant in order to grow normal sized clones in a future herb garden.

My husband was too eager in getting this thing cut back enough in order to remove some limestone blocks to build my cold frame, so we don't have an actual "before" picture. This is actually a "during" picture showing the portion of the plant I kept my husband from ripping out with his bare teeth. Have I mentioned yet how much my husband does not like this plant?

Well, never one to let things go to waste, I quickly snipped off the soft, new-growth tips from the part of the plant lying in the grass gasping for breath. I mentioned this all to my mother who off-handedly stated "you need a drying rack," which got my juices flowing.

Twelve hours later (it would have been much sooner, but it got dark and I needed to sleep), and the fresh rosemary is drying on this lovely newly-manufactured rack. I salvaged from our woodpile the stakes from the jasmine plants that are now growing in the chicken coop planters. The kids had broken the stakes playing some sort of swashbuckling game, but they were still suitable for my purposes. A couple nails later and I had a wooden frame around which I stapled a piece of leftover window screen.

Tah-dah!!

Now, as for the cuttings, when I first realized I wanted to save some of this monster plant, I knew I would need some rooting solution and sterile seed starting mix, but didn't, of course, want to actually spend money on a quart of liquid and a ten-pound bag of dirt when I really only needed a little, tiny bit.

Then my sister-in-law steps in and tells me I can soak some willow twigs in water and use that for the rooting solution. Cool, now I just need to find a willow tree.

The next day, when more of my brain synapses were firing, I remember that I have White Willow Bark capsules just waiting for my next headache and I don't need to hunt down a neighbor's willow tree under cover of darkness.

This Goddess of the Garden relative also tells me I can sterilize my own soil in the oven, but that then I wouldn't want to actually inhabit my house for a good long time afterwards. I was sort of bummed about this until my mother reminded me that I have an outdoor fire circle (yes, I'm quick, aren't I?) which could also sterilize soil perfectly without the burnt dirt smell lingering over our oatmeal the next morning.

(That's our soon-to-be cold frame in the background. More on that soon.)

Here's our steaming platter of sterile soil. Doesn't that look yummy! Too bad it smells 100 times worse than it looks.

We added a little water to the willow powder and soaked into this solution the new growth stems which had been cleared of leaves.

Five minutes later and we have six new normal-sized transplants. Hopefully, none of them will have giant gene tendencies.

Auntie J's Rant of the Day

I was going to lay off the water topic for a while, honest, I was, BUT . . .

I just received our water bill, which in itself is not blog worthy, but once I started reading the lead story in this month's city newsletter, I felt a rant coming on.

Here's the article's title:

New Water Rates Encourage Conservation

Now, I don't know about you, but when I read that, I got excited. Imagine my disappointment when I found out the specifics. To encourage conservation, our city's water department is going to increase the rates of higher usage customers. This seems like a good plan and I commend them solely on the basis of their good intentions.

However, I don't believe the plan is going to encourage anything except complacency. For the 20% of their customers who consume approximately 50% of the water, they are going to increase the rate for each 1,000 gallons of water used over 18,000 gallons by 56 cents. For 1,000 gallons. That's 17.85 gallons per penny!

In the city's own example, a high user consuming 20,000 gallons a month, would be charged an extra $1.12. Somehow, I'm not sure $1.12 is that much of an incentive to use less water. Even a really high user like Lance Armstrong would be charged only $174.72 more (that is, if Mr. Armstrong lived in my city). I don't think he'd notice an extra $100 on his water bill when he's already paying more than two grand.

What if the city were to charge a penny more for each gallon over 10,000 gallons? That would get these high end users' attention. Then, this hypothetical high user consuming 20,000 gallons a month would pay an extra $100. That would be much more noticeable on Mr. John Q. Public's monthly bill and a higher incentive for Mr. Public to decide that continuing to overwater the fescue in the middle of the worst drought Texas has seen since 1917 is not the smartest thing he's every done. Even Mr. Armstrong couldn't fail to notice the extra $3,200 on his water bill.

I also suggest that instead of focusing on the higher usage 20% with slap-on-the-wrist rate increases, the city should be working on incentivizing the lower usage 80%. An 18,000 gallon monthly threshold seems outrageously high. What if the monthly base fee was raised to $15.00 and included the first couple thousand gallons? What if . . . I don't know, we did anything that would shake us up and help us realize our current pace of consumption is not sustainable.

Our city gets 75% of its water from Lake Georgetown which is currently over 17 feet below normal. Isn't NOW the right time to start thinking a little bit smarter? Nine years ago (the latest census available), our city had over 61,000 residents in over 21,000 households. 21,000 households multiplied by 18,000 gallons a month equals 378 million gallons of water a month. That's 378,000,000 gallons which is a daily average per person of over 200 gallons. That's DOUBLE the estimated national average of daily water usage in this, the highest consuming country ever known on this planet. Have I mentioned we're in an exceptional drought?

Oh, but wait . . . there's more. You want to know the best part of my city's feeble attempt at Encouraging Conservation? These increased rates (I guess a 1.9% increase is still technically an increase) are only in effect for five months. What about the other seven???

Okay, I'm done ranting. I think I need some chocolate.

That'll teach me to check my mail.

Here Comes the Rain Again (fingers crossed)

Since our area of Texas is experiencing an Exceptional Drought, water is obviously at a premium. So with the threat of another stormfront possibly dropping precipitation, we scrambled earlier this week to install another rainbarrel near the garden. I'd wanted rainbarrels for years, but I've finally come to realize that "good enough" is better than doing without while we wait and save for the perfect solution. Since this is now our second rainbarrel successfully installed (oooh, I feel a habit coming on), we're feeling expertish enough to provide this quick tutorial on rainwater collection.

First, collect the necessary parts. An inexpensive hose bibb (otherwise known as a spigot), a pvc adapter for the inside, and two O-rings are all it takes - plus the rainbarrel, of course. Our first barrel was actually a holeless trashcan my husband salvaged from a nearby river. A perfect example of the second R of waste management - REUSE. This second "barrel" is also a trashcan, but unfortunately, one purchased from the Evil Empire. My apologies, Gaia.

Drill a 1/2" hole a couple inches up from the bottom of the trashcan. I'm sure there's some fancy drill bit available that will do this job perfectly and professionally, but I like using what we have, even if it means making a series of smaller holes which, when connected, make a shape roughly estimating a circle.

Put one of the O-rings on the spigot and twist the spigot into the lovely hole you just made.

One of the reasons you don't want your spigot too close to the bottom of the barrel is to allow for the sediment from your roof to settle without clogging up your plumbing. Every couple years, when you don't have anything better to do, you can always empty out the sludge from your rainbarrels and take pictures to show your grandchildren how much of a neat freak you were.

From the inside, place the other O-ring on the spigot, then the pvc adapter piece, and tighten until you can't tighten no more. This is a picture of the inside of our barrel just before we tightened, so you could see how it all goes together. (Have you ever realized how difficult it is to take a good picture from the inside of a black trashcan?)

This would then be a good time to fill up the can until there's water a couple inches over the newly installed spigot in order to check for leaks.

Now to attack the gutter's downspout. If you're lucky enough to have them already installed, your battle will be pretty easy. Simply remove the bracket(s) that are currently keeping the downspout from wiggling all over your wall.

Am I the only one shocked by the previous exterior color scheme of my house?!?!

Then, estimating the general length you'll need to reach past the lid of your barrel, vent your frustrations on the downspout with a hacksaw or other suitably destructive tool. You can make a more exact cut later, but right now, you just need to shorten it so that you can get your trashcan up under it.

You'll need to raise the barrel up off the ground somehow. In this instance, my husband found the cutest pallet imaginable (it's only about 1-1/2' square) at his work and immediately thought of me. Isn't he a sweetheart?! Other women get diamonds, I get a mini-pallet. I love it!

Our other rainbarrel is resting on a couple limestone blocks that we've ripped out of an undesireable "landscape feature" in our front yard. Whatever you end up using, it needs to be sturdy enough to handle the weight of a rainbarrel filled with water. Remember, a gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds, so based on the size of your trashcan, it could weigh over 500 pounds when filled. Not exactly something you'd want to fall onto Fido or that bratty kid from next door that is always in your way. You don't need it up very high - you only need enough clearance to get your bucket (or whatever) under it. At the very least, you want room to easily attach a hose on the spigot without creating a nasty kink in the hose.

With the lid off, put the trashcan in place on its supports with the drainpipe inside the can. Now you can better estimate the exact length needed for the downspout (below the lid, but above the trashcan) and get a good idea on the placement for the hole in the lid. Once you have that, mark out the dimensions. I then drill corner holes which give me my guidelines to cut the hole sides with an electric handsaw. This worked perfectly on the plywood cover we used for the first rainbarrel (since stores don't sell trashcan lids separately - ugh), but having tried this on the plastic lid, I suggest you start with the tool I eventually ended up using - a pocketknife.

Here's the finished downspout fitting almost perfectly into the finished lid.

Once the threat of rain is removed, we'll probably run a bead of caulk or some of that expanding foam stuff around the joint in a feeble attempt to keep out mosquitos, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

And here's the final product - Chez Baril II.

Since I already had it out, I used the electric hand saw to shape around the bottom of the barrel to provide bucket access under the spigot while still keeping the barrel centered over the pallet.

And how much did these Gaia-approved barrels of liquid fun cost us? All told, we spent less than $22 and about two hours to setup both barrels.

Now, of course, we're just waiting for the rain.

Conundrum Solved

Here's our solution to the recent water bottle issue.

The three baby thermoses (thermi?) only hold 12 ounces, but as we were researching all the options, it became apparent that the kids would rather have smaller ones than the larger ones I was leaning towards. Where I was concerned about having enough capacity to last all day, the kids wanted ones that could fit in their bags or be lighter to carry. I should have asked them sooner.

The large thermos holds 40 ounces and comes with a carrying strap. The idea being that will be our refill thermos, since it holds enough to refill all three small bottles.

The best part about all of this?? All four totaled less than $26. Not perfect, but good enough for chickens.

The Coop deVille

As nice as it is, it's amazing we have a garden at all this year, because for three weeks in February/March, I had been "distracted" by the urgency to build a chicken coop.

Let me explain.

In most of the other places we've lived, it was feasible to own and raise chickens. Even in downtown Seattle, a raging metropolis, one could have a minimum of three hens (more if you have the space). But wherever we lived (Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho), we didn't have the space or time to keep chickens. We figured by moving to Texas, and into a house with a large yard to boot, surely the allowable quantity of poultry would raise exponentially. This is the country, right?

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I called the city to ask about the poultry code and was told chickens are not allowed in the city limits unless you have more than an acre of land which also must be zoned agricultural. So I pouted, grumbled under my breath, and tried not to be jealous when I saw friend who lives just down the road (but in another city's jurisdicion) and her lovely hens.

She was the one who suggested that this might be a time to ask for forgiveness rather than permission and that a gift of eggs to keep the neighbors happy and silent may be just the way to go. Would my neighbors go for something like that? Let me think. Hmmm . . . they're both county sheriffs, so I'm thinking they may not be willing to look the other way on something like this.

Such was my pathetic life UNTIL one of my husband's co-workers mentioned something about his chickens. But wait . . . you live in the same city we do. You can't keep chickens! I called the city - they said NO!

"Oh, they may not like you to, but just follow the city ordinance - they can't touch you!"

Five minutes on the internet and I find this. Scrolling down to page 10, we find this gem:

SECTION 2.800 FOWL

2.801 LIMITATIONS ON NUMBER OF FOWL

(1) This Section shall not apply to property zoned AG.

(2) It shall be unlawful to own or keep fowl within the corporate limits of
the City unless the number is limited and they are kept in enclosed pens
as set forth below:

(a) If fowl are confined within an enclosed pen which is located fifty
(50) feet or more from any building or dwelling occupied by any
person other than the owner of the fowl, the number of fowl is limited
to no more than ten (10).

(b) If fowl are confined within an enclosed pen which is located less
than fifty (50) feet, but more than twenty-five (25) feet from any
building or dwelling occupied by any person other than the owner of the
fowl, the number of fowl is limited to no more than five (5).

We quickly measure the distance between us and our nearest neighbor's house (thank goodness we live on a corner) and low and behold, it's exactly 25 feet between their house and our fence. We're good as gold! Can you guess how grateful I am that we have a large drain culvert at the back of our property which added the needed distance.

So now that we knew it was legally possible, we just needed to figure out how to do it. My husband was not as thrilled as I was to learn that we could keep chickens. I'm not exactly sure what he envisioned, but I'm sure it was ugly and smelly or else expensive. Needing to work within those boundaries (cheap, but cute), I got to work.

We found the bases for free when we were looking for pallets and flooring crates thinking that we could reassemble them into a suitable coop. We quickly gave up on that idea, but still use the crates to contain our compost piles.

Knowing our Texas summers would test our chickens' heat tolerance (chickens don't sweat, remember), we wanted to raise up the coop so that they always had access to shade. The added bonus being that vermin can't make nests under your coop when it's raised.

We knew we wanted an easy-to-clean floor, but I wasn't willing to pay $40 for it. This is, after all, for chickens. Gaia guided me, however, back to the hardware store yet again where I was meant to meet Manager Dave. Once I explained my dilema as I was wandering the flooring aisles one more time looking for suitable, yet inexpensive flooring, he donated two boxes of linoleum tile which were out of inventory and he was going to destroy that afternoon. Dudes, he gave them to me for FREE. I was floored, no pun intended. There was actually just enough to lay two layers of tiles with seams offset.

Now we have two sides up. I started with the easy square sides (okay, I guess technically they're rectangles), but then had to stare at the coop for a couple days while I figured out how I was going to frame the angled sides.

You can see at this point the vents along the top of each long side which were my attempt to keep the air circulating within the coop. Also, the angled roost supports were just some extra lumber from one of the crates.

As I pondered the angled side dilema, I focused on the easy projects that had nice square edges like the nesting boxes. Rather than slope the roof of the nesting boxes (to keep the chickies from roosting up there), I figured we could use that space for a storage shelf. With only five chickens, we may have gotten away with having just one nest box, but I just liked the idea of two.

Here we have the shelf above the nesting boxes blocked off from the chickens by a culled piece of plywood I found for 51 cents. At the time I didn't know how I might use it, but its value was quickly apparent.

We've also framed in the angled side walls and have the roof supports up. Don't look too closely as nothing is square or level, but remember this project's mantra immediately became "Good Enough For Chickens". This mantra, by the way, has now come in handy in a variety of situations, none of which involved poultry of any kind.

Now it actually starts looking like a house when we put up the roof and start on the siding. Months ago my husband had befriended some construction workers (when they were expanding a local road and replacing everyone's backyard fences with a new stone barrier) and saved about eight cedar fence panels from the landfill. We've been wanting to expand our fence to enclose our front yard in with our back yard to enjoy the shade of our tree without sharing with everyone on the street. Of course, the only way we could have this project look seamless would be if the "new" fence panels were as aged as the old panels.

We had more panels than we thought we would use with the fence, so we used some of the extra boards for the coop. On the plus side, using aged, warped, and otherwise imperfect boards made my construction imperfections less noticeable.

Luckily for me, I realized before I put up the next wall that it would be 20 times easier to put up the chicken wire at the bottom of the coop without the siding boards in place. Glad I read the fine print on that one.

Finished the angled side which is actually a "magic door" that is completely removeable for easy access to the space under the roosts for semi-annual cleaning. Started siding the other long side which was originally going to have a big door, but I ended up framing in a viewing window at the last minute.

Here's a close up of the vent covers and the quick and easy roofing trim I put up to cover the exposed ends of the roof supports. Plus to cover up the sloppy cuts on the siding, we trimmed the vent and window openings with faux-wood trim actually made out of corn. Seemed fitting for a chicken coop.

My choice for an easy, inexpensive, yet sturdy barrier to keep out the chicken-eating beasties? Gutter screens.

Here's the access to the nesting boxes which was originally going to be one door, but is now two since we removed the door originally planned for the long side. These are the doors for daily use - one for feeding and watering, the other for storage and nesting box access (egg collection when the time comes).

Starting on the chick's yard, we've already starting painting. You can see the garden in the background.

Here's the yard almost completely fenced in along with the matching planters I whipped together. We originally wanted planters at the foot of every post to grow some sort of vine that would climb the fence to keep it all from looking too much like a concentration camp, but we're too frugal to shell out $15 a piece for six planters. I ended up making these for $2 each, but they were larger than we thought they'd be, so we only needed three. Gotta love that.

We originally were planning on making their entire yard critter-proof so we wouldn't have to hassle with locking them up at night, but that would have been a lot more work. We quickly settled on making their yard chicken-proof and making their coop critter-proof. Much easier this way.

Here's the almost complete coop (just missing the gate on the right which completes the yard enclosure) still wanting some trim paint.

You can also see the chicken door that is removed each morning to let them out. It's just some 2x4s with a double-layer of chicken wire around one side.

I tacked on the chicken ramp about 20 minutes before we left to go pick up the chickies. Sure looks homey, huh?

Here's our brood their first day out in the sunshine running their toes through the grass. The two Delawares were originally named Cajeta and Canela (Spanish for caramel and cinnamon), but their superior bug hunting skills made us quickly rename them Diana and Artemis. The Black Australorp is named Onyx and the Buff Orpington was named Lizzy by my son after Liz from the Magic School Bus books. The Ameracauna, Oreo, was promised by the breeder to lay blue or green eggs. The other four should lay brown eggs. We're still crossing our fingers that they're all girls. The kids know that the day we hear one of them crow, we're having fried chicken for dinner, but that won't make it any easier if that day comes.

Every time I go out in the backyard, I'm so pleased and grateful to have our little chickies doing their thing. I find myself stopping to check in on them throughout the day and then ending up entranced by them for half an hour. It's very soothing to watch them. Now we're just waiting for the eggs!

Along a Garden's Path . . .

Once upon a time there was a garden. Well, there was a dream of a garden.

When we bought our current house in January 2007, I wanted to have a garden like the ones we had in Seattle and Boise. My husband, on the other hand, wanted to put in a pool.

Unfortunately, in the space where our respective dreams would fit, there was a ginormous tree that would block out all sun from my garden and dirty his pristine pool with lots of leaves and gunk.

Fast forward to August 2007 when we awoke to the sounds of this same tree crashing down in the narrow space between our house and the back fence. The only damage was a broken fence post and a warped gutter. On the plus side we had firewood for the winter (such as it is in Texas).

Then the race started as my husband and I starting thinking about what we would do in place of the tree. Luckily for me, it's soooo much easier (and cheaper) to install a garden than it is to install a pool.

This is the actual corner where the garden now stands.

Lovely shade, but not for a garden. Nice and green though.





This is looking the long way down the back of our property. The tree's canopy sure looks a lot bigger up close.


The beginning of the garden circa February 2008. We rented a sod remover and rototiller and sprained lots of new muscles we didn't realize we had as we attempted to turn lawn into eight 4' x 8' garden beds.

Notice the fence is still sagging from the tree falling on it and the grass is just a tad less green than it was when the tree was shading it.

By March 2008, we had all the beds in. We removed five sprinkler lines along the fence so that we didn't waste water trying to water a garden from sprinklers. (Think about it for a second - once the plants start growing, the plant nearest the sprinkler head will block all the water from the other plants. Sprinklers only work for short grass.)

We switched out the remaining sprinkler heads (seen in the garden path) for half-circles to water the grass to the left of the garden.

Notice the broken fence post has finally been repaired.

We had the three support poles for the peas and beans up by April 2008.

The shorter poles at the end of the beds held a zigzag of twine on which we hung old CDs. This was our scarecrow system which worked great at keeping the birds away to give the seeds a chance to grow.

Unfortunately, we kept them up a couple weeks too long, so it also kept the birds away from the pesty bugs eating the tender new plants.

By May 2008, we had a bonafide garden. The plants overgrew their beds so fast, in fact, we didn't have time to finish putting in the mulch along the paths before the pumpkin plants had grown into the lawn.

Big, showy pumpkin plants, but we didn't get even one little pumpkin all year.

June 2008 and we seem to have created a monster. The harvest from these eight beds kept us busy for months. This, of course, was before we ignored it completely in August when we had a thousand consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees (okay, maybe it wasn't exactly a thousand, but that's what it felt like).

You'll notice the tree is changing its mind and trying to grow back at the left of this picture.

In February 2009, we got to work finishing mulching the paths and added another level of timbers on the beds to keep the soil from flowing out during rainstorms. Of course, in the severe drought we're having, it hasn't actually rained, but you know, those hypothetical rainstorms.
We've also used the tree stump as the base of our fire circle.

As of last week, I'm happy to report that our 2009 garden is IN - fully seeded and ready to grow!









And what are we growing this year?

We'll have:

• basil
• pole beans
• broccoli
• butternut squash
• cantaloupe melons
• carrots
• chamomile
• cilantro
• sweet corn
• cucumbers
• dill
• honeydew melons
• Jerico lettuce
• Drunken Woman lettuce (my favorite, just for the name!)
• Red Sails lettuce
• Salad Bowl lettuce
• Sweet Valentine lettuce
• Yugoslavian Red Butterhead lettuce
• marigolds
• yellow onions
• white onions
• blue oregano
• Sugar Bon peas
• Sweet Banana peppers
• Anaheim peppers
• Carolina Wonder peppers
• Sweet Bell peppers
• popcorn
• radishes
• spinach
• mammoth russian sunflowers
• tomatillos
• tomatoes
• watermelons
• zucchini squash

Is that enough?