Tire & Conatiner Gardening

Since it's Earth Day and I'm not ready to launch my Etsy shop quite yet (I was excited to put all the recycled and upcycled products up for sale today but I guess it can wait) I thought I'd post about my tire and other container gardens!

Since we're renting and almost all the soil around our house is orange clay, we decided to do container gardens this summer. We also live in such a wooded area that very few spots get more than a couple hours of sun each day which makes the back porch one of the sunny spots!

The spaghetti squash below is one of my few seedlings started in a tray that seems to be thriving.

A cheap plastic tub and my sister's old rain boots make the perfect planters for swiss chard, spinach  carrots and beets. now I just have to figure out how to keep the squirrels from digging in there!

I bought these pots from a garage sale in Anderson, IN a few years ago and I have used them every summer since. This year, they have cilantro and basil and I'm waiting for my chives to sprout.

Swiss chard sprouts- I can't wait to start harvesting the never-ending chard!

And now, the tires...

I knew we needed more space than all the containers we had and as I was trying to figure out where we would plant everything around late winter (I still thought we'd put stiff in the ground) I drove past a neighbor's house with a stack of 3 tires in the lawn and a sign that said "free." 

After giving the neighborhood a few hours to jump on the tires if they wanted (to me, this was too good to be true so I thought I had to share!) I went back at night and fit all 2 huge tires in my little Honda Civic. Then, just a few weeks ago, when it was nice enough to start planting, my sister and I got to work on these bad boys!

With the rims on the tires, I realized most of the soil we would have to buy would go to waste considering the relatively small surface area we would have left. So, we decided to cut it off!

1 Old Jeep Tire....

 Plus A Whole Lotta Hand-Sawing...

...Equals 1 Old Tire With The Top Cut Off!

Below is the before and after shot of Tire #1 with mostly peas and lettuce an, as an experiment, an old garlic clove that started to sprout in our kitchen. Maybe we'll get a whole bulb!

And Tire #2 is below (before & after) with peppers, strawberries, onions, radishes, beets, carrots and spinach. There's a lot in there and it's just about time to thin those little guys! We'll see how many go to harvest in such a small space...

 I can't wait to see how all of these containers do in the long run. So far, everything has been growing better than I expected but I'm still anxious for our first real harvest...

HAPPY EARTH DAY AND THANKS FOR READING!

Forget Spring, Summer has Sprung!

My sister had told me that it goes straight from winter to summer around here, but I didn't believe it till I saw it with my own eyes! For proof of how quickly things come to life in North Carolina, here's a picture Kirsten took of the woods behind my house on April 2nd (Sorry for stealing your pic, Kirst!)

And this is what it looks like today, just 11 days later!

This is the view of the woods behind my house. Every now and then I forget how beautiful this area is and how amazing it is to have all of this nature in my backyard.

The one downside to all this beautiful nature and the boom of life is the pollen. If you don't live in NC, I'm not just talking about regular pollen. Around here, pollen is a thick, green dust that floats in the air and coats everything! My car, which is normally silver, was green the other day and the inside is covered in the stuff. I've already swept my porch and outdoor furniture and it's covered again almost instantly. I was driving through a wooded area yesterday and there's so much of this stuff that there was a visible "fog" of dust in the air. 

People around here don't even seem to notice it, its so normal. But coming from the Midwest where pollen is an invisible, almost mythical, occurrence and you have to check the pollen count online to know how bad it is, this is all pretty crazy to me! And it means lots of happy bumble bees around the house and lots and lots of sneezing! I swear, if this keeps up, my allergies will be the death of me!

I guess sneezing is a small price to pay for all the beautiful foliage, but my face doesn't seem to understand the trade-off....

I'll post soon about my container gardens which are coming to life as quickly as the woods around me. 

So excited!

ENJOY THE BEAUTIFUL WEATHER AND THANKS FOR READING

A Best Friend, A Broken Laptop and A Bruised Throat

It's been a crazy week despite (or, perhaps, evidenced by) my lack of blog posts.

Kirsten, one of the people I love most out of many people that I love a whole lot, flew in last Monday to stay with me for a few days before we drove to her cousin's wedding in western North Carolina.

The first few days of our trip, however, were anything but a vacation. I have been working harder and staying busier than I have since my first year or two of college. Every hour of my week is now taken up by babysitting, cleaning houses, posting blogs, volunteering, hanging out with my wonderful new friends, sewing/crafting, handling money and taxes, running errands and whatever other insane amount of tasks I add to my to-do list! 

Now, looking back on what my life was like and how I felt when I first moved to NC, this is all a very good change. My emotional, social and financial states are all far beyond where they were just a month or two ago and I am amazed at how well things are going! However, as Kirsten's arrival made clear, my weeks are packed so tight that I was forgetting to sleep (another flashback to college life). 

The night she flew in, I had already babysat for 6 hours in the morning and cleaned, went grocery shopping and prepared food for a client which took about 4 hours plus almost 2 hours of commuting. I was so exhausted and my back ached so badly by evening that I tried to take a nap but my mind was still racing with everything I had to do that I just sat awake in my bed for 2 hours. I eventually just got up and cleaning my car (one of the many things on my mind at the time). 

I picked Kirsten up around midnight and we stayed up for hours talking and reconnecting, which was completely worth it and felt sooo good... till I had to get up the next morning.

The first few days were a blur with babysitting, a volunteer meeting at which Kirsten had to call all the State Representatives on my list because of how bad I am on the phone, a fantastic dinner party followed by about 5 hours of packing with my wonderful friend Sanja before she flew home to South Africa in the morning, more babysitting, another dinner and - in general - a whole lotta not sleeping. 

On our third day, Kirsten helped me babysit while I was running around trying to pick up the house and finish some volunteer documents. At one point I had put my laptop down to let Lady in and as I reached down for the girl I was sitting to change her diaper, Lady jumped over a table and kicked my laptop screen with her back paw.

It instantly shattered. 

In case you don't know what it's like to be 23 in 2013, I'm going to take this moment to clarify something: we use our computers a lot. Like, for everything. 

Suffice it to say that it took a lot of willpower to hold it together in that moment.

A few minutes later, while my friend Irina was stopping by and I was trying to pacify a very sleepy and unhappy toddler, she whipped her tiny but surprisingly hard head at full speed into my throat. (The toddler, not Irina.) This was a new experience for me and it's probably foreign to you as well but, let me tell you, it hurts. With tears of exhaustion and exasperation in my eyes, I told Kirsten and Irina that I was at my end.

I realized that whether or not I would call it a sign, it was a sort of blessing-in-disguise that my laptop broke and that I almost broke down with it. I've heard athletes say that getting a sprained ankle or a knee injury was a sign that showed them they needed to slow down and take better care of themselves. I think that's what my laptop was for me. (Not to mention my very sore throat!)

So, rather than cramming in all the never-ending tasks I had secretly planned to do during the weekend (which Kirsten was not happy to hear I had even thought of doing), I went away with her to a beautiful part of the country and stayed at a gorgeous house with amazing people for a family gathering and wedding ceremony that I will never forget. We caught up on some sleep, hiked to a hidden waterfall, played games, had good conversation and generally had an incredible time.

So, thank you Kirsten, for a wonderful week. 

Thank you, Lady, for shattering my laptop. 

And thank you, little girl, for a bruised throat.

I guess I needed all of that.

Admittedly, I have already replaced my broken screen, gone grocery shopping twice, babysat, dropped Kirsten at the airport, purchased a domain name, worked on my website, created a favicon, put oil in my car, sent tons of emails, made tons of phone calls and wrote this post today buuutt I do plan on getting some good sleep tonight. Maybe I don't have to slow down as long as I let myself sleep enough...

Thoughts? What's your most productive way to get things done?

THANKS FOR READING