Right Side of the House!

Ok, as promised here is my next garden section - the right side of the house! This section is shady, covered with leaves, and overgrown with ivy. I fixed it up over the weekend but my phone was not working so it took me a while to get pictures. Anyway, I peeled back some of the leaf layer - not too much because I wanted to keep this more woodland-y. I hacked away a bunch of the ivy and tossed a bunch of dead branches to the woods in back of the fence. Then I planted some woodland perennials, cleaned up the paving stones, fixed up the area around the swing, and added a bird feeder. I even set up a nice spot for the rain barrel on the corner of the house.

Before

Stairs and top of the garden.

You can't see the paving stones because they are covered in ivy.

This swing area needs some help - and someone to haul away the fallen tree branches!

After

View from the stairs.

Birdhouse.

Step garden.

View standing next to the step garden looking towards the swing.

Flowers in the step garden.

Ferns growing in the rocks.

Swing area.

Rain barrel area with rocks and lily of the valley flowers.

Gardening at my Family's House

Well, my parents' house is overgrown. Since Mom got sick, nobody has been gardening. Now that I'm living nearby I decided to clean up the property. This weekend I focused on the front. I cleaned out the leaves and debris, added a bird feeder, planted things, added solar lights, and stuck in a couple of flower pots for good measure. I'm posting some before and after photos so you can see it.

Before

The ramp area before was just a leafy mess:

Ramp before.

You can see from this front view that it just looks kind of boring and brown:

General front view before.

Here's a closer-up view of the front garden area before:

Closeup of garden area before.

After

The ramp area looks much better with a couple of big flower pots:

Ramp with big flower pots.

 Here's a shot of the whole thing so you can see the birdbath and cleared out garden. I unearthed a fair amount of rocks and am not entirely sure what to do with them so for now there's a mini rock pile. Maybe it can be a design feature?

Broader area.

And here are the solar lights along the walkway. I'm hoping the ground cover will fill in a bit now that I've trimmed away the dead branches. If that doesn't happen I may just rip it out next year and sow a different ground cover since I'm not 100% sold on this one in the first place.

Solar lights along the path.

I think it looks much better than it did! Next stop: right side of the house!

Seed Starting

It's that time of year again! I've ordered seeds online and today I spent some time starting seeds and re-potting plants with Waldo's Nonna, who I will refer to as Surrogate Nonna from now on. She gave me a heaps of instructions and seeds to take home with me so with any luck I'll have some heirloom cucumbers and tomatoes this year.

Surrogate Nonna re-potting tomato plants.

Update

The move is going poorly - or rather, it's not going. Cupcake's housemate has rescheduled twice already and has still not left yet. I'm going to be moving during the work week with little help because my friends - who were ready to help me over the weekend - aren't available during the week. Rather than dwell on that, I'll give a random update.

Spring has started and the strawberries I planted last year are coming back. I'm very proud of this because frankly I had my doubts. Of course, other garden things are coming back too. This move needs to happen but I really will miss my garden. Especially since I was the only gardener at the co-op so I know it won't be looked after once I'm gone.

Strawberries!

What else? I've done a lot of randomly wandering about Harvard Square. Today I managed to stumble upon these strange street performers. They were singing songs about rhinoceroses and yes those are orange rhino horns on their heads:

Two male performers dressed in orange with orange rhino hats.
One is playing the keyboard and one is playing the guitar.

I ate some pizza at Pinocchio's which has some tasty pizza. They've got a themed mural of Pinocchio running away from the whale with a random mermaid sitting nearby - all of them eating pizza, of course.

Whale mural at Pinocchio's Pizza. 

I also looked at some of the ivy covered Harvard Buildings and went into their library to check it out.

Brick building covered in ivy. 

Fancy library room with wood panels and a rolling ladder and a fireplace. 

White domed library ceiling with intricate carvings and a candelabra.

Vermicomposting 101

Well, my worms are doing fine so I figured I'd make the post I promised a long time ago in which I explain vermicomposting. Vermicompost, in a gist, is intentionally feeding your food scraps and junk mail to a bin full of worms, who then poop out "worm castings" which you put in your garden.

White person's hands holding a handful of worms and soil.

What kind of worms?
Red wriggler or red earthworms. My worms were obtained from a neighbor who works as a middle school science teacher and who used them in a class project.

What can you feed them?
Feed them: non-oily vegan food scraps, egg shells, non-glossy paper, tea bags, coffee grinds and filters, dead but not diseased plants, hair and nail clippings from humans and pets, dryer lint, and old natural fiber rags. Keep a ratio of about 70:30 brown (paper and dead stuff) to green (plants) materials.

Do NOT feed them things that aren't on the list. Also, they don't like yeasted products or spicy food, and you should go easy on the citrus, onions, and garlics.

Cartoon of a worm sitting on a toilet with a newspaper that says "poo of today."

What's so great about worm castings?
Worm castings are rich in water-soluble plant nutrients like calcium, magnesium, nitrates, phosphorus, and potassium. They also have over 50% more humus than is usually found in garden topsoil. And it has a neutral pH, which is important for plant growth. Plus it contains beneficial microbes and bacteria.

In case you're wondering what humus is: Humus is the molecules left of decomposed organic materials once they're done decomposing. It basically acts like a big sponge and can hold 90% of its weight in water. So a soil that is rich in humus is a soil that will hold moisture longer and release it slowly to your plants. It will hold nutrients in the same way. And it also helps make a loose soil structure that is easier for gardening.

What sort of home do they need?
I have a fancy pants worm bin from Plum's earlier attempts at vermicomposting. But the neighbor that gave me the worms had made his own worm bin by taking an old lidded plastic bin and drilling air holes in the lid. Whatever you use for a bin, it should be kept somewhere between 55-75 degrees F so you don't freeze or overheat your worms. You also need to make sure it stays moist, which you can do by misting them if the soil looks dry.

Picture of seedlings growing in tiny containers with percentages of worm poop in each container labeled. The container with 20% worm poop has the biggest seedlings and the one with 0% has the smallest.

Sunchokes!

I harvested my sunchokes today! Yay!

Me showing off my sunchokes.

For those of you who don't know, sunchokes aka Jerusalem artichokes aka artichokes grow as tubers on a tall plant with lots of yellow daisy-like flowers. They taste like nutty potato-like deliciousness, contain almost no fat or cholesterol, and give you lots of dietary fiber plus antioxidants, potassium and iron. They were super easy to grow. I just buried a few tubers, watched some lovely giant flowers come up to decorate the garden, and then pulled up the whole plants when they started looking past their prime. Each one had a bunch of tubers attached! Yum!

Carnivorous Plants and Fairies

Today was a great day. I began the day by taking a trip to Tower Hill Botanic Garden to look at their carnivorous plant show. Before this show I had heard of Venus Fly Traps and Pitcher Plants. Turns out there are TONS more carnivorous plants, including some that grow in New England. Who knew?

Venus Fly Traps.

The Judith plant (I thought it was pretty).

Pitcher Plant closeup.

Me with another type of pitcher plant.

After the plant show, I raced home to join Joy, Cupcake, and Mini T in dressing up as fairies for Fairy Day. We looked AWESOME. We took the T all the way to a street festival in our fairy garb and then we hung there for a few hours.

Cupcake before leaving the house.

Joy and Cupcake on their way to Fairy Day.

Mini T running down the sidewalk.

Joy waiting for the T and looking stunning.

Our fairy shadows.

Cupcake eating my horn while I smile nicely.

Cupcake smiling nicely while I make a scary face.

Joy and Cupcake.

Mini T in front of the candy store.

At this point Cupcake had to go to a party so the rest of us went to meet up with Belle at her work. But first we took a detour to the park for fairy frolicking and pictures.

Mini T playing with my fairy dust.

Me being a fairy behind a tree.

Me, Mini T, and Joy in our fairy outfits.

Here are a couple more pictures of my costume for good measure, because I'm super proud of it:

Me with my wand and my face paint and crown clearly visible. 

Serious fairy me.

Blowing fairy dust.

I kind of love this picture. I think it captures my mischievous fairy personality.

And now that you've made it through this whole post, here's a bonus picture of Sebastian on the day we made our costumes.

Sebastian with an orange bow on his head.

Also, in case you want to make your own fairy wings the website I used is here.

Mmmmmm….

I spent my Saturday cleaning up the backyard with Joy and Belle. It looks pretty good now. Joy even got solar lights for the garden. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea:

Cherry tomatoes.

Hot peppers.

Chocolate Mint.

Regular Mint.

Tiny Cucumber.

Chives.

Sage.

Fairy garden!

Ginormous Sunflower.

Scarecrow and sunflowers.

Joy made empanadas, rice, and plantains for dinner. Belle made apple pie cupcakes with caramel frosting. And everything was vegan. Don't you wish your housemates could cook like mine?

Dinner.

Dessert.