Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Town House Homestead "?" Wednesday

Okay I'm going to admit that I am thrown off by the holiday. It's not Tuesday. The weekend for us was mostly work and prepping for this Saturday's final move. We are ready. Work included mowing, edging, trimming, cutting, and cleaning this half acre of land, more unpacking, and getting some plants in. 


Yesterday a couple more packages arrived. Mostly items we haven't been able to find at local stores, including the "big box" stores, and yes a couple of treats. This package was especially interesting. It looked like the Godfather had delivered a detached leg. It was wrapped in a giant gray poly bag and taped for shipping. 


Inside the package was this wonderful new tool. I have named it the "scissor stick". It trims grass and weeds in hard places, and if like me your hip and knees are aging, you need a "scissor stick".  A co-worker of my daughter's told her of this tool. We played with it for a few minutes last evening and it is great. What's even better is that it reduces our carbon footprint, because we really don't have to have one of those noisy dirty weed trimmers or blower. Simply cut and rake and it's done. 


This is how the "scissor stick" works. Happy, happy, happy that we were introduced to this tool and if anyone knows the actual name for this tool I'd love to know, but for know if we ask each other for the tool we can chuckle and know what is being asked for.


Back when times were better for me I'd search flea markets and yard sales for unique pieces that I could use for planters. This piece is an old steamer that I spent $2 for, and when I was downsizing for economic reasons, a place for it and the dream to make it a planter was passed on to my sister-in-law. On her first visit here at the new Town House Homestead, when she came to see if my daughter, her God Child had done okay with the purchase of her home and land, she brought this to me all glued together. The cover has been inverted to hold the miniature garden she made and all I had to do was spray paint it and set in the plant. She even bought me the paint. The delicate plants are starting to hang over the sides which was what I wanted them to do. 


Still another of my daughter's co-workers had her husband build her a garden planter out of a pallet. With my actual in ground garden not going to be ready until some fall planting and next springs planting, my daughter asked if he would make one for me. She came to see the house and they both surprised me with it. I have it behind the garage and have put my herbs in it with some spinach. I have planted more since this picture and the spinach is now sprouting. It's an awesome idea and space saving. It also gave me that chance to have some garden and not kill myself digging through the clay earth.


Because the tilling will come slowly, the seedlings I had started were dying off. Yesterday, after grabbing as many planters and buckets as I could from the apartment, I managed to plant three tomato plants and the strongest peppers. Four of them. A sweet variety called carnival blend. I don't mind container gardening for now and I'm hoping that the country critters won't bother them. 


I discovered some well established chive plants in the garden that was already here and the flowers were opening. I harvested the chives and flowers for some holiday cooking and started a new jar of chive vinegar for summer salads. We're still looking and learning about this piece of land and we're hoping the one tree in the yard that bloomed last week is some kind of apple and is healthy. That's whats new here at the new Town House Homestead. Stay tuned because there's plenty more where this came from and if you should wonder if we are happy, the answer is yes, even with all the work it feels like home.Thank you for visiting and have a great week. 

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