Town House Homestead Tuesday

Today I am a lot tired and going to take it easy. Temperatures are headed up into the nineties and it will be a slow putter day. First an update on the furniture rescues and their status. 

The rescued chair is all repainted white and is now home with my desk. The decision to paint it white was the correct one. It makes my desk look sharp and refreshing.

The rescued rolling file holder is complete. I think it came out quite well. I now have a large pot of endive growing in it along with a large pot of flat leaf parsley. So wonderful to have the time to restore items and put them to use.

We did some thrift store shopping and found some vintage Pyrex, a Vera scarf, a vintage towel, a new mouse for a computer, candles and of course books.. We shopped at a library book store for some too

From my container garden I harvested a few ripening tomatoes and can't wait until they're ready to use for a meal.

I have two good size sweet pepper plants growing and as you can see they're producing well. Not ready to harvest yet. These are carnival peppers and they should turn color before they are ready. 

This jalapeno pepper plant was a gift from the universe. We intended to purchase it and several days later, after looking at the receipt, we discovered we hadn't been charged for it. It is producing what it can in it's tiny container.

We purchased a habenaro pepper plant and after I thinned them to other pots had seven individual plants, for the price of one, that as you can see are starting to produce peppers. I am looking forward to making some habenero pineapple jelly. 

I have two large and long pots of beans growing. The beans are coming, but so far not enough to make a meal, but it won't be long. I also have a pot of spinach growing. These plants are moved outside during the day and brought in to the breezeway in the evening. We haven't been here long enough to build an outside "protected" garden  yet, but it will come. In the mean time the breezeway serves as a lovely green house for my container garden. No critters have touched the tomatoes, so they spend the night outside. It's been fun and later this week I am going to plant some cucumber seeds in a pot with a tomatoe cage. It never hurts to try and learn. That's what's happening here at the new Town House Homestead. Thank you for stopping by and have a great week. 

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. 

Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

Things move along quickly when you're having fun. Did I say that? I always feel busy, but some how it's not all fun. Plenty is though and I'm enjoying my labor.

This past week my daughter baked lemon lavender shortbread cookies. They were beyond awesome. We've harvested a new crop of lavender to dry and use and there's plenty more to come. 

Do you recognize it? The new to us green Cinderella Pyrex bowl found thrifting earlier. I put it to use making up my corn bread mix for the up coming chili season. It's all stored in Ball jars along with the extra corn meal. Some is in the pantry for instant use. 

Since the holiday was celebrated quietly and there was just two of us and we didn't need a lot, we only had one dessert of  red, white and blue cookies after the turkey burgers, corn on the cob and roasted rosemary potatoes. 

The container gardening is going well. I am getting a good harvest of herbs and the sweet potatoes are getting larger every day. 

The peppermint is getting ready for me to dry the leaves for my winter supply of tea. I have peppermint simple syrup blending for my ice tea. 

I always love the freebies and have decided to share them this week. I'm always trying to save on my groceries and use some coupons, but a few programs allow you to get cash back on items other than a lot of processed foods. This includes fruit and vegetables which you never see coupons for. This past week Savingstar.com had free Morton salt. All you do is request the item and when you purchase the item with any of your registered grocery or drugstore cards they credit your account with the full purchase price or the coupon offer price. To save more you can use regular manufacturers coupons at the store to purchase the item if one is available. It takes a few minutes, but it's worth it when that cash becomes available. I got one box of salt and the other was a surprise from a friend who likes my baking. It's already saved in the canning jars I found thrifting earlier and I recycled the salt container tops to put on my canning jars for future use. This idea I found on Pinterest.com.

Savingstar had a free offer for a Hershey chocolate bar and it has been put aside for that dreaded, overwhelming desire for chocolate. Yes, I can resist until then.

It's been a busy week here at the townhouse. I've had sewing for income to keep me busy and cleaning, photographing and editing pictures of items to list on the store and the regular life that keeps us hopping. I was blessed last week with a day long visit with my grandsons and this week I will get to spend time with my granddaughter. They grow so fast and I cherish every minute with them. Thank you for stopping by and I wish everyone a wonderful week.