PICTURE POST

Major Back and Arm Workout

After the Dirt is Gone...(sing with me everybody)

Garden Bed with the most shade gets Lettuce/Spinach/Carrots/Radishes

LETTUCE SPROUTS

Pots for Parsley, Rosemary, Basil, Mint, Chives, and some other stuff

Prepping potatoes for planting

PLANTED!

Sad, dead Love Apricot. 

And now, we wait

SEEDS!

This past Saturday I spent my morning snooping around a garden store looking at seedlings, plants, seeds, trees and all the accessories that go with them.  I struck up a couple of conversations with some growers, got some helpful insight and by the end of the day...all four beds were planted.

So now we wait.  

What I heard from every gardener I've talked to, was to not expect anything significant this summer. I started this backyard project a little too late, I should have been planting seeds a month ago but time and resources were scarce. So, we'll see what comes out of all of this.  

THE LOVE PEAR

Oh, sad news.  

The Love Apricot is dead.  I did a branch test on it to see if the main stalks were still retaining any water and they snapped way to easily.  And the branches were brittle to the core.  I found out from one of the growers at the Garden Depot that Apricots don't really fare well down here.  So I picked up a pear tree from Lowe's that was already pretty mature and planted it instead.  I thought about getting an apple tree, but I'd need to get two because they didn't have any self pollinating species for sale.  And I'm done digging holes. 

PLANTED!

So what's next?  

Well, I could look into a landscaper to try and even out the backyard sod situation a little bit.  But I think I'll save that for later this summer when it starts too cool and the rains come back. 

I think my next project will have to be an indoors adventure.  Mark will be moving into his new apartment in the next two weeks and with him goes all of his furniture and appliances.  Which means I'll need:

• Washer/Dryer
• Kitchen Table
• Kitchen appliances/utensils/ware
• Couch
• Coffee Table
• Entertainment system (minus a TV, I already have that)
• Cleaning supplies (swifer/vacuum) 
• Patio Furniture

SPROUTS! (carrots)

But that's just the beginning.  There are a lot of indoor projects I want to accomplish this summer:

• Kitchen shelving remodel (probably gonna wait for Jeston)
• Kitchen countertop/backsplash remodel (probably gonna wait for Jeston)
• Chalkboard doors for the laundry room
• Behind the door shelf unit for the bathrooms
• Curtains for the windows (probably gonna tackle this one first)
• Shelving for the office and living room
• Wall Decor
• Green Screen wall in the spare bedroom 
• Garage organization 
• Find a roommate?

So over dirt

Ready for planting!

I've dug holes, replanted trees, stained wood, built garden beds, dug more holes, filled those holes and filled those beds, started a compost pile, dispersed dirt randomly throughout the lawn to even it out a little and I've only ruined one pair of shoes during the process.


It's been a grueling adventure to undertake on my own but I feel really accomplished.  In fact, this week has been a great week for me and for a lot of people around me.  Friends are making changes in their lives that are for the better, I'm embarking on a group project that could potentially be really rewarding, and I'm faced with a unique job opportunity that will most likely change my entire existence.  Also, it was Jeston's 25th birthday and I cooked him some food that I ate (because he's in the Virgin Islands).

Overall, it's been overwhelming in all the right ways.  

Evening out the yard

TIME FOR PLANTING

I've gotten to the point where there is no more preparation to be done.  It is time for planting.  And that makes me crazy anxious.  Most of the time I thought gardening consisted of dirt, water, sun and seeds.  A careful balance of both and you'll be successful.  NOPE!


There's soil pH levels, pests, birds, soil compositions, fertilizers, plant varieties, direct versus indirect sunlight, which plants need other plants near them to grow better, and all the other small details that botanists have a leg up on over me.

What am I planting?

A visitor!

Here's the laundry list of things that I want to plant.  I've been researching which plants go well together, what varieties do well in this climate and while most of the vegetables I'm planting aren't super finicky, with my luck they'll all die a slow and painful death because I didn't follow all the details to the letter.

1. Bed #1: 6 hrs of sun min.
1. Spinach: Dark Green Bloomsdale
2. Lettuce: Salad Bowl or Red Sails
3. Carrots: Danvers Half Long 
4. Radishes: Cherry Bell
2. Bed #2: 8 hrs of sun min.
1. Tomatoes: Sun Sugar or Super Sweet 100 (I prefer smaller tomatoes)
2. Asparagus: Jersey Gem or Jersey Gaint
3. Garlic: Softneck
4. Red Onions
3. Bed #3: 8 hrs of sun min.
1. Chickpeas  ended up not finding plants or seeds for this.  Maybe I'll try it in a pot later
2. Cucumbers: bush
3. Beets: Chioggia 
4. Broccoli: Green Duke 
4. Bed #4: 8 hrs of sun min.
1. Potatoes
2. Sweet Potatoes
3. Green Beans
4. Brussel Sprouts

The more I read about these vegetables, the more I realize that I may be taking on more than I can chew.  I'm hoping that when I go to Lowe's/nursery this weekend that they'll be able to give me some more consistent advice. 

Panoramic of the backyard!

A bench for pots

drilling the pilot holes in the top piece

It's been a bit of a struggle to make sure I'm keeping to the schedule I set for myself. While weather and funds prove to be inflexible obstacles, I don't like not accomplishing tasks.  Perhaps I can blame my parents for this trait, the constant need to be producing something.  I don't feel right if I'm wasting my time doing nothing.  I mean, yes I can just relax and chill and do nothing.  I'm very good at that.  But when it comes to tasks that need to be completed and there are things in my way that I can not control keeping me from completing those tasks...then I start getting unsettled.

And at this point I need to start sowing my beds.  I've got the list of veggies I want to plant, which ones go well with others, but we've been on Tornado watch this week and I don't have the supplies I need until this paycheck kicks in.

So I made some benches. 

Benches made easy

I had already bought the wood on my last trip to Lowes.  It's been cut and stained, all I needed to do was drill the nails.

Since this wood was a lot thicker than the cedar, I started off with pilot holes first.

These benches weren't really meant for sitting on.  They are too awkwardly high, short and narrow for that.  I made these benches to house the potted plants I intend to keep.

They turned out alright.  They will serve their purpose well.  Any maybe a few other purposes in the future...who knows. :)

Drrty, filthy grumbles.

Spring is happening!

So the beds are created, they are installed, and now they need soil so I can start planting. From the research I've gathered, the best time to start planting is around April/May.  Being that April is over, I need to get soil into the beds soon if I'm going to start planting seedlings before it gets too hot.

Since the beds are so tall, the volume calculates out to 30 cubic feet per bed or 1.1 cubic yard.  And with 4 beds that'll add up to 120 cubic feet (4.4 cubic yards) of soil that I need to purchase.  Granted, I don't want the beds full to the top with soil, and from what I've read you want to mix a variety of soil types together to help with water retention and plant growth. So I really need to do my research and look into what options are best for me financially, and physically.

OPTIONS

1. Call a landscaper and have them dump a shit ton of soil on my driveway
1. Pro- Price is cheaper also, I don't have to haul around dirt in the back of my Element.
2. Con- I don't get to have a mix of soils that I wanted. Also all the delivery services say they can only drop off contents on the driveway...that's annoying.  I don't want to continue walking back and forth between the front and back yard to move dirt (then again...more calories are being burned)
2. Spend $520 at Lowes on different variety of soils, mix it all together 
1. Pro- I get the soil composition I desire, don't have to coordinate with an outside vendor and I can put the dirt in the backyard instead of on my driveway. 
2. Con- more expensive and my car can't accommodate all those bags in one trip
1. 16 bags of garden soil 
2. 16 bags of compost
3. 14 bags of peat moss
4. 8 bags of horticultural vermiculite
5. all the shredded newspaper I can get my hands on
6. A few dissembled cardboard boxes (for layering)
7. ow my back. 
3. Buy the soil online
1. Pro- I can pick what kinds I like
2. Con- Deliver is expensive

That's about half of the pile.

So I slept on the ideas, put in a few quote requests to some landscapers online and got some great feedback.  There's a company near me called Atlantic Mulch that engineers soil for garden types and they sell their cubic yards for $30 per yard.  Which means I can most of my options available to me.  I'll get the bulk soil I need (compost and garden soil) from the landscapers, the extra soil from Lowes in a smaller quantity that allows me to move the bags in one load and save me a ton of money and pain but...DIRT IN THE DRIVEWAY.

Well, you win some you lose some.

The dirt was dropped off Thursday night so I did a few wheelbarrows of dirt to the beds.  I'm going to buy Peat Moss and Horticultural Vermiculite on Sunday and layer that in.

Element at the Highline Hotel

Now, there's a second problem, I'm heading out to NYC for the weekend to perform with Element and won't get a chance to move all the dirt that's ALREADY ON MY DRIVEWAY until Monday afternoon.  It's going to be a challenge.

For those who are unaware, I was on NBC's The Sing-Off with the all-female group Element from NYC.  I'm the beatboxer for the group and when there's major performances in the city, they'll fly me up. 

Challenge Accepted. 

WOOD?!

[insert Full House Uncle Joey reference]

WOOOOD?!

Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I go into home improvement stores like Lowes and Home Depot.  Mostly because I only ever went into those stores with my dad, who is a general contractor/engineer and has home improvement skills (he built our family's beach home in South Florida).  But being the productive person that I am, I try to do as much background research as I can before I go into any purchase (shoes are an exception).  And when it came to building raised garden beds, all the content I found was similar.

1. Buy the wood
2. Cut the wood
3. Stain the wood
4. Nail the wood
5. Install the wood

So I walked into Lowes confident on what I wanted and how I wanted it cut.  Until the lumber guy asked...'what are you doing?'

"I'm building raised garden beds. They are going to be 2 feet high, 3 feet wide and 5 feet long.  I'm going to need ____ pieces cut into ____ feet long blah blah blah blah blah" I replied confidently.

"Did you know that this wood here is treated and when it rains those chemicals will seep into your soil and cause issues with your growing? You'd be better off using cedar wood, it's untreated and it will last longer with the proper care" the lumber specialist explained with an air of....you didn't do your homework did you little girl....YES I DID SHUT UP!

Special Walnut stain on the wood

...by the way, cedar wood is more expensive and has different dimensions so I had to redo all my math...

But it is also the name of my family's contracting company (Cedars, Inc.) and the symbol on the Lebanese flag, so I didn't mind the change in wood choices. 

$500 later....I had wood, a brush, a bucket of exterior wood stain, turpentine to clean the brush between stainings, a tarp to protect the patio area and a nail gun. Over the next week and a half I spent each sunny afternoon staining all the 75 pieces of the wood, both sides. 

YOU ARE NOT HELPFUL

Unfortunately, the nail gun required a compressed air hose to power up and I didn't have that option so I returned the nail gun and instead bought some screws.  Mark said I could use his power tools to drill the holes I needed to attach the wood to the braces and corners. 

Up next?! 

CONNECT THAT ONE PIECE OF WOOD TO THAT OTHER PIECE OF WOOD! 

Conquering power tools

Remodeling requires you to be able to use power tools to complete certain tasks. Yes, technically you could use man power to nail and screw things into things (heh), but I don't have hulk arms and I don't plan on spending my time at the gym cultivating hulk arms.  I like my lady arms.


So, I'm going to have to learn how to use power tools.  And today is that day.

FRIENDS! LISTEN!  HEED MY WARNING!

Power tools are dangerous.  My dad, the guy who built a house and a company with the help of a multitude of power tools, has also succumbed to some severe accidents when using said tools.  This one time in high school I got a call from my brother who was frantically screaming

'Dad cut his arm off with the circular saw'

A sentence that definitely warrants a frantic scream.

Special thanks to Kristin and her foot
for helping me today

Thankfully he didn't cut it off, but he did hit bone and he does have a very big scar from the incident.  And being that I am his daughter, I have inherited a lot of my father's traits.  Some of them are incredible, like his sense of imagination and ingenuity.  I'm glad to have some of that in my genetic makeup. Other traits of his I inherited are his klutziness.  Unfortunately, the combination of my imagination plus the power of power tools plus klutziness equals....I may cut my arm off trying to nail some wood to some other wood.

How?  I dunno, but it's very possible.


Thankfully my friend Kristin came over and offered to help with the assembly (THANKS KLO). We started off by drilling pilot holes first and then drilling in the screws but found that we could forgo the first step pretty quickly.  The beds came together nicely.  There were a few instances of warped wood splitting but nothing that damaged the integrity of the final product.

BEDS INSTALLED!

We ended up doing three beds in one day but without the braces on the longer sides.  I needed to buy more wood for that.

The next day I ended up back at Lowes buying some more wood and some chicken wire for the bottom of the beds. Then I finished up the last box, added on the side braces and placed them into their plots.  I ended up turning them upside down so they sat lower on the ground.  I'll figure out how to trim the tops later. 

I also bought some more wood to create two benches for my potted plants because now that I'm confident with a power drill...I AM UNSTOPPABLE!

Up next.....dirt. 

Just keep digging

The trees were doing well in the yard.  Well, the 'love apricot' stopped showing signs of growth.  I'm hoping it's just a phase though since I do plan on continuing to live in this house if Jeston and I have to break up...which could be awkward.

DIG A HOLE!

But the compost pile had started becoming unruly with all the kitchen scrapes and dead foliage from the winter.  Plus Mark's dog, Kali, found out that's where she can go to find fun things to eat.  I had researched a bunch of different compost designs and thought about buying a compost bin from Lowes but ultimately I wanted it to be easy for me to access but not for Kali.

The simplest solution was simple.  Since the compost was in a corner of the yard, two sides of it were already protected.  I just needed to create a fourth corner post and then conceal the sides from Kali or any other hungry visitors.  With a medium sized wooden post, a staple gun that kinda looks like a hammer, some chicken wire and a mallet, I enclosed the compost area! SUCCESS!

Contained Compost Area

Of course the second I turned around all I saw were piles of dirt from where I had dug holes and holes where I had dug holes.  Pretty much, I had a lot of holes and dirt.  Which had brought me to my next remodeling project....

...RAISED GARDEN BEDS 

(also known as: postponing the holes and dirt problem)

Those things are all the rage now.  But popularity aside, it was almost necessary to plan on raised beds since our lot was about 2 inches of sod and then nothing else but dense clay and rock.  Not something that is easy to grow things in. 

holes on holes on holes

I spent the rest of the week preparing the ground for the beds.  I measured the length and width to be 3x5 feet and dug out the area.  Jeston and I had drawn out the plans for how we wanted to design the beds; we wanted them tall and possibly with a ledge around them so you can sit and enjoy the yard in all it's imaginable splendor.  We also had originally planned on doing four beds but I figured I'd start on a few and see how they went.  

Once the bed plots were dug, I had two options....

1. buy the wood for building the beds
2. do something with all that dirt

Dirt be gone!

The second option won.  Mostly because I had cultivated this thing about dirt and I hadn't gotten my paycheck yet to go and buy the wood. 

In a couple afternoons, with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, I moved all the misplaced earth from the holes and plots I dug.  The dirt was redistributed to fill the many holes as well as used in an attempt to level out a weird slope on one side of the yard. 

Next stop?  Wood.

The Backyard...

...was a mess. Not like, old tires and an abandoned rusty car kind of mess.  Just, not well maintained or thought out kind of mess.

Trying to avoid killing the Japanese Maple

The previous owners had planted six saplings right in the center of the backyard which didn't make any sense to me.  If they were to stay there and grow to their full size, it would severely limit the growing and living potential of the space.

So I moved them.  

Jeston had already dug a hole for me before he left so I dug out the 4 foot Japanese Maple and replanted it.  That took a full week.  I was so concerned about the rootball and the shock of relocating a plant that I used a hand trowel and carefully dug around the sapling until I was able to grab it with one hand and move it to it's new home. 

Japanese Maple right after replanting

I ended up digging two more holes and dug out the remaining two 3 foot Purple Magnolia's.  That only took a few days since I realized I didn't need to be SO delicate with the relocation process and that a shovel was a lot more efficient than me sitting on the ground with a hand trowel.


All three saplings were relocated along the perimeter of the yard within two weeks and the rest of the plants looked stupid so they were cut up and put in the compost.  Sorry stupid previous owners, those plants looked stupid. 

After that whole process, the yard looked like I had really large gophers or rabbits inhabiting my grounds (which, oddly enough is one of my inexplainable fears...that large rabbits will destroy me).  So I was faced with an option.  Keep digging or stop?

Purple Magnolias doing well in their new homes

LET'S KEEP DIGGING

What we did before he left

The House!

The house was bought back in October 2013.  It had carpet and popcorn ceilings and a lot of dog piss stains throughout the house. The previous owner had a lap dog but we won't hold that against her...

Before we moved in...

...Jeston decided to use part of the loan for the house to redo the floors, walls and ceilings - because he's smart and knows that an endeavor like changing floors, walls and ceilings should be done while the house is still empty.

So goodbye piss-stained carpet, goodbye popcorn, goodbye faded walls!  Hello wood laminate floors, smooth ceilings and paint.  You look so nice in your new home.

Not the final product

For the most part, it was ready for us to move in.  I had made a fun trip down to FL to pack up the rest of my belongings.  Got a little sidetracked with a mugging in downtown WPB (travel in groups of three everybody) but by Halloween we had a mattress, some new walls, floors and ceilings, and a bunch of furniture/appliances that our roommate Mark brought with him (THANK YOU MARK).

Then winter came.  

Having grown up in very hot climates my whole life (Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Florida), my body is not accustomed to dealing with the following weather patterns on a regular reoccurring basis:

• Ice
• Cold Rain
• Sleet
• Snow
• Really anything below 50 degrees Fahrenheit 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaz3Vf2lnt0

It's just not in my nature to handle being exposed to those circumstances constantly and from November to March I was kind of a cranky bitch.  So, I apologize if I offended or upset anyone, I just wasn't myself. I had to wear socks. And because of that we really didn't do any work on the house during those months.

But we did talk a lot about what we liked.  Jeston signed up for a Pinterest account so we could share ideas or inspirations of what we wanted. There were a lot of drunk nights talking about our plans for the kitchen, yard and decor themes throughout the house.  But not much action....just a lot of remodeling foreplay. 

SPRING

There's rain, humidity, sun, some chilly wind here and there, but the best part is that I can go without having to wear socks anymore.  

I hate socks. Yes, even in closed toe shoes. 

But I'm into Spring.  It was the perfect excuse to start fixing the mess that was the backyard.  And thankfully Jeston wasn't scheduled to leave until mid-April so I was able to use him and his manly strength for a few weeks. 

He dug some holes for me.  Ripped out a bunch of stupid looking plants, cleared out the back and front yard of random winter remains (leaves, branches, etc.) and piled it all up in a corner so I could start a compost pile.  There were a lot of weird concrete stepping stones and pavers used by the previous owners in the yard.  Those were all moved to a unified place to either be thrown out or used later...who knows.

We also planted an apricot tree and aptly named it our 'love apricot' because everyone measures their relationship through the growth of things.  And we decided not to grow any forms of animals (humans, pets, etc.) so instead we bought and planted an apricot sapling.  So hopefully it lives...or else we'll have to break up.

 

Sad little Love Apricot

Jeston dug a hole!

And then he left.  Off to Fort Lauderdale/Caribbean for rehearsals and dry dock and all the things that an audio engineer does to prepare for working and living 8 months on a cruise ship.  

From that point forward...the remodeling was on my shoulders.