It's all about the Garden

Since it is Spring, almost summer, our attention is mostly on the garden. Changes to the house will have to wait until next year.

This is a picture taken from the kitchen window on May 2 (that's my dad playing the guitar).


This is the Garden from the kitchen window, taken this morning.

Not only are the grapevines coming out, so is everything else. We have roses bushes that have bloomed. There are a variety of ground vines that we have no idea what they are. Today the Good Mr. Dr. is going to trim back the ground plants. Tomorrow we will go out to buy a composting bin. Our farm share starts this week, so we are going to have a lot of veggie scrap. We're trying to reduce the amount of trash we throw out as well as make some clean new soil to rehabilitate the Garden. We went to the bookstore and got three books, including the essential Dummies Guide to Gardening, to help with figuring our how to plan and maintain our Garden.

Not all of our attention is focused on the Garden. We are doing some small things to put a "sweater" around the house to save energy. We had an energy audit done this week. It is free and they go through your whole house (or apartment) to tell you what you can do to save money on energy. The auditor also comes prepared to replace lightbulbs (and we got a three way CFL too!), put weather stripping around doors and windows, put door sweeps in, and who knows what else. We had done a lot already, but it was good to know what other inexpensive things we could do to be more energy efficient. If you live in Massachusetts, you can call 866-527-7283 to schedule an appointment.

In local news, yesterday was the Chelsea River Revel. As I always do, I volunteered to work the kayaks. This year I decided to volunteer for only a couple of hours so that I could actually enjoy the festival. Our Good Friends D and J with Little E came to come out on the canoes and kayaks. This was also going to be the year that I got to go out on the kayaks. Alas, it was not to be. The organization that provides the kayaks and canoes, their van broke down. It was too bad, because it was perfect weather to be out on the river. Oh well, there is always next year. It was still a nice festival and Little E loved the Peruvian dancers. And I got to see many of my neighbors and meet some new ones. East Boston and Chelsea are great communities.

That's all for now. In our next episode, I hope to describe our efforts to set up the compost bin and the first meals with our first week's farm share.