Garden, take 1

I've been reading. Not that that's news, but I've been devouring everything I can find about sustainable gardening, eating locally, and being a good steward of our planet. Sounds cheesy, huh? Not so much when you consider that popcorn, cookies, and gas station crackers have a preservative made from butane...or that a cow fed solely on corn wouldn't live past two years old because its liver would explode.

OK, with that preface, where can I go now? Hm...stepping down off my soap box for a bit, I suppose. After doing all this reading, the next logical step was to start a garden. I want very much to take control over what Matt and I put into our bodies. I feel that we have a responsibility to our bodies to keep them as healthy as possible by making good choices. We can also do our part to influence the food industry in a positive way by putting our money where our values are: at the Farmer's Market, with the locally grown veggies at HT, and at restaurants that support local food.

On Saturday (4-3), Matt and I spent the morning wandering around the Piedmont Triad Farmer's Market. It has been a seriously cold winter around here. Lots of snow and super-low temperatures. As a result, there was almost no locally-grow food available yet. We saw collards, kale, mustards, and spinach, as well as these awesome planters full of lettuces. There were also sweet potatoes and regular potatoes galore.

However, the most abundant items were plants. It was so lovely to spend the morning walking along rows of green growing things. :) We bought eight heirloom tomato plants (four German Johnson and four Mortgage Lifter), garlic, Moroccan peppermint, African blue basil, stevia, Greek oregano, creeping rosemary, parsley, Cuban oregano, and aloe. I potted them all in plastic pots with the cheapest topsoil I could buy from Home Depot. I went ahead and installed those cheap, ugly metal frames for the tomatoes and put multi-colored aquarium rocks on top of the soil to help retain water and keep the squirrels out. Awesome.

The same day, I planted some seeds I bought before Spring Break! I bought long rectangular planters and filled them with the same cheap topsoil (which is gross and full of clumps and sticks, but oh well). I planted organic Swiss chard, spinach, and two varieties of lettuce. I also planted an heirloom cucumber that's round and yellow, like a lemon. I covered the soil in these pots with aquarium rocks too.

I chose the heirloom and organic varieties for a very specific reason. There are a tiny handful of major corporations (six, if I remember correctly), that control 98% of the seeds distributed world-wide for food purposes. Many of the seeds and plants distributed by these corporations have been genetically modified. Possibly the scariest modification is one called a "terminator gene", which prevents plants from reproducing naturally. This requires farmers and gardeners to buy new seeds or plants every year. There's another modification which increases resistance to diseases or pests, but only with the application of a specific chemical to "turn on" the resistance. Guess who sells the chemical? Ten points to anyone who said it was the same corporations which sell the seeds. So anyway, I don't really want all those genetically modified foods in my system. Who knows how the altered DNA might affect me? I mean, a terminator gene. Scary.

Back to work!

Sadly, after our lovely anniversary evening, I got up and drove right back to Greensboro to do more interviews and more work on the house. I'll post a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure, including one of Mom's bruise (she fell off the bottom step onto the carport on Saturday when we were leaving the house after dark).

Mom's bruise.

Daddy still had wallpaper stuck to his feet the next morning, but at least it's all down! The hall is going to look great!

Mom managed to get a stain in the shape of a chili pepper on her pants today.

Trying possible flooring options for the back bathroom (the one with the brown tile and the soon-to-be-blue walls). We're holding it up to the wall because it will be next to the darker brown tile when it is laid, but there's a white strip covering it up at the floor right now. I like this option because it will not show dirt or scratches at all. Plus, it is the closest match to the colors in the tiles.

And a close up of the same vinyl floor.

This is the other choice for that bathroom. I think it's too light and too yellow and it would show wear a lot sooner. However, I do like the pattern on it.

Here you can see how yellow it really is.

Margo stopped by this afternoon to see the house while we were working. It was fun to give her the grand tour, although I can't wait for it to be FINISHED so I can show it all off!

Also: Harold the AC guy came today, but he has to come back tomorrow with a taller ladder so he can get up in the attic and fix the broken pipe so the AC won't leak. Then it should be good and the house won't be 85 degrees or higher when we're working.

Lee at Lowe's has put the estimator's measurements in the computer, so all I have to do is go and tell him what kind of flooring I want and he will give me the numbers. I am hoping for some good financing options.

Tomorrow I am going to call Thompson's Pest Control again and see if they will come and spray ASAP. I don't think I really want to move in there until it has been sprayed.

More pictures!

Yawn! Not a lot of commentary tonight because I'm exhausted. Back to Greenville tomorrow to celebrate our one year anniversary on Monday!

Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy for now...more to come!

Long day of work!

My parents and I spent all day at the house working. We're exhausted. Many thanks to Thomas and Mandy for stopping by to help and staying for hours! :) Yay! We cleared a lot of wallpaper today...the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen are done, and the hall is about 1/4 done...maybe a little less. It's a lot harder because it's been painted over, but it's going to look so good when it's done!

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. :)

Making the Daddy face and eliminating spiders!

Thomas was very disturbed that we fit on the countertops.

Wallpaper chaos...and the remains of a rainbow on the wall.

Taking a break.

Jazzi helped peel some wallpaper!

Tha hall wallpaper wants to stay attached. Yuck.

But the kitchen looks great! Ready for paint! (When we pick a color...)

A tornado? Nope...wallpaper peeling fiends! Thanks Thomas and Mandy!

Hall wallpaper again.

This is what Jazzi REALLY spent her day doing. :)

Welcome and unwelcome visitors, paint colors

Sharon came and hung out with me at the house today! She helped me try paint colors and offered her excellent advice and bargain hunting skills. Then she bought me [more] birthday ice cream! Yay! Thanks, Sharon!
There is a great deal of wildlife around our new house. This is partly because it's been empty for 5 years and partly because it's on one of the last undisturbed pieces of land in the area. With the new highway going right behind our property, animals are forced more and more often to live in close proximity to humans.

Twice now I have seen some kind of hawk perch on the window sills of the high windows in the back bedrooms and flap and screech like he wants to get it. It makes a lot of noise, but he surely is majestic to watch.

A less welcome guest (or three): black widow spiders! Ugh! We found 3 today. I am so glad they were outside (on the other side of the glass from me! Yay! Here are some pictures before Daddy exterminated them!



These are the paint colors we are considering for three of the rooms.

The bedroom (and possibly guest bedroom too): We want our bedroom to match the sheets and comforter we already have, so we thought we'd go with a nice mushroomy color. Sharon, Mom, and I aren't sure this is the right color, though. Mom suggested I try the next lightest color on the card and she promised to go to Lowe's with me tomorrow and help me look at other colors that are close to this one. Hmm. Also, notice the pink and purple heart wall paper and the pinky-purple paint on the walls. Definitely my room, last painted when I was 6. Whoo hoo!



The brown bathroom: What goes well with brown tiles?! I think blue, and I really like this one, even though it went on really weird because the roller was wet. Like Sharon said, "It looks like a cloudy sky!" :) It will match our blue bathroom stuff, at any rate.


Click here to see our pretty blue bathroom stuff. I think it will look great!

And finally, the kitchen: I'm really struggling with this one. Let's start by saying that the cabinets are really pretty, but the wallpaper is old and ugly and the paint underneath is, of course, much worse. So. I thought green would be nice in the kitchen because it matches our dishes (check them out here in celery and cream) and some of our other stuff. I didn't want it to look quite this institutional, though. Still hunting, because I don't like what I have.


Tell us what you think!

New home - on the web, and in Greensboro!

I decided to start yet another blog to showcase all the great things that are going on in our lives right now. Most exciting is our impending move to Greensboro, where we will be living in a house my grandfather built in the 1960's and in which both my dad and I grew up. I'm really excited about it, and probably most of the posts for now will be about the house (which needs some attention) and our move.