Garden Repast

So I took a solo camping trip over the last two nights/three days. It's something I've always wanted to do and the time was just right. Me and the dog.

Since it was just me, I decided this would be a nice time to have a little cleansing diet so to speak. No meat, diary or processed sugar. I raided the garden before the trip and got a little creative at the campsite. When it's just you and there is nothing else to do, it's amazing what you can come up with. Honestly, I'd also done a quick search online for vegan-type camping food and didn't come up with any real individual serving meals. So, here's my contribution:

Garden fresh green bean saute (with olive oil, onion, garlic powder) served with a sprinkle of nutritional yeast and homegrown parsley. All over a bed of quinoa. And a salad of tomatoes and avocado with olive oil and zatar.

Oh yeah, and this was my entire kitchen - so it doesn't take much!

Pickles!

Well, the garden is going strong. Cheryl picked a bunch of cucumbers yesterday so I made a couple of jars of refrigerator pickles for us. They are bread and butter pickles and are supposed to take 3 days to be ready to eat. I used an old pickle jar for our batch.

We also had some lovely quinoa tabbouleh with garden fresh garlic, parsley and cherry tomatoes. Lastly, falafel with yogurt cucumber sauce.

Oh and the green beans grew over night ready to pick!

How Does Our Garden Grow?

Here's an updated look at the shared garden beds! This is the garden we started with our next door neighbors. The lettuces are getting ready to eat, the broccoli is HUGE and the squashes are taking off. Cosmos, nasturtiums and marigolds pepper each bed to attract the pollinators. Baby garlic and green onions are stationed throughout the beds to detract pests. A second crop of lettuce has been planted to take the place of the mature when we collect it.

Little Garden

Babies in our newest raised bed - slowly replacing all the grass : )

Strong little green bean, just pushed through the dirt!

Radish forest, just a few days old.

Mixed greens to be shaded by green bean canopy.

And progress continues on the shed.

Roof Trusses

And work continues on my special shed! Kalvin and Jovi got the door opening framed yesterday while I took a mid-term test and sat through 2 hours of anatomy and physiology lecture. Today the three of us got through most of the roof trusses. The cross beam is new too - the idea being that we will have storage on the right half of the ceiling and then an open ceiling on the left (window side).

One of our new garden beds in the foreground  (green beans, garlic and carrots so far - planted radishes and lettuce today too)

Beeing Green

I've been looking for quick projects that can give me a break from studying and work. We also have a bit of left over odds and ends from the framing of my "shed" I'd like to figure out how to repurpose. (Yeah, that's my new work lately!) A few years back, up in B'ham, I saw these neat cylinder-filled canisters for sale in the local book store. Turns out they were bee homes, meant to attract mason bees to urban yards, providing shelter for the bees and pollinators for your garden and flower beds. So, today I decided to make my own bee home! This will eventually likely be attached to the side of my "shed", but for now I've just propped it on a fence 2x4. Not the prettiest, neatest drill holes ever, but it was a quick feel-good project. I'll let you know how it works out - if I get any bees. 

A Room of One's Own

So, the wife loves me. What's even cooler, is that her little brother loves me too. He, and his family spent this past weekend helping to build me a little room of my own. All this while I mostly studied or was in class! It's officially to be known as "the shed", you could also call it my woman cave. It's a 10x20 structure with a mix of repurposed and new materials. Here's the skinny on what it will include in the end:

• Leftover flooring from my in-law's house
• Leftover 3-tab shingles for the roofing from a friend's house
• Recycled windows from the Rebuilding Center
• We are looking for shingles on Craig's List leftover from someone else's project... 
• I'm also looking for some good solar lighting options
• Rainwater catchment - not sure if we will just water the adjacent garden beds with it or hook up a gray water faucet for projects in the shed itself. 
• We were toying around with a green roof for part of it, but I don't think this is the best idea with the shed being entirely under very large cedar trees completely shading it and shedding acidic branches constantly. 
• I plan to make several hook racks out of the larger branches we had to trim from the closest cedar tree. 

That's it to start. Would love feedback, ideas, tips! 

Here's some pictures of the process. 

Kalvin and our nephew Cade have their handprints added!