How I threw my back out...or...the garden is done!

I took this picture on Friday-- so a week ago-- and some of you may have seen it already, but this is how my garden looked at that time:


Click for large and legible version.

It feels good to have gotten all the veggies in and I'm so excited about my three-sisters area. I'm sort of following this guide here.

Basically you plant corn and when the corn is 6 inches high, you plant peas or beans which climb up the corn and bind nitrogen into the soil. Then you plant a vine crop like a squash or a melon which shades the roots and helps keep the weeds down. Genius.

So I have corn, sugar snap peas, and then I'm going to do one mound of melon and two mounds of spaghetti squash.

After the week I had-- Monday and Tuesday clearing the ground and fenceline, Wednesday roto-tilling and sifting the soil (with help from Dougie and Anastasia), Thursday hauling three pick up trucks' worth of yard waste and logs by myself (but I got to use the new chainsaw!!), and then Friday planting it all...plus shooting 2 long weddings Friday and Saturday...when I bent down to tie my shoes on Sunday, I couldn't stand back up again. So I've been seeing a muscular therapist and am mending well but still in pain. Damn it. I still haven't learned to pace myself-- I'm either all in or...not.

Also, Anastasia wanted me to share her chicken coop plans:





As always-- click for large and legible.

Compost I Have Loved and Chickens I Would Like

My partner-- I generally refer to her in my other blog as AVR because she has a long name-- when we first met was a firm Bostonite. Although she is an ex-Mainer, she does not own it. Or did not. The deck that I garden on was a place to put trash when she was too lazy to take it all the way out. It was covered in beer cans that another roommate (and her alcolholic bff) left there...and broken furniture from the house.

Then I started the garden.

Then I pushed until she let me get a compost bin. The compost bin was subsidized by the city. Most urban areas do it-- $100 bin for $25. Sold.



Our back yard is paved but for a 6 inch swath where the stockade fence has drifted away from the macadam. As there was nowhere to anchor the compost bin to, I laid some bricks on the rim. They work just fine.

Anyway, AVR started getting into composting and the garden and now she secretly reads about urban homesteading and wants to keep chickens....just a pair of hens for eggs. We were chatting about it sleepily the other night and decided they'd be named Adelaide and Five. Then I discovered Eglu:

Seriously-- looks like an iMac and chickens live in it.


I am now on board with chickens. Somerville permits them, too.

We like to think that we are drifting from the grid. Dream house will have a wind turbine, a big garden, and chickens out back...and oh the compost.