Friday, July 3rd
Where's the sun?
It's been raining for a week, everything is soaking wet and the river is at spring's snow melting levels. Tuesday night was literally The Deluge, water was overflowing the roof gutters in torrents. It's making work more complicated and not helping with the vegetable garden that was already suffering from the cool weather.
It's the first year that I have set up a real garden. I'm using the Square Foot Gardening approach with it's raised beds: less work... and I had the perfect spot behind the house. We're eating nice fresh lettuce, a few radishes; they haven't cooperate very well so far. I also have tomatoes, gumbos, ground cherries, peppers, basil, shiso(japaneese mint) and squashes. As usual, I took most of the house plants outdoor, except for lemon tree that is under the windows on the second floor where I can watch the little lemons grow.
This spring, the black flies where not a big problem and we managed to quickly get most of the facing done with Jacob and Stephanie's help. Only the overhangs on the East side remain in this major step for the "finished house look".
The second floor roof is turning green form the red mustard, thyme and chives we sowed. I also transplanted some periwinkle that has been growing like crazy on the septic tank for a couple of years. Next summer, the roof will be purple with flowers!
We worked on the "Chatte Room" to improve the insulation and fix it's trap door into the shed: it wouldn't close properly and let a lot of draft in.
I'm currently working on the kitchen plans while Alain is setting up a workbench in the shed in order to empty the planter that we'd been using as storage space. I hope we'll start working on the kitchen counter in about a week.
For those of you who missed the Rocket stove workshop, don't worry, we'll definitely do it again. It was a great week-end, with 14 people who all left with a twinkle in their eyes. Already some of them are planning to build their own this summer. You'll find the pictures we took in the photos' section under "June 13th 2009 workshop" and more will be added as the participants forward us their own.