Saturday, November 26, 2011

Please support small businesses today!

I've been watching all that has been going on in my country for a while now.  People are pissed off.  They are pissed off that there is such a huge gap developing between the haves and the have nots.  And I know one small way everyone can help close that gap a bit.

Buy from local and small businesses this holiday season.  Start now.  You can even patronize small businesses online.  It's a small easy step in the right direction.

Please do this.  It will help everyone... including me.  Shop small businesses and keep the money out of the hands of those Wall Street execs.

http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/studio/divapixie

http://www.artfire.com/

Monday, November 7, 2011

Greenhouse groundbreaking.

We decided to break ground on our greenhouse project today.

For those of you who don't know, or more because I probably have been REALLY bad about updating my LJ lately, Lee and I have decided to tackle to project of building a greenhouse form mostly recycled materials. The inspiration for this project was our friend Jola, who has such a greenhouse attached to her little shed. We figured if they could do it, so could we.

Anyways, we purchased our 10' 4x4 posts this weekend and today we got started digging the holes for said posts. These five posts will be our support for the frame of the greenhouse, which will also be attached to a thus support by the existing shed.

So, Lee went out with the post hole digger and started digging... and hit concrete! I shit you not.... there was a sidewalk completely buried... and partially under my vegtable garden. This explains why my cucumbers did so poorly this season.

After much digging, prying and lifting.... we had quite the large stash of concrete panels and even somecurved pieces that were used as a drain next to the sidewalk. This was some old school concrete pouring.


We removed three sidewalk panels and 4 pieces of "drain" as well as two old bricks and one random large rock. UGH. After all this was taken out of the way, we tooksome bamboo pieces we have and some twine and found our line for the first side of the greenhouse. We measured out where our first two posts on that side should be located and then marked those places with some spray paint. Then it was all "hurricane Lee" from that point on. He dug a 24" hole with the post hole digger,injuring his knee and nose in the process. No worries, just bruises and small lacerations... no sprains or breaks.


Doesn't look like much huh? Well, one two foot hole dug.... only 4 more to go. Then we are on to placing and Quickcreting in posts. It's the first step anyways.