Necessity, invention and novel garden delights
After concluding a week of work in Florida and narrowly succeeding in making my Denver connecting flight, I rolled back in the driveway at 2 a.m. Saturday morning. Needless to say, I did not see anything on my way inside. I briefly recall smiling as my cheek greeted the pillow.
Morning came with its usual jolt of brilliant sunlight streaming through the window directly onto my face. I chose
to roll over and ignore it for another hour. I ventured out of bed around 8am, filled my cereal bowl, and with it in hand, wandered outside. HEY! THE WALLS AND RAFTERS ARE UP! If you happened to drive by at that moment, yes, that was me doing a happy-dance in my p.j.s in the driveway.
Much of the day I spent tending the burn pile and cleaning up the mess Troy had generated in the week while I was away. His time was spent delicately weaving together the joining of the new addition with the old house. I have tremendous appreciation for the extreme care he took with installation of the flashing. In my Florida house, the framers did not take care with the flashing at one of the ridges and two months after moving in, there were stains on the ceiling from water seeping in.
Now Troy is a strong wiry guy, but not the kind of fellow I picture lobbing sheets of plywood onto the roof with
ease. How does he get the plywood sheets up there? They were certainly too heavy for me to assist with. A look at the back of the house revealed a marvelous tool he had built. There stood a gigantic art easel. Troy would carry the sheet around, lift it enough to prop it up on the easel shelf, and then from the roof, he could slide the sheets up from there.
Back in the garden I worked on the micro drip irrigation system. It’s 90% together. I’m just lacking a few line stays and a few “T” connectors. While in Florida I had the surprising delight to visit ECHO–it was a matter of a couple miles from my work appointment location. That’s Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization. I worked there a week a month for about a year back in 1994. The teaching farm has grown tremendously since then and I was surprised that the founder and wonderful fellow I worked for, Dr. Martin Price, just happened to walk through the door when I was there. He gave me a tour around the farm. I was reminded of so many really fun plants they grew and so as I left, I had to buy some packets of seed in their nursery store.
Today I planted seeds for three fun plants: garlic chives, quail grass and yard-long beans. I hope the beans grow. The kids next door would get such a kick out of beans that grow to be quite literally a yard long. I’ll have to figure out where to try to grow some moringa, red malibar spinach and vegetable amaranth.
