Shout out and fun with parenthesis

Skrubtudsen at In the Toad's Garden recently put up a really cool post about mobile community gardens (Ørestad Mobile Eco-gardens). I'm not sure what his affiliation is with the project (I guess I could ask), but he has shared a few posts this past year on the development of the movement (yes I just called it a movement). Rob at One Straw Revolution does something similar, but I don't believe the garden containers he makes are transportable once they've been filled with dirt (again, I guess I could ask). I just want to give a "Hell Yes!" to these guys and any one else out there who brings gardening to those who live in communities where backyards aren't in surplus. I hope some day to do the same for some of the neighborhoods in the Philly area.

Thanks guys, you make change inspirational.

Backyard Breakfast

This morning I went out back, gathered some eggs, harvested red oak leaf lettuce, picked some sage, and clipped a few leaves of chard. Fifteen minutes later they became breakfast. Other than the olive oil everything came from our garden/coop and it was delicious. This is one of the major reasons why we shop at home.

More Photos Coming

Our polling peas were in need of a place to climb. This is our third year gardening and every year we change the design of our trellises. This year's model is a little labor intensive, but all of the major materials are natural. We should be done with the whole thing tomorrow, weather permitting, and will share more photos with a more detailed description. Until then, here's a sneak peek.

No Mow

Our landlord has a keen interest in just letting things go. We won't mention the condition of the house (bad vibes), but outside there is an odd array of random volunteer trees and patches of grass a foot or so high. I don't know what it is, but he hates having the grass cut. We suffer our share of ticks through the year, nothing bad, and the chickens think it sucks. However, right now it's not so bad. The wildness of our yard has invited a shabby meadow. There is color everywhere.

Thinking Way Ahead

In the world of "What ifs," Meg and I have contemplated the possibility of renting for another year or two and what that would mean for the garden. The idea we are tossing around is joining the herb garden with the vegetable garden to create what would be a 3,000 square foot backyard market.

I took this photo from the far edge of the herb garden furthest away from the vegetable garden. If you look to the far right of the photo you can see a little concrete pillar (it's a stand for the birdbath), that marks where the herb garden ends. (I know it doesn't look like much of an herb garden now, but Meg, myself, and Steveo have big plans for it's rejuvenation later this month.) The grass area from the concrete pillar to the garden fence would be double dug and fenced in. It would be a shit load of work for someone else's property, so I hope we can get out of here before it gets to that. Like I said, it's a "What if."

Shady Grove

Not too long ago we erected a sunshade to protect the bed of greens and peas. When the rest of the garden fills in we won't have a need for the contraption, but for now the high-noon sun is just a bit too much.

The set up really is as easy as it looks; we just tied a sheet to one end of the fence and ran a line from the corners of the opposite end of the sheet to the fence on the other side. The string running on the left side of the photo is attached to the fence with loops as opposed to tying it on. The loops allow us to slide the string on and off the fence posts so we can pull the shade back on cloudy days.

The View From the Top

This photo was taken from Mt. Tammany, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware. The big road along the river is I-80, and through hikers on the Appalachian Trail have to climb down there and hike across the bridge on the road shoulder. Better than swimming, I suppose. On the left side of the river is Pennsylvania, and the small, two lane road down there is Route 611—if you drive down far enough, it turns into Broad Street in Philadelphia. Unfortunately the subway doesn't come this far north.

Eureka!

Some of our friends from grad school came along with us this weekend, and that meant we needed to rustle up some extra tents. Fortunately one of our friends, Large, comes from a family that's big on camping so she was able to borrow a couple of tents from her dad. Unfortunately, one of the tents was about 35 years old and either it had extra parts or it was missing pieces—it's hard to say exactly what was wrong with it, but something was definitely amiss.


Jeff and Jess, the two who would be using the ancient tent, started putting it together themselves but soon called for backup. Kelly and Large came in to help.*


Not much progress is made, so a strategy meeting is held.


Large quits, and the rest of the tent pieces are forced into place.


Jeff shoots the tent an angry look as he wonders why it is nearly as tall as him, but only half as long.


The fly is on. Wow, what a spiffing tent.


I wonder why this company isn't around anymore?


*As I was doing this post and talking about that sad tent, Kelly said, "Please do not put up any photos of that tent with me near it. I do not want to be associated with that catastrophe."

Over the River and Through the Woods

So, this weekend we headed up to the Delaware Water Gap to do some camping. The Water Gap is mostly reserved as park land, and it covers a huge area where the Appalachians cross the Delaware River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. We camped right next to the river, which was nice. Here's the view from our tent:


That's New Jersey on the other side. From where we were, you couldn't even smell it.

The Eyes Have It

Our potatoes showed up today—a bit later than we'd have liked, but they're here all the same. We got some All Blues and Yukon Golds, and we'll pick up some kind of red variety to add to the mix.

We're off to northern PA for some (possibly cold, wet) camping this weekend, so expect some backdated posts to be thrown up hastily on Sunday night or Monday. Also, I have about twelve million unread garden blog posts hanging about in my Google reader, so I'll be making the rounds to see what all you folks have been up to.