Garden Update

We have kind of three garden areas in the new house.  There are lots of perennials planted in the retaining wall, many of the plants I still don't know what they are.  We also have the original garden (OG), a 15'X100' area planted by the orginal homeowners that has rhubard, raspberries, and strawberries.  And then we have our big garden space that we fenced in.  Here are some photos of the retaining wall garden.  If anyone knows what some of these flowers are, please comment!

Here's a photo of the whole garden.  You can see that it's overgrown, but I want to figure out what everything is before I start changing things.

Pretty yellow flower growing out of another plant.

The peonies are almost ready to bloom!

A different yellow flower growing amongst other things-are they weeds?  Should I be pulling them out?

Bleeding Hearts!

These aren't in the retaining wall, but they're spreading like crazy!

Next let me give you a photo tour of the OG!  Here's what the previous owners had already planted!

I think this is some kind of iris.  There are a ton of irises all around the property.

Crazy big rhubarb!

So many strawberries!  This winter I want to make it look like an E and make rows for easier picking.

Raspberries!

And here is the garden that Jason and I built!  We still have a lot to do in it, but we've got a good start!

Tomatoes and Peppers in the raised Hugelkultur bed

Peppers and dill!

There's a butterfly drinking from the bird bath.  The solar fountain didn't survive the move.  :(

One of a bajillion hops plants!

Potato bed-the left side is red potatoes and the left are ozettes, a potato native to the Pacific Northwest!

Our row of 4 apple trees-Spizenburg, Cox Orange Pippen, Ashmead Kernal, and Arkansas Black

Our row of stone fruit-Craig Crimson Cherry, Red Globe Peach, Chinese Apricot, and Early Italian Plum

A friend gave us some golden raspberries, hopefully a few will survive.  These look really sad!

This will be an herb spiral soon

Blackberries

Blueberries

Our hugelkultur bed

Well, those are our gardens so far this spring.  We still need more vegetable gardens and to sheet mulch the grass away, but we're slowly getting there!

Loving Life

I am so happy that we moved to Kettle Falls!  We live in a beautiful place.  Everywhere I drive, I need to force myself to look at the road and not the mountains or rivers or lakes all around.  I love our house.  It's really starting to feel like a home.  We still have some renovating and decorating to finish, but it's getting there.  I love my kitchen, with my refrigerator that can fit a large pizza box and my gas range with electric oven and the fact that it's open so I can see Jason in the living room while I am cooking or look out the windows at the gardens and the mountains beyond.  I love our garden!  I can't wait until our trees and berries mature and start producing like mad!  I love the possibilities and the fact that we won't be able to finish putting in everything we want in the garden this year, it leaves more surprises for next year!  And I really love the community that we are building here.  I have met some really great people and already I feel like I know more people here than I did with four years in San Diego.  We're building a community, a home, and a life here and I couldn't be more happy!

I love our home!

Giving Up the Hot Tub

Neither Jason nor I ever really wanted a hot tub.  When we would go to a hotel with one, we might go in it.  I enjoy using my Aunt Polly's hot tub when I visit Minnesota, but we never would have bought one for ourselves. 

When we bought our house, it came with a hot tub.  There were some issues because we closed on our house in February and although we put antifreeze in the tub, there was ice in the tub and pipes in February.  When we filled it and turned it one, one of the diverter valves burst and sent geysers of water spurting up.  There is one hot tub repair place in Colville and they didn't have the part to fix it.  We called places in Spokane and they didn't have one.  Finally we ordered one from Seattle, it was on back order, and a week later it arrived.  While waiting for the part, we put a board and bricks to keep the geyser flow contained.  After fixing the diverter valve, we started taking stock of our new hot tub.  About half of the jets had either fallen out or didn't work.  The plastic from the jets was deteriorating and there were always little bits of plastic suspended in the water.  We bought a pool skimmer but some of the pieces were too small to catch.  Yet in the winter, even without the jets, nothing warmed me up faster than sitting in the hot tub.  I loved sitting in the hot tub and reading a book before bed.  We decided to wait to decide what to do about the tub.  Then last week I got into the tub and it was warm-not hot.  It was only 96 degrees.  I changed the filter and I checked the pipes and I couldn't figure out what was wrong.  I called our local hot tub place in Colville and they gave me their technician's phone number and despite leaving numerous messages, he never called us back.  I called Spokane repair places and they would charge $80 just to come up and give an estimate. 

The Hot Tub in question

All the parts that need to be replaced (I don't know why the photo is upside down)

That helped make the decision for me.  We had never really wanted a hot tub and I didn't want anything causing so much stress, so we gave the hot tub to one of Jason's co-workers in return for 2 cords of wood to burn this winter.  Now that it's warm out, I don't really miss it.  And if I want to warm up come winter, we always have a bathtub.

On Spring and Broken Lawnmowers

I got back from an amazing trip to Sitka and a fun visit with Sarah in Kettle Falls and felt overwhelmed at the tasks that needed to get done at our homestead.  While I was in Alaska Spring sprang in Kettle Falls.  All the trees leafed out.  The daffodils gave way to colorful tulips and the grass grew about 6 inches.

Daffodils!  They were my wedding flower!  I'm so happy they're here in our garden!

Tulips mean spring, right?

Now since about March I told Jason that we should get a lawnmower and he kept insisting that we should just call our lawn area "The Meadow" and let the grass grow.  Even though we fenced in a 100' X 50' area for our garden, there is still a LOT of lawn left.  I have never really had a lawn before and felt strongly that we should have some area that would be called lawn and would not have tall plants on it.  So I started looking at lawn mowers.  I really believe in limiting fossil fuel consumption so my first thought was to buy a reel mower-powered just by my legs and arms.  We ended up buying THIS one and with a little help from my friend Sarah I used it to mow our lawn.  Now I thought that I was in decent shape, but pushing this lawn mower is a lot of hard work.  It also fell out of allignment pretty quickly (our lawn isn't flat) and not all of the blades would cut, which meant that I had to cut each row 2 or 3 times to get all of the grass cut.  It tooke me 3 days, working about 4 hours each day, to get the lawn mowed.  I thought that the next time would be easier because I wouldn't let the grass get so tall.  So a few days after finishing I took the lawn mower out again.  On my first pass I ran over a rock and bent one of the blades. It was barely working after that I got frustrated and decided to quit. 

A few days later Jason and I decided to rent a lawnmower from our local rental place in Colville.  At $10/hour, it would help us figure out what we liked and/or wanted.  And in the intervening days our grass was once again about 6 inches tall.  I got the lawnmower home and started mowing.  It was self propelled and I was LOVING it!  It cut the grass short; it wasn't hard to push; and, I didn't have to stop every 5 miunutes to catch my breath.  About 10 minutes into mowing, the machine just stopped.  I checked the grass bag and it was stuffed full.  I emptied the bag into our compost bin, turned the mower over to clean it out, and decided to leave off the bag and just let the grass collect where it was cut.  When I started the mower up again, it almost immediately turned off.  Without the bag, the grass didn't have anywhere to go and it was just getting caught in the machinery.  I cleaned up the bottom of the the mower again and reattached the bag.  Every 5-10 minutes I had to stop to empty the bag.  It was annoying but I was trying to think of all the good nitrogen for the compost.  About 1/3 done with the lawn, the mower died and refused to start again.  I called the rental company and tried to troubleshoot over the phone.  In the end when I brought the mower back, they told me that the grass had clogged the machinery and would need to be cleaned out.  After breaking two lawnmowers, I decided that maybe Jason is right, maybe we will just have a meadow and not a lawn. 

Can you see where the lawnmower quit working?

Another edge where the lawnmower stopped working

So I guess this is our "meadow," with the garden in the background.

Does anyone know how to turn bluegrass into something low growing that wouldn't need to be mowed?  Next year we plan on having chicken tractors, maybe I can plant some sort of low growing plant after the chickens have scratched up all the grass.  Any ideas?