Wedding Card Chest

Our granddaughter, Casey, is getting married to Curran soon.  She called the other evening and asked Grandpa to make her a chest for gift cards.  They thought about having a "money tree" at their wedding, but it's hard to write a "thank you" for money, if it's just hanging on a tree. 
What happens to the wedding cards???  Besides "it's the thought that counts." 

So George looked online at treasure chests, wedding card boxes, wedding card pseudo cakes and decided upon a design.  Today he started Casey & Curran's wedding card chest.  It's looking good, Grandpa!

The wedding chest is 21" long x 14" wide.  The bottom of the box is about 10" high with the curved part resting on top - about 5 or 6" tall.  George needs to stain or paint it and put hardware on it.  We'll let Casey help us with her ideas of how she & Curran want us to finish it up.  

George sanded the rounded top smooth, so you don't feel the individual boards.  This is made of solid wood, no plywood.

Below you can see the card slot on the left hand side of the top.

Better picture of the card slot:

We need to fill the pneumatic brad holes.

First Fruits - Oops - I mean First Veggies!

Well, not exactly.   We've harvested strawberries 5 or 6 times, so far.  George just brought in our first 2 zucchini's and some spuds.  The zucchini's I understand, but I was really surprised when he put a few potatoes on the counter.  It turns out Buddy, our big, black Shepherd, was standing in the potato bed and George had to save the potatoes.  Buddy trampled the plant down to the ground.  

Jacque, our neighbor, gave us the sage.  We're starting some to plant in our herb garden.

Weeding the Garden

Well, George finally tried the Japanese weeding tool I bought him at Ginger Street.  

We were weeding the hill with all of the buttercups and thimble berries.  I tried to talk him into trying his tool, but no.  He was happy with his "trowel."  

I was tired, so I went in for an afternoon nap and left the gardening tool in the weed barrel, so I could use it later on.  He snuck the tool and tried it.  He came in, woke me up and said "That's really slick!  I know it's a guy thing, but the next time I tell you "no" tell me to pound sand!"  

I laughed and said "pound sand, George."  I'm sure glad you like it!  He smiled.

My tool is the smaller of the two tools in the pictures.  Laura sold out of them, but she's looking into getting more.  She has several requests for these tools.  I bought the smaller one, when she first got them into her store.  Then Laura ordered the heavy duty tool, so I bought one for George in the middle of May.  These tools go fast!

The black handled tool is George's.  I put these on a 3 ring binder to give you perspective

on the sizes of these tools.

The black handled tool is much sharper and made of a steel that won't rust.  My tool isn't as sharp and will rust, so it needs to be oiled occassionally.

Greenhouse Update!!

Here's an update on our garden.  Below are pictures of a picket fence board sign I bought George from Ginger Street in Rainier.  It says:  Garden of Weeden.  It's our eden.  Our Eden, once the weeding is done!

As you can see, George has made a lot of progress on the watering system.  We've pulled off the poly from the poly tunnels and the plants are growing quickly, now.

Our herbs are growing slowly.  The arugula is bolting, but it never did fill out.  Strange!

The compost tea barrel is about 1/4th full.  We need to add water and compost to it, again.

The old greenhouse is gone and the new one is up & full!

We moved the carpeting from the squash patch (it killed the grass!) and now it's laid out on it's final home.  We'll put walkway bark on it, soon.

We put the garden tools in the pallets around the 3 bin composter.

The chairs are guarding the volunteer potatoes that grew in the first bin of the compost station.  As you can see, our dogs have run through the other potato box.

This gives perspective on the size of the greenhouse.  The beds are 4' x 8'.

Here's the herb garden.  In the lower left hand corner is the shoots of our horseradish.  I bought a large flower pot for it, because they will put out poison (like black walnut trees do) that kills any plants growing nearby.

Our leeks are tiny and last years kale was cut down, but is coming back.

Our strawberries are thriving in their new barrel.

Flowers are starting to bloom in the side yard.  The whisky barrel (with the pump) is filled with peppermint.  TEA!

Love the carpet rose (lower left)

Volunteer violets - growing in the river rockery.

more violets.......

More violets (sweet.  Reminds me of Loretta Selle.  She loved her violets.)

Chives in a barrel.  (The asparagus hasn't come up, yet.  If it comes up, I'll transfer the chives.)

The hydrangea that Bob used to weed wack down to the ground, because he thought it was a weed, so I put a cement border around it to protect it.  

The view of the inside of the greenhouse.

Tomatoes that we started from heirloom seeds.  They're happy little tomatoes - enjoying their compost tea.

We'll be planting in square foot sections (maybe 15" in the side bed) carrots, beets, etc for winter.

Folded poly tunnels - saved for next spring.

Buckets & flower pots for starting plants next spring.

Riley snooping around the greenhouse - checking out the hose.

Storage shelves with garden tools and supplies.

Buddy, checking out the sprinkler pipes.

Riley in front of the remains of our old greenhouse.  The barrel catches the sawdust from the dust collection system George's children bought him as a "retirement" present.  It's making a big difference in the garage.

Buddy eyeing the veggie garden.  Our boys love playing out in the yard while we work.

We've eaten broccoli, cabbage, spinach, lettuce and strawberries several times already.

Our peppers were started from seed.  They're really growing slow, even though George covered them in the poly tunnels until yesterday.

The spot of red (up in the top of the picture) isn't a flower.  It's a red container that we use for a water dish for the boys.

New Greenhouse

New Greenhouse 

We bought a new portable greenhouse on ebay - to replace our Redneck greenhouse that was falling apart.  I spent $110.99 on it - including shipping and handling.  We couldn't build a 10 x 20 greenhouse for that price, so we're pleased.  George built the beds along one side and across the back of the green house, to grow plants in year around.  We have black shelving and black containers to hold water - for passive solar heat during the winter.  We should get the cover put on, soon.

The container with cucumber plants is a under the bed shoe storage box.  The beds are 3' wide and 20' long (10' across the back)  The beds took 2 yards of mushroom compost and about 1/2 yard of walkway bark.

The light colored wood chips were left over from our chicken coop.

In the front bed, George has finished installing the automatic PVC watering system he made from scratch.  We got the idea from LDSPrepper on Youtube.

Carrots & beets are in the front bed, broccoli, cabbage and spinach (bolting) in the second bed & herbs are growing in the terraced hillside by our compost tea barrel.  You can see the poly tunnels George made so we could get an early start on our veggie garden.

We weeded out between the rows & filled up one of our compost bins this week.  There are still some areas left to week.  I love the Japanese weeding tools I bought at Ginger Street in Rainier!  It makes weeding a snap!

Strawberries in the barrel are doing great!  The thimble berries need to be taken out of the hillside, so we can terrace it, too.

Strawberry rows around the back yard are producing well!  We have a lot of happy little strawberries & a few big ones, too!

Cement blocks we didn't need for the greenhouse.

Herb Garden & a better view of the 3 section compost bin.  (The first section has volunteer red potatoes growing in it, so we put our chairs in front - so Buddy won't traipse through it.

Poly tunnel is over the green pepper plants.

You can see George working on his automatic watering system.  

There is George working..  you can see where I quit weeding - where the bark ends.  I'll finish the weeding over the next week & we'll put in more bark then.  As you can see - the grass and buttercups really filled in during the winter.  The Japanese hand hoe is one of the best tools for getting under the roots and makes weeding a cinch!  

This bed is about 10 x 8.  It has onions and potatoes in it.  the poly tunnel gave these plants quite a head start.  (Look at the weeding around the bed I still need to do.  YIKES!

Looking at the garden from Bob's house.

Looking at the greenhouse from Bob's place.

We took off some of the vinyl covering the raised beds, to install the watering system.

The greenhouse frame (closer view.)

My sweet George finishing up the first section of the watering system.  (There will be 4 sections of 4 beds each that will alternate running, so they will have good water pressure.)

Riley in the right hand corner by the greenhouse.   

The watering can in front is for perspective.