Support from the Heart.
Apr/101
Those that know us well, know that we like to try our best to make a statement with our finances — essentially using our money to cast a vote for establishments we trust and things we believe in. We’ve been beyond fortunate to have the ability to sponsor kids from Compassion and World Vision (and even “donating” our bodies to run the Bluegrass 10K to support Compassion’s Child Survival Program); to get our food from local growers (by heading to the Farmer’s Market or joining a CSA); and to spend our time and resources patronizing local stores and restaurants.
We also appreciate the arts, so it was a really cool experience to recently get to help fund our favorite band’s next recording project (and was also super cool to get a personal thanks on the website).
While we still enjoy the convenience of a trip to the big-box hardware or grocery store from time-to-time, we’ve realized it’s much more satisfying to grab brunch at Alfalfa or dinner at Natasha’s; to shop for books at Joseph Beth; or enjoy a good cup of coffee and relaxing atmosphere at Coffee Times. And, by spending our time and money there, we help — in a small way — to ensure that these lovely locales will be around for others to enjoy as well.
Are there any local businesses or places you love? Are there any places you already like to shop, eat at, or hang out at that you could try to find local “versions” of? Feel free to share in the comments!
Yard Fun: Project Rain Barrel.
Apr/103
Last weekend, the yard fun continued. We tackled several projects long in the waiting.
Project #1: Rain Barrel
We had purchased our rain barrel several months back, but the place we wanted to set it up needed cleaning and leveling. Trevor dug, leveled, placed a paver on the ground as a foundation for the rain barrel, and supported the barrel atop it with bricks. We hooked up our extra hose, and we were in business! It couldn’t have been better timing – we’ve had little or no rain this spring so far, but starting Saturday we had several bouts of rain and storms roll through. Undoubtedly, we’ve accumulated over an inch since then! Yay for water conservation!
We purchased our barrel from this site.
Kristi’s Favorite Flower.
Apr/102
In case anyone was wanting to know… Kristi’s favorite flower is the daffodil. The first herald of spring. But in our case, the daffodils were a little late in coming and the crocuses beat them to the punch. So we’re still enjoying daffodils up to now, while most around the city are already gone.
What’s your favorite flower?
Spring Project.
Apr/103
With the typical “last frost date” behind us here in KY, it was time to tackle making a bed for all our seedlings already sprouting away inside. We decided to do a raised bed about 1 foot high, 5′ x 3′ in size. The day began with a shopping list and a trip to the big blue store. (by which we do NOT mean a UK Wildcat Fan store…)
We had the debate of whether we needed to bring two cars or not. I convinced Trevor we could manage with one. This was, however, assuming the supply store would cut our lumber down to Smokey’s size… But we were surprised to find that their saw was broken and we were out of luck. The shortest cedar boards they had were 8′ long. We took a gamble that we could make it work… 8′ lumber, PLUS 10 bags of soil and 8 bags of mulch and some flowers to boot.
Note the impressive amount of stuff we jammed into Smokey… and Trevor’s look of amazement that we made it back home with everything inside. Keep in mind that these shots were AFTER the 8′ lumber had been cut down to 5′ and 3′ sections. (We had popped over to Kristi’s dad’s house to use his radial saw… thanks Dad!)
Step 1, buying materials, was done. It was on to Step 2, clearing the sod.
Digging up sod was hard work. Especially when digging around concrete bases of our deck posts and hitting numerous rocks buried in the ground.
Step 3, assemble the raised bed frame. We used untreated cedar. Treated woods leak harmful chemicals into the soil and should be avoided when growing edibles. This created a problem for us when we were unable to find untreated posts. We improvised by screwing two 1-bys together to make a workable post, albeit smaller than traditional 4×4 posts. We also chose cedar, as redwood was unavailable and cedar will hold up under the elements better than the alternatives (pine, etc).
Unfortunately there are no pictures of the bed being screwed together, but it was the most time-consuming piece of the puzzle.
But here is the finished product – the built bed frame! Landscaping fabric was positioned underneath to deter weeds. The job of making it level was tedious and the end result was imperfect, but close enough for our purposes. With the bed in position, all that was left was filling it with our soil mix.
Success! Filled with 10 cubic feet of soil and the contents of 1 compost bin. It felt great to finally have some payoff from our compost bins for the garden… the best natural fertilizer you can come by!
Now all we need is to transplant our seedlings…
10K Training
Kristi's Training Mileage:
Trevor's Training Mileage:
Good Reads
Kristi's read shelf:
Trevor's read shelf: