Week 56

Another weekend spent hard at work here.

I spent Saturday morning sealing the floor in the new room:

And then we spent the afternoon in the yard. AJ planted lavender & mint in this nice planter that Jon gave us when we moved in:

While the dog rolled & napped in the dirt:

Then she planted succulents in one of the planters we built:

Looks good, AJ!

While she did that, I spread out some mulch over our unappealing packed dirt and gravel yard:

I got black because I thought it might look interesting. It does, but it also looks like something burned down, so I'm going to be adding some brown in next week to finish up.

Pickles contributed to mulching in her usual fashion:

After finishing the one planter, AJ turned her attention to the other:

Things are really coming together! 

On Sunday I worked out an efficient way to collect & store the water that we waste while waiting for the shower to heat up, so that we can use it to water the vegetables when the rain catchment system is empty (or, you know, hasn't been installed yet). I looked into laundry-to-landscape systems earlier this week, but just one load would generate way more water than we can actually use in the yard in a reasonable amount of time -- only the vegetables need watering, & they seem satisfied with just a couple gallons a day -- so I set my sights on a smaller scale.

Next up: Finishing the mulching, and picking up Jon's old couch -- that is destined for the DuserHaus home brewery in the basement, but will live temporarily in the new room for warm afternoon fun times.