Weekend project

I should be winterizing the rest of my garden. But I am not.

I have the worst follow through when it comes to "putting my garden to bed for the winter." I subscribe to an e-newsletter out of Kansas City called the Savvygardener. From that, I recently learned that it's a good idea in the fall to spread some sort of mulch over your garden and work it into the soil a little bit. This mulch can be anything from wood chips to leaves to rotten straw. I have plenty of rotten straw just sitting on my garden. I've pulled everything already (the exception being my eggplant that was too touch to pull up by hand) and all I need to do is go over there and dig around a little bit with a shovel.

But again, I am definitely not doing that this weekend. By October, gardening has, for sure, lost its glory.

My only other gardening news is that the "free agent" tomato plant that came up after I put a layer of manure on my flower bed continues to survive, and even ripen. Every Sunday, I pull whatever few yellow tomatoes are ready and slice them up on our traditional meal of homemade pizza.

I also am growing, or attempting to grow some spinach in my cold frame box my dad built for me two summers ago. I cannot quite figure out why it won't grow very nicely. (It was the same last spring too). I am hoping to get some more manure next spring and bulk up the soil in this box. Hopefully that'll help. I feel doubtful I will grow anything in this box that I'll eat this fall. Shame.

Anyway.

That's not what I was planning on talking about. Nope.

I wanted to tell you about my plans for my little DYI (we'll see how well that goes) little patio area between my backdoor and my garage. Since I am a renter, there is not a ton of stuff I can do to beautify my space (although I did plant flowers this summer and just recently planted hostas). I inherited a lot of falling apart pieces of "patio furniture" from my sister back when they moved and am finally getting around to it.

My plan is to spruce up the furniture as best as I can for my abilities and for the condition it's in (thanks to help from my paint dealer boyfriend), get a fire pit, a giant lantern, and sit outside under the twinkle lights. It might take me my entire life to make this happen. Who knows.

But I do know one thing: my father is a master craftsman. When they were here last summer, I asked if he could build me a bench for my patio. It is beautiful. It took me awhile to tell myself it was okay to paint it because I loved it so much and didn't want to ruin it.

This weekend I finally did.

Now I cannot wait to repaint the door table and add a few more semi-falling a part chairs to the mix. (If only I wasn't going on a work trip this week…)

I can't wait for this space to be complete. My goal is to have it all ready by next summer. We'll see how that goes.