Raised Garden Update

Or should I call it razed garden update?

When we bought the house this area looked rather boring with a raised bed covered with ivy. An ivy that I did slowly started to creep up the walls and I started to worry about the structural stability of the house. So we hired some people to pull the ivy out and realized that the walls of the raised bed were quite damaged. So my idea of just replacing the ivy with some lovely plants did not work. I would have to rebuild the wall.

I started by razing the wall down (I blogged about it here last year) and was making good progress, but the limited time I had for garden activity meant that we hired some one to break the rest of the wall down and this is how it looked after the wall came down:

I then decided to build a proper wall for this raised/razed garden and then rejuvenate the soil before I take care of the plants in there. The irony is, that it will be another cinder block wall! But this time, it will not be mortared into place.

So in came 4 pallets of cinder blocks!

So in came 4 pallets of cinder blocks. Don't worry, they are not all for this project. I have a few more up my sleeve. The inspiration for this wall came from this page Apartment Therapy.

This is how it looks now.

The rubble needs to be cleaned up, of course.

Another view

How do you like my idea for a bird bath? It could also work as a planter. In its previous life it was an interior light fixture. Reuse, reuse, reuse!

The "porcupine" near the bird bath used to have "thorns" where people could wipe their feet off. A doormat, essentially. It may either be converted to some sort of planter or some kind of yard art.

All that's left to do, is to remove the rubble, add some more soil to the raised bed and plant away to my heart's content. I wish I had saved up some of my astilbe's to plant here.

Don't you just love that little guy?

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GiOrangeade -- A recipe

A sinus inflammation always makes me crave oranges and ginger and something to drink. Sadly caffeine is out of my life so no more tea and therefore no more ginger tea. But, I decided to try something new. I am going to call it GiOrangeade = Ginger Orangeade. I tried two versions. First one I did not like that much. The second one I loved.

Version One of GiOrangeade:

Juice of 2 large navel oranges
1 cubic inch piece of ginger, peeled.

Cut the ginger into very thin slices
Boil it in 1/4 cup of water to make a sort of ginger tea.
Let it cool.
Pour it into freshly squeezed orange juice (dump some pulp in, if you like)
Mix and drink up!

Version Two of GiOrangeade (much simpler and much better):


Juice of 2 large navel oranges
1 cubic inch piece of ginger, peeled.

Smash the living daylights out of the ginger in a pestle and mortar.
Empty the contents of the pestle and mortar into the freshly squeezed orange juice.
Mix and drink up.
Munch on the mortal remains of the ginger at the end!

Enjoy. Your sinuses will thank you. And sorry, no pics. I drank up well before I even thought of making a post out of this!

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Kitchen Garden Update

I harvested my first batch of methi (fenugreek, vendhayam) leaves for my methi omelette today. I did not get much out of it, just two hands full. Normally I like to have a whole bunch for to omelettes. But nipping off the tips will probably make these guys grow bushier.

Methi -- two weeks ago.

The basil is also looking good, although it will probably be a while before I have enough for batch of pesto. Here is a "file photo" of the basil from a couple of weeks ago.

Basil -- two weeks ago.

And here it is now:

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Random rant.

On somedays all I want to do is take a really good book, preferably hard bound and huge -- like say the Mahabharata or something and then lob it real hard at life. The trouble, I find, is that while metaphors like this are so satisfying to visualize, they are of no use. I am unable to pin life down to any one physical form.

Today is one such day, where I wish I could concretize life to one object and then lob things at it. I just wish I did not have to be so many things to so many people and have so much to do. But then again, if wishes were horses.

Minor irritant number one: I am sick again and can't seem to drum up enthusiasm for anything.
Minor irritant number two: I almost made up my mind to hire some one to do something on the house. A large scale thing. Turns out that although they claimed to be Better Business Bureau certified, I can't seem to find them on the BBB listings. A seed of doubt has been sown and I can't seem to sleep! Now that means, the screening, interviewing and everything has to start all over again! But more importantly, it means I am still gullible.
Minor irritant number two point oh one: I discovered today that they guy we hired to do some electrical work and who had apparently praised my halloween sculptures a lot to my husband has, in deed, broken my ground breaker!
Minor irritant number three: I bought too much stuff for the yard that needs to be done. I am nervous that I may let things slip by one more year.
Not so minor irritant number four: Dad is not doing all that well and I am nervous about how my Mom is going to manage alone.
Slightly major irritant number five: I have two major deadlines and a conference coming up.
Slightly major irritant number six: I am losing steam on workouts -- actually have no interest it seems which is more important than just not making it to workouts. Apparently I prefer to procrastinate like I am doing now!

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