Thursday, April 22, 2010

Backyard Improvements

This is mainly a test post to see if I correctly worked the settings so my blog publishes straight to my Facebook page. I finally did get around to taking a picture of the new trampoline, so here it is, with all 7 kids on it. You can see how it is crammed into the corner of the yard, with trees all around! We had quite a time getting it in there too. It took our neighbor, plus his son and daughter, Bob, me, 3 of our boys, and another neighbor boy to get it from our neighbor's back yard, through their trees, up the street, and into our back yard through more trees. We had to saw off a couple of branches in the process.
While we are looking at new things, this is our new grill. Bob found it on clearance at Lowes this weekend. He's glad to not have all these tempermental hot spots, like he had on the old one. I guess a grill can only take so many moves . . . The firepit is in front. That thing has been quite the hit, I must say. We also have a blueberry bush in that tub to the right of the grill. And the blue tub you can barely see is a part of our garden this year.
Here is a better picture of the tub. We actually have 3 tubs like this, and we are growing things in them, instead of down by our basement where we tried the past few years. That area didn't have great soil, it didn't get enough light, and it was a hassle to water. On the deck is better, and the boys have been very diligent about taking care of everything. We're growing tomatoes, spinach, peppers, zucchini, beans, peas, carrots, and something else . . . maybe another kind of squash? I can't remember. I am not the green thumb behind this operation.

We are also trying something new this year. This is Bob's cheap version of the "Topsy-Turvy" tomato grower, hanging off our deck. It's what we can the "cheap 5 gallon Lowes bucket with holes drilled into it". Catchy! One bucket has tomatoes and the other strawberries. We'll let you know if it works. Or you can just wait until you see us on late-night TV hawking our invention.


So that's the roundup of all our new backyard features. Now to see if this post shows up on my news feed . . .



1 comment:

petersonclan said...

Hey Claire... did the tomato growers work? I am putting together an aricle on ways to grow tomatoes and was wondering... feel free to just drop me an e-mail about it.