Apron Thrift Girl

sod for a song

Just a warning that this may be my most boring ever post because it's about grass and mud. And I can't think of anything less exciting than that but being a thrifter I just have to share this story with you. As I have mentioned many times here that I tend to keep a good eye on Craig's List. I go through cycles though. Sometimes I don't look at it for days while other times I check it out at least ten times a day. It was last Friday when I decided to take a look at our island listings. If you type in the name of your community in the box on the left hand side, it should only show listings that mention your town.

What I love about thrifting is that I sometimes find things that I didn't know I was looking for. It's not that I had trouble surviving without something but when I find it I have a little "wow" moment. When I typed in our island into Craig's List, a listing five down jumped out at me: "Sod". I clicked on the post and saw that someone was selling rolls of sod from their yard for $25. I ran to Dave, stuck the phone in his hand (I don't like using the telephone except on rare occasions) and told him to call the number.  As always he doesn't quite know how to handle my spontaneous excitement and does this weird shaking of his head as if he is trying to get a hold of the situation. He then usually says "What"? while continuing the head thing but has since added this strange eye thing too. I finally take a deep breath and explain about the sod and tell him to call this guy immediately. He takes a deep breath and finally takes the phone from me and calls him.

I didn't know I needed sod but the minute I saw it I thought it would go perfectly here.

 

I don't show too many views of our yard because it is such a work in progress. The yard seems to take so much money and we prefer to do smaller projects inside the home. Although with that said when a school auction item came up for bid last November I found my equally frugal husband bidding before I could even properly register the fact. He was bidding on 12 school dads (including a landscape architect and a couple wood guys (they make wood from cut trees and then build neat things with the wood) coming to our yard for one day and doing anything we would like. Dave won, I gulped, and we went home with our voucher in hand.

In the spring the architect came over and talked about our ideas and plans. He later sent us an estimate of something crazy like $8,000. Which I'm sure would have been money well spent. But we got back to him asking him to lower it to a $100.00 budget and see what we could create from there. Instead of making a new fence (ours was rounded and looked odd) we recycled as much as we could from the old fence. Instead of renting equipment we borrowed it. I picked up some cedar wood to build garden beds from a sale and so on. Despite our low budget our yard looked so much better after their day here. The photo above is where the fence was moved to. It used to hug the mini kiwi plant in the left side of the picture. The dirt you see was part of the gravel driveway. When we went to LA for the week my father brought dirt in ready for grass seed.

After speaking to the sod guy Dave grabbed Cerys & Keiran and took my father's truck (which he is loaning us for the summer) to look at the sod. He arrived home about an hour later looking less confused and instead a little hopeful.

It's not very pretty at all but here is our truckload of sod.

This is what our work in progress looked like. 1/4 of the sod is down at this point. The grass is in beautiful condition and the soil very moist. At the cemetery I used to take up sod and place it back down after burials so I have some limited experience in this area. Ironically....

Finished. We were short about 7 inches which we can fill with a small planter near our gate. While it looks a little clumpy it will even out and should grow nicely next spring. Our grass doesn't usually die in the winter. Instead it just stays a lovely shade of dark green.

I never envisioned buying dirt and grass second hand. It just confirms the idea that you truly can buy practically anything on the thrifted market. Without our typical moist fall weather this grass with bind to the soil underneath (I'm sure there is an official grass way to say that) and it will thrive. Now our yard is complete with grass. Now we just need to get our fence painted....

What is the weirdest, craziest used item that you have purchased?

Abundance in the Garden

We are preparing to leave for our summer vacation to California. My garden is growing in leaps and bounds and I am guessing that most of it will ripen when we are away. Much to our surprise when I went searching for something to add to our salad we found ripe strawberries hiding under the plants. Two bowls worth. What a lovely parting gift before we travel. And they are delicious as they look.

Thank you every for your heartfelt comments on my last post. Isn't it intriguing that many of us are in the same predicament. Do you feel that maybe our blogs even spurred this need to buy every last vintage item at a yard sale or thrift store?

I went out on Saturday ready to hit the sales, but ready to buy things that I truly wanted and not just items to fill my house again. The first sale I went to, I found an American girl closet system with foldout bed. $25.00. Next sale I was about to leave when I decided to look at the framed art. My heart dropped when I saw this.

Barbara Helen Berger is one of my favorite illustrator/authors. Our two favorite books of hers are Grandfather Twilight and When the Sun Rose. I found this signed print of hers for $4.00.
and look how she sneaked Grandfather twilight into the picture...
If you haven't heard of these books, I would high recommend them, especially for young children.

I also picked up a very expensive air filter that I have been searching for, for at least four years. I've never seen one at a yard sale and I happily picked it up for $20.00. I also came home with some book inventory and a few toys for the kids. I passed by the vintage board games, vintage dishes, pampered chef stoneware dishes and much more. It felt wonderful. I was able to enjoy them from a distance and truly appreciate what I did buy. The signed print is above our couch and looks perfect in our living room.

Sustainable Living

With the environment, you are sometimes left to make hard choices. I choose to sometimes drive 45 minutes away following a trail of yard sales in order to avoid going to Walmart & Target to buy items that were shipped thousands of miles and packaged in plastic. I choose paper bags over plastic so I can reuse the bags to send items back to goodwill and then when they eventually make it to the landfill, they will decompose naturally. I try to take my own bags but usually I forget. I personally feel that helping the environment is about doing your best and everyone's best is going to differ. This month we took down two, eighty year old Douglas fir trees. It wasn't an easy decision and it took us a lot of time to decide and a lot of money to take them down. $1800.00 worth to bring down two trees that took eighty years to grow. (I know the fence needs painting :-)

We took them down for a number of reasons:

1) Light-much of our yard was in shade most of the day, especially in the afternoon. In the summer it can still be chilly in the shade. Once the trees were down I was surprised at how much lighter the house became. I am a huge believer in passive sun, especially in the Pacific Northwest. It continues to amaze me when new houses are built with a south facing garage and tiny craftsman style windows.

2) Wood-we are still a bit old school and are using a wood stove (although purchased recently and it is one of the best for environmental standards). I grew up in the 70's and my parents were faithful followers of Mother Earth News. I learned from them the idea of self sufficiency. They were also Mormon at the time which was an interesting mix.  We had a years supply of food and a solar hot water heater. Even our wood stove heated our water during the winter when the sun wasn't so bright. I learned so much from my parents on our small farm in Corning, California. Our current house also has central heat that uses oil which generally cost $700 to fill the tank. I'm sure many of you are experiencing that cost this long winter. I find that the heat in the home from our furnace is so different than the wood stove heat. A couple weeks ago I broke the glass in our stove door. Oops! It took us a few days to get it replaced and I missed the invested heat of the wood stove terribly. When the two trees came down, we rolled the cut rounds to another part of our yard where they will wait to be split and used in our stove.

3) Enlarging the garden-where the trees were, it blocked the sun in a large section of our yard. Now that they are gone we are planning to plant 5 dwarf apple trees near the fence and in the grassy lawn part we are going to rototill and create a huge vegetable garden to double the size of our existing garden. In my mind, if I plant anything in our yard, I want it to be edible and sustainable.

4) Mulch-this one wasn't planned but became an added treat when we had the stumps ground down. I have a few years supply of a mulch which I will use on my paths around my raised garden beds.

In our area, these trees grow like weeds and are everywhere. I do understand that they take years to grow unlike a wee that shoots up quickly. That was the hardest part of our decision. Ironically if they were in the back of our yard, they would still be standing. When we make decisions with the earth in mind there are so many different levels to make them on. When we took the trees down we were judged by some of our neighbors. People walked past our yard asking us why we cut them down. Dave was usually the one explaining. People shrugged at his reasons and continued on their walk. I mentioned to a friend yesterday that if the US food supply is in danger, then they might be the ones knocking on my door for a meal. In my perfect world, nearly every tree planted in our community would be a fruit tree, and every new housing development would have a large shared garden instead of a pretty green with a few shrubs, and all houses would be south facing with plenty of windows to take in the warmth of the sun. In our house, in the heart of winter, if we have a sunny day we can actually turn our fire all the way down and the house is heated by the sun. I generally curl up on the bay window on days like this and soak up the sunshine.

I don't know if any answer is perfect, but we do what feels good to our family. That is the wonderful thing about taking steps to help the world and the environment. Many of us take different steps and follow a different path. It's the thinking consciously that we all share in common. So many of you love thrifting and I can't think of a better way shop than buying something second hand. Even if it is the only thing you do that is considered environmentally friendly, it is still a wonderful choice you make.

I'm off to the garden now to plant some onions and shallots.

In the Garden

I love how the British refer to their yard as their garden. It sounds quaint, whimsical and just kind of romantic. Spending time in the garden doesn't necessarily mean getting your hands in the dirt but just enjoying time outside relaxing on a vintage glider in the sun. Today was a lovely Autumn day with a tease of coolness in the morning brought in on a damp fog which burned away to a warm day by late afternoon. A day ideal to dress in layers. With both children in school I worked much of the morning at the computer. It is strange that I'm not alone any more in the house. Of course there is Dave in his basement office but on the main floor of the house it usually is just me. Sometimes Sydney our tortie will grace my presence by popping in to give me a warm meow and a flick of her tail before chasing a dust ball or seeking a warm windowsill in the sunshine elsewhere. I'm not used to her company and she'd rather do cat things than book things. Elffin on the other hand has enjoyed my company very much. He fell asleep under my computer chair and I couldn't move the chair with worry of rolling over him. He finally moved and found another spot to nap. He keeps running off with my slippers or gnawing on boxes lying about my office full of books. I feel like a newbie with a puppy not quite sure how to discipline him. We refer to the term gentle discipline with our children but how does one do that with a puppy? How do you teach a puppy not to eat your beloved Born boots by gently saying "no"? I've luckily had friends either give or loan me puppy books and I guess I need to hurry up and read them to answer some of my questions. He's grown far too quickly in the two weeks since he came to live with us. I feel like he has grown twice his size. Is that possible? He has settled down very well with us and now I can't imagine not having a dog in our home.

While I was taking a picture of a vintage quilt I picked up at the Goodwill Outlet for $2.00, he was keeping me company.

It is rather an odd quilt consisting of four very large squares all of different fabric. It's tied together with large yellow yarn.

It has that very soft feel of vintage fabric that I adore. I wonder how many washing a blanket needs to feel that soft. I found it at the bottom of one of the large blue bins looking a little worse for wear. I quickly got hold of one corner, grabbed it by the arm full and stuffed it in my cart before anyone else could make a dash for it. I'm sure I'm not to blame by bragging about the outlet here in blogland but everyone seems to have discovered the Goodwill Outlet. Each time I have been there in the last few months there appears to be more and more people filling cart after cart of very low price thrifted goods. It's taken a bit of the fun away but not enough to stop me from making the trek there to shop. With Goodwill keeping so many good things back to sell on-line, at least there is still someplace to find something vintage. I think that the outlet gets their rejected items from local stores but also possibly direct from the Goodwill donation trucks. Most items are not priced and every so often you can find a real gem. I've never walked away disappointed which is pretty special for a thrifter.

I think Elffie was looking at me strangely while I took a photo of linens in the garden/yard.

 
He wasn't quite sure what to make of the chickens.

Slowly our homestead mini farm is growing. If I had my ultimate wish we would have five acres with a horse, some goats, a sheep and ducks. Land here is too pricey though so for now I'm content with our small flock of chickens, our tortie cat, our outside-cat-that-came-with-the-house and now our adorable and lovable puppy. Blissful Sigh...

The Spring Itch

**** I forgot to give a huge thanks for all those beautiful, heartfelt emails. Dave is in England this week and your comments just made week. It's been rather lonely. Thank you so much!!!!***

Give me a week of sunny (with a light cool breeze) weather and I'm bursting with energy to be outside in the yard. Our garden has fallen victim to being neglected for the last two years. We moved to our home in June of 05 and we quickly planted a few items in the two raised beds in the garden. The next year we found ourselves working hard to fix up rooms, paint the outside of the house and so on. While the house is only partly painted (half yellow/half beige) and we still have rooms to paint, this year I am planning to make it a priority to have a garden.

I've also been conscious of how much garbage we have. I think we probably have far less than your average, non-recycling household, but we have more than I desire. We give most of our kitchen scraps to the chickens, we recycle everything we can but we still somehow still have stuff to throw away. This led me to wanting to build some compost bins. We have had two compost bins in our last two houses. Both of them were just decaying messes that we didn't open in summer because of the flies and the smell. We never used the compost, both lacking any compost 101 classes, so it kind of fell to the way side. One of my goals this summer is to make some bins. I found a book that had a design to make bins out of wood pallets. Nothing better than a bit of frugality and recycling in the garden.

In one of my gardening books (.50 cents from a thrift store) Weedless Gardening, there are some quick and easy ways to create a weedless garden without even using a rototiller. A mom's group I belong to, is meeting on Wednesday to throw around gardening ideas. We want to discuss improving or starting a garden, how to do it frugally as well as involving the children in gardening. One of my favorite children's gardening books is Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots by Sharon Lovejoy. It is filled with beautiful and sweet ideas on creating a children's garden paradise.

To create the weedless garden one of the first things to do is get rid of the vegetation. The illustration in the book shows the guy mowing his lawn. I certainly don't feel like digging out the mower in February so instead I let the chickens into the garden and they pecked away at the grass. I figure a week or two in there will get it prepared and I don't even have to break out a sweat with the mower.

We really long to have a self-sufficient homestead. I can't do that entirely as a cow couldn't exactly fit on our 1/3 acre but I aim to do as much as I can. Maybe she could live in the basement or share a home office with David. I would love fresh milk (as long as I don't have to milk her at the crack of dawn - I wonder if I could tivo her to be milked?) We have a rain barrel but it is not hooked up yet.

Here are some of my Garden Goals for the year:

1) Create a compost area consisting of three bins
2) Uh...learn to make compost properly rather than smelly decaying sludge
3) Enlarge garden 3 times the size
4) Install Rain Barrel to guttering
5) Create a teepee of pea plants for the children
6) Install a drip line to the kiwi plant and raspberry plants (lost a lot of kiwis from lack of water this year)
7) Create an herb garden for healing colds & headaches
8) Share garden bounty with friends and family

Are your thoughts in the garden yet? What are you planning to do differently this year?