Our Latest Adventure: Day 17

The last time I wrote an update on the kitchen, we had more than half of a tile floor and were about halfway done with painting cabinets. Well, since then...

... Derek and Mark finished laying down tile...

... the drywall was taped and mudded...

... tile was grouted and sealed, and cabinets were brought in...

...there was lots of problem solving...

... then we hung the cabinets (yes, I helped... it was a team effort to say the least!)...

... Derek and Mark brought in appliances (yes, the fridge will stick out like a sore thumb until we replace it...), and I painted crown molding which Derek and Mark installed...

... and Derek and Mark installed the over-the-range microwave!

It's been a great week! Things that we have yet to do: install the oven; install the countertop (arriving tomorrow); install the doors, drawers, and pulls; buy, paint, and install trim; PAINT THE WALLS (there is an awful lot of white in the kitchen right now!); and decide on a backsplash!

Brownersen Garden: Day 43

I think that one of the big theme of this post is flowering. Many of the plants are flowering and/or starting to produce fruit (or vegetables, as it were). The zucchini plant and the tomato plants (2 of the 4) are starting to grow fruit, and the other 2 tomato plants, tomatillos, eggplant, Jenny Lind, and peppers are all flowering. The only plants that are further behind are the corn and the potatoes (although I don't think they get flowers until right before you dig them up...). 

We have been eating quite a bit of salad still... we definitely got our money's worth out of those! We grilled kale (kale + lemon juice + oil + salt/pepper --> grill; see below) a couple of times this past week also. Both of these plants have been great, although I can barely keep up (recall the one lettuce plant we pulled up because it seeded)!

Here are some photos from this afternoon... it's a beautiful, sunny day!

While this view of the garden had been one of my favorites, it really doesn't work so well now that the tomatillos and tomatoes are getting so tall...

Ahhh -- that's better!

Here are the tomatillos... they are 37.5" tall this week, 9" taller than last week!

Here is a close-up view with flowers! See the little yellow things?

There are the tomato plants; they look kind of weird from far away!

Here are some baby tomatoes on the not early one. Not scheduled to have ripe tomatoes until the end of July...

Here is the corn... 31" tall this week, 7" higher than last week.

Here is the zucchini... it is 30" from stem to leaf, 7" longer than last week!

And here are a few future zucchinis... just a couple inches long! I predict we'll have zucchini in 10-14 days. I didn't have an estimated time frame on those, though, so nothing to compare it to.

Here is a cauliflower plant... no sign of anything coming up in the middle yet... but I can't for roasted cauliflower and cauliflower puree. Yum!! That was estimated to be ready mid-July, so just 3 weeks or so!

Here is the sweet pepper, which is 13" tall (3" taller than last week). It has flowers, although they are hard to see in this photo.

Here is one of the five hot peppers... it is 16.5" tall, 4.5" taller than last week. Most of these have flowers as well although their heights are really varied. I can't wait to find out which is which, hopefully not the hard way!

Here is the eggplant; it hasn't grown any taller since last week (22"), but aren't those flowers pretty?? (By the way, was my camera crooked or is it the plant? This should have little eggplants in about 3 weeks as well.

Here are the Jenny Lind vines, which I did not even attempt to measure because the vines are curving around every which way.

Here are the all-blue potatoes. I still can't get over how vine-y these are becoming!! This is 25" long, 6" longer than last week. No flowers!

Same story with the sweet potatoes... boy are they taking off and becoming vine-y! The vine for this one is 28", and I measured it at 13" last week (seriously!!!). And to think I was worried about them dying awhile back...

Here are a couple of new views... at the top, you can see a row of tomatoes, a row of tomatillos, and corn at the back.

And here we have the kale, lettuce, eggplant, Jenny Lind melon, potatoes, peppers, zucchini, and cauliflower!

Our Latest Adventure: Day 11

So I know I just updated on the kitchen two days ago, but a lot has happened in that time! I figured the action in the past couple of days really deserved it's own post.

On Monday, Derek took a half day and I stopped working early. We attacked the subfloor after having installed half of it the night before. 

With that done, we really wanted to get the Durock started since that was supposed to be done by Monday! Well, this is all we got done... but I'm glad we put our heads together and figured it out, even though we were basically going crazy from exhaustion.

Then, John happened. John is a friend that we met through Derek's boss... he is a remodeling guru. He was called in specifically to help with tile, but turns out he does a lot more. He arrived by 8:30, and by noon or so they had sheetrock up and the Durock completely finished. WOW! I was impressed.

The afternoon was spent tiling. John helped us get 60% of the floor tiled AND taught Derek and Derek's cousin Mark (who is here helping us for the week) how to cut tile, tay tile, mix mortar, etc.

Meanwhile, I painted cabinets in the basement and worked for the morning.

This is the tile by the end of the day. As I said, it's about 60% done. It looks a bit funny in this picture because it's got the dirty mortar water on it. We aren't supposed to walk on it for 24 hours or so, but after that, we'll clean it up and get it looking spiffy.

WOW! Seriously, I'm so glad we had John come over, and it's so great that Mark is here for the next week to help out. While I am a big proponent of doing things yourself (even though I have very few skills to actually DO it myself), I think having a little help is fabulous (particularly because now I can get some work done and not feel guilty :)).

Well, there's the update! Now it's time to go to sleep on time tonight as we've had WAY too many late nights recently.

Brownersen Garden: Day 36

I'm a little late with my garden post this week (see the previous post if you're curious what could be keeping me so busy!), but I've got pictures and stuff to share. In general, the plants are still growing like crazy, and they are showing us more and more that we'll have food soon!

Here are a few pictures of the whole garden. 

As a reminder, here it is on Day 2...

...and a mere 8 days ago (Day 28)...

And here we are now!

I've often thought about taking a day to just sit and watch the plants grow. No joke... I'm pretty sure I could right about now!

Here is a tomatillo. I measured it at 28.5" this week, up 5.5" from last week.

Our corn grew another 8" from last week and is now 24"! (This is not universally true... you can see that we have some shorter plants too.)

The Striped German tomato plant is 30" tall this week, which is 5" taller than the week before. Here is our early tomato plant, which I think I posted last week or the week before had already sprouted some tomatoes. We have definitely had issues in the past with tomatoes sitting forever on the vine, not getting ripe, and then eventually rotting. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again this year! If anyone has any suggestions on how to prevent that, I'm all ears!

Random thought: I'm not sure how I feel about this early tomato plant. First of all, it is supposedly determinate, meaning that all of the fruit should ripen at once (around July 11). Well why do we have this batch of early tomatoes then, huh?? Also, it doesn't look like a normal tomato plant which is generally upright and almost tree-like. This one is more like a crazy bush with branches sticking out every which way. Overall, I'm not sure I trust it, but time will tell.

Here is a two-for-one... both the lettuce and the Jenny Lind are shown in the photo below. The Jenny Lind vine has increased from 10" long to 15" long this week.

I'm not measuring our lettuce anymore since we've been harvesting (Derek and I are each eating 1 BIG salad every day from the garden!). It's been really great, and I'm very happy with our lettuce! I learned that you have to be disciplined about cutting leaves away... if you look at the head of lettuce that is furthest to the left, you can see a weird green thing sticking up out of it. I believe that it has basically seeded, and if I cut any off now the leaves would be bitter. I will probably cut it out to a) make room, and b) ensure that the other heads don't get any ideas!

Here are a couple of cauliflower heads... the one I measure each week is now 10.75", .75" taller than last week. However, the others are taller... closer to 16". They are so full and beautiful!

 Here is the kale... the leaves are HUGE! It has stayed 17" tall since last week, but the leaves are definitely broader than before. I harvested some just a couple of days ago and must say that I'm at a loss in terms of how to use it, primarily because we don't have a stove (see below) and I'm not sure whether grilling it is appropriate.

I believe that this is the all-blue potato. The vine is 19" long, which is 1" longer than last week. Additionally, the sweet potatoes are finally taking off! They are vines now too, so I won't compare their length to my previous height estimates. Either way, it's about 13" long! That has probably been the biggest surprise -- I did NOT expect our potatoes to be vines!

A couple of plants that I apparently didn't snap pictures of this week are the hot peppers (up from 9" to 12") and the sweet peppers (up from 7.5" to 10"). Also, the eggplant is 22", 6" taller than last week, and it has these beautiful purple flowers! I might have to just make a special post just of that plant... it's really too bad I missed it! Also, the zucchini leaves were approximately 23" from stem to leaf, 6" taller than last week.