Utah Rewards--Beautiful Sunrise

Sunrise in Utah has been incredible lately. View from my back porch. 

The Pizza Oven Building Officially Begins

Brent has been researching the building of a pizza oven. He needs to be a guest author and post the technical details and the sites he follows. He's done his homework!

The pizza oven is one of the first features to go into our backyard landscaping. We still have a healthy bunch of weeds growing but we're getting in the big stuff first!

He first built a cinder block base and reinforced it with rebar. We recently poured the concrete and I think the kiddos had a good time getting messy!

The beginnings of the base:

 Base ready for a pour:

 Estee's job was to get out the bubbles with a long rebar stick. She did great!

 Maya liked finish work.

 Brent and Cole had the messy job of loading up the cement and pouring it in.

 Brent preparing the base for the concrete slab.

While most of us were doing the pizza oven Sierra worked on another project (everyone ALWAYS has a project at our house). She was making a pinata head to resemble a friend for her b-day--it turned out awesome!

Summer of Veg

I am not ready to put in my front landscaping plants. I am not convinced that the soil is where it needs to be to commit to anything semi permanent. The dirt here is full of rocks and does not have a lot of organic material. And NO worms when we started working in the dirt.  Worms are good. You want worms. I have been on a mission for the past two years to amend the soil with compost and attract worms. One thing I do is bury directly my kitchen compost into the dirt (peelings, leftover veg, rice, peanut shells, egg shells, old bread). The worms have loved it and our soil is beginning to look beautiful.

My neighbor Ruthann calls these my "worm holes" I leave them open and she shares her scraps with me. I leave a compost bucket on the kitchen counter. The kiddos are well trained and peel directly into the buckets. In the first picture you can see lumpy, not loamy, soil. It has taken a while to get those lumps out and get the soil to the current color and texture. But it's a fun project. I get excited about my dirt turning into rich soil!

Since I haven't committed to our permanent plantings, I filled the front of the house with Vegetables. Photo above shows our pepper plants and pecan tree. 

I planted an area in back with potatoes and we had a great harvest!

 I planted a cucumber in a front bed and we ate cucumbers all summer.

 I planted to pumpkins in the front patch again. We harvested 20 pumpkins this year! This is the "before" pumpkin.

The "after" pumpkin...

 Pepper and a pecan tree in the front planter (see the box--it's going rusty!!!). The "before" peppers...

The "after" peppers...

 We ended up with an endless supply of peppers. We pickled a bunch of them. (You can see the white compost bucket between their heads on the back counter).

 Put a pecan tree and onions in the second planter. Tomatoes behind! Tomatoes came on slow but by the end of summer we were eating them regularly. "Before" onions and tomatoes...

 Tomatoes and onions turned into this! "After" tomatoes and onions...

 Added eight concord grape vines along the back of our property.

 And grew zinnias from seed (these are Maya's favorite thing to grow).

The soil might be ready in the spring for the real plants. But in the meantime it's a vegetable garden. It's a good conversation starter with the neighbors!

Weeding

The front yard is taking shape well! However, we still have the garden of weedn' in the back. I spent time with the girlies pulling weeds. Filled the trailer and it still never ends. I solarized two different sections in the back. Plastic down for many weeks to kill the weeds and seeds underneath (had to clear the weeds first). It worked well! I recommend. Stick with the clear plastic--better results!

 Girlies with the weed harvest.