Our Concrete Home

We continue to add to our garden. Brent built a large steel bed in the back yard and planted tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, asparagus, and cotton. He added 2 pomegranate bushes on the south side of our garage. I continue to raise pumpkins and zinnias in the front. Someday I will add the permanent landscaping, still working on amending the dirt. The pecan tree yielded 3 nuts that we were not expecting this year: My pumpkin was growing one HUGE pumpkin and we only allowed an additional 3 pumpkins to keep growing on the plant. But one very, very sad day I came out and my plant looked like this: The next day completely dead. Squash bugs. Ugh. I was very sad since I love my pumpkins!  Our grapes went crazy this year and I was able to steam/process 67 quarts of the most delicious concord grape juice ever! I was surprised to get so many quarts since it's just the third year of our grapes. We will enjoy the juice it all year long! 

Brent installed our solar panels! We were able to find a company in SLC who designed the layout, applied for the permits and sold us the panels. Brent spent more than a month, every day after work, setting up the panels. He went through all the city inspections and they were complimentary about his electrical skills (no surprise to me).  He is the hardest working man I know!  I got on the roof a couple of times as did my brother Adam. The panels have been a wonderful addition to Our Concrete Home! We even hit a month when our ENTIRE utility bill was $9.00. Whoopie! We love our detached garage. All the panels are on the garage's south facing roof. From the street you can barely tell that there are panels on the roof. I love the hidden panels. We celebrated the installation of the panels with a new purchase: 2017 Nissan Leaf. The kidlettes call it the "raspberry". It's a smooth, quick car and we love the feeling of independence it gives us. ...

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

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...

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...

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.