building a raised bed

I've had about 50 raised beds pinned on pinterest before I even considered building one myself. I told my dad (he's a wood working genius!) about my plans to get some advice on what kind of wood to buy. He suggested recycling an old shelf that he's had in his workshop for years. It's genius - he cut all the pieces and we assembled it in my garage. It only took us about 45mins. The holes are great for drainage. I've considered painting it but I haven't found any natural paint in a bright color I liked yet.

My mom helped me fill it. We used branches for the bottom (we found them in the garden) and I bought four bags of soil. I'll add some compost on top for manuring sometime soon.

The first plants I planted were some basil and a zucchini plant that I planted in a tiny greenhouse on my windowsill.


Last week I bought a couple of tomato plants and a strawberry plant. I'll plant most of the tomato plants in containers so I can put them in my basement when it's super rainy/windy.

The raised bed is at the back of the house (facing south so there's lots of sunshine!) and it's pretty much impossible to see unless you go to the small part of the garden where the clothes lines are. Many people told me about strangers stealing their fruits/veggies so I'm really glad my little garden can't be seen from the street :)

Let's hope the great weather keeps up for a little bit longer so my plants get to make themselves at home before the rain comes back again.

planted.

The weather is finally spring-like enough over here to start growing some plants. So yesterday I got my gardening gloves out and the seeds I bought a couple weeks ago. I always buy organic seeds because I prefer chemical-free food and also a million other reasons that you can google if you're interested. I filled this container thingy (I think it's called cell flats?) with soil outside because it's always a huge mess. I added the seeds inside because it was rather stormy outside and I was afraid the light basil seeds might get blown away.

Have I mentioned that Lina likes flowers? As in she tries everything to eat them; once I put some flowers on my fridge to keep them out of her reach and she did a crazy stunt to jump from a chair to the fridge. She becomes a cat with superpowers as soon as plants are involved!

So naturally my planting actions weren't unnoticed and soon Lina was there to expect her future food. Or so she hopes.

I planted ten zucchini seeds. My parents have an awesome spot in their garden where I grew zucchini last year and they were huge and super tasty! I wanna plant some seedlings there but I'm also planning to plant some in the garden of the apartment house I live in. I'm somewhat paranoid thought that neighbors might steal my vegetables...

I also planted some basil because, well, it's basil. It's awesome and I use it for just about every meal I make. Have I mentioned that I like Italian food? I'm gonna make some pesto this season so I'll need looots of basil! :)

So the seeds are sitting (and hopefully growing soon!) on my window sill where Lina can keep an eye on them. I've seen her stare at the containers several times as if she expects something grand to happen. I guess I finally found someone who's as excited about my little plants as I am ;)

around here

The other day I started some spring cleaning in my kitchen. I didn't take any pictures yet but my kitchen shelf is super clean and organized now. I bought some ikea food containers when we were at the h+h to store expensive yarns (I don't want any moths among my fibers...) but as I was reorganizing my baking ingredients they came in pretty handy to store nuts and cupcake decorations etc. Guess I'll have to buy some more containers for my yarn next time I'm at ikea.

During the spring cleaning I found three opened packages of walnuts. Whoops, I didn't know I have that many! Naturally I wanted to get rid off the two halfway empty bags so I decided to make walnut bread!
I didn't find any recipe that matched the ingredients I had at hand (it was about 9:30pm and I had no desire to leave my warm and cozy apartment just to get some walnut oil) so I had to improvise.
I ended up using four different kinds of (mostly whole wheat) flour (all aaaalmost empty bags!), dry yeast, water and oil, some salt and many chopped walnuts. I just mixed all the ingredients together and added olive oil until the dough felt right. I might buy walnut oil to taste the difference but the result with olive oil was pretty damn good, too!

Next time I make it I'm gonna write down the ingredients I used and put it into my 'approved recipes' book. I love baking bread and finding new recipes/combinations that work is so much fun!

Besides my bread baking adventures I don't have much to share. I'm working on a big and exciting project that is taking up much of my time and energy but it's probably gonna be a couple weeks before I can share the exciting news. Spring has finally arrived in my bedroom; the orchid I bought when it was pretty much dead started to bloom in my favorite shade of pink.

My kitty wasn't very convinced when I started exchanging my winter clothes for summer clothes. She prefers using the opportunity to sleep in my closet instead. Well I guess she's right and I can wait a little longer... if you follow me on instagram (@froggeddesigns) you might have seen that the clothes to yarn + fabrics ratio in my closet is almost 1:1. Luckily there's a lot more space in my yarn boxes now than it was last year. But I'm looking for projects to use up some of my worsted weight leftovers. Any pattern recommendations?