First Week March: repotting seedlings, fixing garage, blueberries and bluebells (with chicken)

Our twice weekly work parties are gathering steam, thanks to the sun’s role in life on earth. March Madness? Not here. Instead, productivity.

In and around the greenhouse, Joseph, Aya, and Daniel especially have taken charge of repotting little seedlings in bigger pots when their roots need room. Daniel and Marita have been doing most of the watering, but this task will likely get divvied up further among the group at tomorrow evening’s monthly meeting.

By Friday, more of the seedlings needed repotting. Here’s Joseph, with tomatoes, working in the back.

Beautiful!

Also, on Friday, a friend of Annie had shipped some blueberry bushes to her, four of which we decided to plant by the fence along the road, where neighbors who walk by can also feast on them.

They’re tiny right now, but will grow, and imagine they enjoyed last night’s gentle rain. We planted them with a bit of our homemade compost in each hole. 

Finally, there’s the garage wall, which was identified as a problem that needed to be fixed when the rental inspection person visited that property (an every three year occasion). The fix, according to the city, was simple, just repair the sill to one window.

Well, my son Colin didn’t agree. He said the entire wall needed to be exposed, because who knows what kind of rot is in there. But Colin has been suffering from a nerve problem in his right shoulder and arm, plus his bad knee was acting up. Luckily, I was able to postpone the re-inspection, twice. But the third time was told sternly, that this is the final appointment. If we cannot make this appointment I will have to go before some board of appeals. That was about a month ago. Theoretically, we had plenty of time, since the drop dead date was March 10th. But it wasn’t until this week that Colin felt his body could handle the work (he is scheduled to do a lot of things around here that require carpentry skills, in exchange for parking his bus in driveway, and use of the garage as a workshop for him to “trick out” the bus. 

Okay, that’s enough backstory. I won’t go into details of the last time this garage was  the focus of the city, during the last rental inspection three years ago, when, after much miscommunication from both sides, we did have to go before the board of appeals, and they told us to paint it . . . in the middle of February . . . or else! So we did, gathering ten people together on the one day in February that was above 45 degrees. 

Here’s the chronology of the wall, so far. Colin tells me there’s only about five or six hours of his work left, and Marita has volunteered to paint it. First, this is just after he removed some of the rot.

Then, deeper and deeper into the morass, which he was definitely anticipating.

We already had two windows here from Habitat ReStore, which he used to replace the old ones. 

So let’s see, this is the 6th.  . . supposed to rain either today or tomorrow. But Tuesday the 8th should be fine. Okay, if all goes well, we will make that March 10th deadline. Whew!

Finally, chicken inspecting bluebells on other side of the fence.