Project 333 -- Simplifying Your Life

I'm reading a new book by Tammy Strobel called "You Can Buy Happiness (and It's Cheap): How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How You Can Too".  In it she mentions Project 333 as a way that you can simplify one aspect of your life, your wardrobe. 

I really dislike clutter, and what I dislike more than clutter is my packed-tight closet full of clothes.  Most days I can't find anything I want to wear, and it's difficult/depressing getting ready for work or to go out and run errands.  I've always wished there was a way to simplify things.  This Project 333 has you keep only 33 items of your wardrobe and wear them for three months.  You box up your remaining wardrobe and put it out of sight.  I think after doing this long enough you begin to realize that you can live with a much smaller closet of clothes, and that it makes your life easier whenever you need to get dressed.  Gretchen Rubin also talks about how cleaning out her closets makes her happier in  "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun ".  All these authors talk about the same theme.  How simplifying our lives and uncluttering our lives, can make us happier.  Less stress, less depression, less to think/worry about, and your stuff ends up not controlling you anymore.  

I've decided, when I get a chance this weekend, I'm going to try to get my wardrobe down to approximately 33 things.  And then box everything up and put it aside.  I sort of do this when I go through my closet for donations.  I pack up the donations in a garbage bag, and then I store it for a month or so.  If during that month I don't need to go into that bag to grab an item, I should be good to go and am ok with donating those items.

Who Woulda Thunk It?

Williams Sonoma has a new Agrarian shop on their webpage!!  Wow, it's nice.  http://www.williams-sonoma.com/agrarian

They've got chicken coops, planter beds, beekeeping stuff, canning and preserving, tools...  Of course everything is a tad spendy.

I found some really cute garden planning guides (they are PDFs):

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/shop/agrarian-garden/agrarian-garden-plant-a-gram/

Plant-A-Grams at Williams Sonoma
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/shop/agrarian-garden/agrarian-garden-plant-a-gram/

More Planter Boxes

Now I'm trying to upgrade my planter boxes.  I showed you, many many posts ago, the second-hand planters I'd gotten from my parents.

Old planter from my parents -- wood has rotted pretty badly

My brick pathway behind my house has planter areas -- the planter boxes were free,
but too small for the planter area, so I filled the excess area around the boxes with rocks

What we did today was remove one of those old planters, that was against the garage, and replace it with a new planter that fit tight to the bricked in area.

Here we pulled out the old planter, and removed the rocks that were filler, left
the two plants that were there originally

Here's the start of a pile of rocks

We used red fence wood to build the box, and we (meaning the husband) built it to be the exact size of the planter area.  Now no need for rocks!  The rocks weren't the best solution for filler, they let the weeds grow in pretty badly and required lots of maintenance.

New planter box that fits the space perfectly.

You can see in the picture above that I had two nice green bean plants that are still going.  The reason there were only two green bean plants in a rather large area is because I planted 6 but only 2 germinated.  I didn't bother, to try to replant additional seeds.  I just got lazy.  Anyway, so we just kept those in the ground (since they still are producing beans), and then we spread a mixture of compost, pete moss, and perlite around them to fill in the rest of the area -- since this planter box is now much bigger than the old planter box.

If I use the square foot gardening method on this box I'll have 5 square foot gardens to work with because the box we built was 5' by 16"...  I'll just say the 16" rounds to 12" :)  Using the square foot gardening method I'll plant quite a few green beans in this area now.

This is the one area in my yard that I have to water by hand, as there are no sprinklers near it.  Well, that's not true, I also have to water my vertical plant stands that I have now.

Chickens

OMG OMG, I want chickens like nobody's business.

I've decided I want three chickens.  They are social creatures, so you need at least two.  I've read that you should have 2-3 hens per person in your household.  I think that's a bit much though.  That'd be 4-6 hens for my house, and I don't want to take care of that many chickens!  But three I think would work.  Some weeks we eat about seven eggs (one for me each day) and then other weeks we eat a bit more if my husband eats an egg.

So which breeds would I get?  I read "A Chicken in Every Yard" by Robert and Hannah Litt that had a great summary of pros and cons of each breed.  Also, mypetchicken.com has a good comparison page.

I think I've decided:

Leghorn (white chicken) or Australorp (black chicken) -- best layer...  Australorp has brown eggs, and leghorns have white eggs.  However the site and book disagree with one another on who is the best layer.  The book says the Leghorn is the best layer, and the website says the Australorp is.  Hmmmm.  Mypetchicken.com says the Australorp lays five eggs per week and the leghorn lays four.

Easter Egger (brown) or Legbar -- green/blue eggs...  mypetchicken.com says both lay about 4 eggs per week.

Plymouth Rock -- really pretty hen, with black and white spots...  mypetchicken.com says they lay 4x per week.

I don't know whether it's worth it to have a really pretty hen that's not as prolific a layer?  There are three other good layer breeds (besides the Australorp), according to mypetchicken.com:  Star and Rhode Island and Ancona, all 5 eggs per week.

Should you just get the breeds that are the best layers?  Or should you go with some diversity in bird color and in egg color....

A Community Garden

We went down to the Westminster Church Community Garden today after Thanksgiving dinner.  It's quite a nice and large garden.  I took alot of pictures.  I noticed though that they seemed to be letting alot of plants stay in the ground too long.  The lettuce seemed really large and tall, and rangy at the top -- so I think it had bolted.  Also, some of their swiss chard was beyond massively tall.  There were other plants there that were really big, that I didn't really recognize.

I'm not sure whether we were supposed to be inside the garden or not.  It was after hours, it was gated, and they had locks on each gate.  However, one of the gates was a double door -- and by pulling the door stake out of the ground, and by swinging it out, you could get both gates open without needing to remove the lock.

Sooooo...  not exactly the most legit start to Thanksgiving.

Here are the pictures I took:

Lettuce that has bolted

Broccoli -- one of the guys is still small and already has a head on it

Bird houses

Massive swiss chard

A pyramid trellis

Cabbage

A MASSIVE carrot ready to be plucked

Really nice work bench....  I want it!

Succulents and DoDads

I bought these two succulents awhile back at a garage sale.  In the olden days, I was only growing succulents.  Mostly because they are pretty, and you can't kill them (however, I have killed a few, lemme tell you....).  Anyway, a lady was selling off her large succulent collection, and I ended up buying a few of them, giving some to my Mom.

Several different types of succulents in a copper pot

More succulents in a painted terra cotta pot

When I went to buy my fountain (see previous post), I also bought two metal plant stands.  The woman selling the fountain was foreclosing on her house, and she'd decided to sell every last fixture in the house (including her 200 lb fountain that came with the house).  She had a nice garden full of dodads, and so she offered to sell me all her plants (that were still in the ground) and all the dodads.  I stuck with the dodads and bought the two metal plant stands.

Seed Club

I tried to start a seed club at work, but wasn't too successful.  I envisioned us sharing seeds -- I'll trade you 3 butternut squash seeds for 5 buttercrunch lettuce seeds.  I got a bunch of people interested, and wanting to participate.  I created a google document, that could be shared among all of us, and I got a few people to list their seeds on it.  I thought we could all reference the document to facilitate a trade.

I just couldn't get people to actually do it.  For starters I had quite a few seeds available and a lot of the other folks had only a few seeds to share.

Has anyone been successful starting a seed club?  What's more important?  People who are really into it?  Or people with alot of seeds?  Or both?  I don't know.

I think it'd be lots of fun (and would save some money) to trade seeds you don't plan on using for seeds you really need...

FYI, my favorite seed store:  Victory Seeds

Fountain as a Plant Stand

I bought a fountain awhile back on craigslist, and am using it as a planter.  I think I paid $90 for it.  And it was HEAVY.  HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY.  Luckily there were some guys in the alley, when we unloaded it, and they helped carry it in (took 4 guys total). The entire fountain fit in the trunk of the Camry, once we separated it all apart.  We got it into the Camry using a dolly that the lady had who was selling it.  Hubs was able to roll it close to the car, and then he and I were able to lift it straight into the car.  Getting it out of the car, from the alley, and into the backyard was a little too far for me to lift....  We were lucky those guys were around.

I got this idea from a local eatery:  To The Point Cafe  They had a fountain (a 2 tier one) out on their patio that they would grow herbs in.  It was cute.  This one I have is much bigger.

Fountain off of craigslist

To The Point Cafe -- 2 tier fountain right in the center (from Yelp)

My fountain has three tiers.  I'm using the second tier right now to grow strawberries.  Every couple of weeks I have a strawberry to eat!

Strawberries on the 2nd tier

I've tried doing a couple things with the top tier.  There's not much soil in the top, and it dries out quickly.  I tried starting some succulents in it, but they aren't spreading.  And right now a little green onion is coming up volunteer.  So, I don't really know what to do.....

Top tier, succulents and a volunteer green onion

The bottom tier has lots of soil in it, and stays moist.  Right now I'm growing lettuce in it, and as you can see I have bird netting over it.  I put bird netting over everything, better safe than sorry.  However, I'm worried the birds are going to find the strawberries, so I really need to be diligent about plucking them.  I've got rocks holding the bird netting onto the fountain.  So very non-permanent.

Lettuce in the bottom tier

What Did I Pull Today?

 Four big radishes, two mini carrots, and 2 green beans (I've got a pile of green beans going).  I'm putting everything in a beef stew for dinner.

We Built a Fancy Planter

My husband built me a fancy plant stand today (ok, maybe it took him 3 weekends to do it, but who is counting?).

I saw this plant stand a few weeks ago at the City Farmers Nursery.  I could tell that this plant stand was made from fence wood, because we'd been using fence wood on all my square foot planter boxes and I recognized the wood color and the notches at the top of the wood.

The planter box I liked and wanted to make

So we set about building it.  We bought the wood from Home Depot.  We bought 8 boards that were 7.5" wide, and another 8 that were 5.5" wide (all matching fence redwood).  That amount of wood makes two plant stands.

The boards at Home Depot

Prices of the boards

The boards were $4.27/ea for the wide boards and $2.35/ea for the smaller boards.  And we were able to fit all the boards inside my Camry!

16 boards fit in the Camry!

Starting to cut the small boards down

Each stand has two 7.5" wide boards, for the sides, with no cuts (original lengths).  Then each stand has four short 7.5" boards acting as the base of each planter box.  To make those, we just cut the wide boards short, removing the notches at the top.  Then there are 8 planter box side boards, which are the 5.5" boards, cut to length.  Then the feet to brace it and keep it upright (it's really tall).  We just used scrap wood for the feet.

Here is the final product!  I've put it in front of a window on the back of my house to give us something decorative to look out at.  I've already filled it up with soil, and planted lettuce in it.  This side of the house gets direct sun, and faces south.  So I'm hoping it will get a lot of sun and grow nice lettuce.

The final product!

Hubs put some REALLY big feet on the stand -- you know, California earthquakes and all...

The San Diego Zoo:

Went to the zoo this morning to just walk around awhile.  We have a membership, so can come and go as we please.

We were walking around the zoo and I found one area where they were growing a bunch of veggies.  I'm wondering who planted it and why.  Are they doing something with the veggies?

I thought some of their plantings were spaced too closely together.  For example they had quite a few broccoli plants in one planter box, and I thought they were way too close together, and inter-mixed with other plants way too close together.

But hey, they didn't ask me.....

Here are their carrots.  They are sticking out of the ground about half an inch.  Time to pull them!

Kohlrabi

Some fancy eggplant

Eggplant

Really pretty signs for the lettuce boxes

Nice vertical planting system

More lettuce

GIANT radishes...  I should find out what variety these are.  GIANT.

Lettuce and lavender

More vertical growing

Really cute greenhouse, but nothing in it

Carrots and something that is trellised?

More vertical

Mesclun