One Person's Trash Is Another Persons Cobbler! Enlarging Garden, My Carpet Re-newal Idea

One Person's Trash Is Another Persons Cobbler! I love my neighbor- she's dog sat for us and is so nice. Each year I have lusted after her HUGE rhubarb in her front yard. It's massive, about 4' across (1 plant), ripens, then she throws it away. Meanwhile, my 2 little ones get a small harvest and wither in the heat, but I moved them this year and bought 1 new plant. Hope springs eternal:) This year I got up the courage from my Independence Days Challenge to ask her if I could buy some? She said- take it all, no charge, it's free, help yourself. I nearly swooned!  My husband grew up  eating lots of rhubarb, and my garden has failed in that one crop. Dave got out some clippers and brought back about 5 lbs! That's about 1/3 of what's still out there still ripening! I bought some frozen triple berry mix at Costco, and made a nice, big crisp. I used this recipe- Rhubarb Berry Crunch, cut back on the sugar and added cinnamon to the fruit and topping- it's still cooling, and the cream is waiting for it:)

Garden Enlarging- You know how you build something perfect? Then you add something later, and now it's not so perfect? That's what happened with our veggie garden layout. It was fine, until we built the coop. Then it wound up having a fence panel in the middle of the front, large coop panel. Tough to clean, so... I asked Dave if we could move the fence back a few feet? We'd get more room to grow veggies, especially now that we have more light. Here's Dave, he started without me, I was making the cobbler-

Dave moved the rock border out 3', then the fence. It's lined up with the small coop door, easy to clean! We'll fill it in with tomatoes and peppers next in that area.We'll gain quite a few square feet. The weather has been wild this week, so my veggies are still on the deck :(  Hopefully in 2 or 3 days we'll plant.

My Carpet Re-newal Idea- Last year I bought a nice, jute area rug from Target. Fast forward one year- dog cookie stains and the fabric border is really worn. Lesson learned- buy heavier carpet. It's not in the budget right now to buy a replacement, so.... I had the brilliant idea to turn it over, vacuum it, and whala- new carpet! Old carpet, before-

Re-newed carpet, after. It will be fine for a while...

Ellie by the raised bed- "beware of snapdragons"