Free Water, Spring Gardening Clean Up Starts, Steel Cut Oats w/Fruit and Nuts, Aluminum Cans = Art

Free Water-
With so many people going out and buying water, and having a home water bill, it might be odd to see something that says free water. That's where rain barrels come into play! At our last house when we had a 1/3 of an acre lot with high city water bills, our rain barrels were really helpful! One (or more) 55 gallon rain barrel is a great addition to any yard or garden. You can use it to water all kinds of things. Most rain barrels are elevated on a wooden frame or concrete blocks so that it is gravity-fed through a hose, making sure it's level. You can also use for watering cans for smaller jobs. We have ours elevated for that reason, easier to water larger sections. One of the other more important reasons would be if you had a water outage. Depending on the circumstances if your water was cut off  due to a local emergency, (fed through a pumping system that failed or from contamination) you would have still access to water. You would first have to filter your water into a safe drinkable water. This is where you would buy a really good quality camping or backpacking water filter to remove any bacteria, etc . We have one on hand that we could use worse case scenario.  If you needed water to simply flush your toilets you could use the water as-is.  Most garden stores and big box gardening departments have rain barrels ready made, ours was about $35 several years ago-

Screen on lid for filtering out debris, diverter off of downspout

You can also make your own barrel which we did previously, but is a little trickier. You basically buy a 55 gallon barrel, drill a hole in the bottom and buy the plumbing hardware. I do not advise this, as it's hard to get a good fit. Once you have your rain barrel you need to decide where to put it and it's easy enough to find drop-down diverters to add your gutter downspout. They are paintable to match your house or trim. We have this design-

                                                   

We added ours during our new gutter installation, a perfect time. You can add them later though, just needs different planning. You basically cut a gap in the downspout to be above your barrel. Screw on the diverter, that's it. We bought a small section of screen to attach with the ring on the barrel. In a freezing climate in the winter it's a good idea to always empty your rain barrel for the winter. We had ours sitting out empty, then last week I adjusted the diverter into the down position to fill up the barrel. After one good rain storm in one day the barrel was 3/4 of the way full! So there is free water out there, some people who set up multiple rain barrels and even very large water catchment systems. Some have above ground, or below-ground, depending on your budget, your needs and preferences. Depends on your climate as well. You may need to check with local ordinances as well, as it varies in some states if you can collect water. I personally believe if water falls on your property you should be able to collect it, but that's another story...

Gardening bench ready!

Spring Gardening Clean Up Starts-
Everything has really started greening up here! Work-wise fruit trees have been pruned, shrubs have been trimmed, mowing has started, and a few things have been rearranged. We had two shrubs that we finally dug up and put in our city compost bin. One was a very large butterfly bush that we loved but about 90% of the shrub was dead, had a very woody base with hardly any live branches left. It was time to simply replace it. Another was a ornamental cherry shrub that was planted near our front door, that just didn't do very well there. When a plant is stressed repeatedly it has a tendency to have bugs/diseases, and the shrub had both consistently. Not enough light in that spot. Ditto it went to the compost tote. I'm a big believer that your front yard, driveway and entryway says a lot about you. You want it clean, tidy, neat, attractive and nicely planted. If your back yard is a pit, at least not one can see it from the street! This doesn't always apply to rural areas where you have much larger acreage to have all your heavy equipment and vehicles out. It's sad for me to see homes becoming an eyesore from lack of care.  We have a large three-story Victorian home in our neighborhood. It's used to be gorgeous, a real gem! Tons of gingerbread, had pretty landscaping-

"before" photo

After 10+ years, the paint is peeling off, the house is sinking in spots, and it's just falling apart. I wish someone with a lot of money would buy it and bring it back. It's just sad that people let their homes go for some reason. Sometimes the owners die, become disabled, who knows.

Dave and I both take a lot of pride in how our home looks, so a minor re-do of the front yard will fix that! I'm doing some research on what kind of medium sized shrub I can plant in mostly shade near the front door. I think a boxwood may fit the area, maybe.  Dave has added compost to the raised veggie bed in back, with more ready to spread. We bought a new pair of clippers for pruning, our old ones were toast. I scrubbed all of our outside windows last weekend with my handy Windex kit, works great!

                                                     

You can reach hard to clean areas. I've had mine for years, just buy new pads every year or so. I can see out my windows now! Winter always blows dust and rain, makes a real mess of the windows. Also works great on our backyard glass-topped table. I cleaned/set up, our garden work bench. Great to have everything back in place. We always cover the top in plastic for winter-

Next projects are-

Taking down the "sun room" for the hens, and remove storm window from the bottom. A big screen goes in there. It's been good we've had the sun room up with all the rain! Trimming all the canes of our berries, cleaning out any debris from our perennial beds, fertilizing, and more pruning to come. I'll be starting seeds soon, just hasn't happened yet. Too much weekend time sucked with car repairs, misc stuff. Luckily it's barely April!

Steel Cut Oats w/Fruit and Nuts-
I've been using some of my steel cuts oats recently. I read about using toppings on the oats and thought why not just mix them in? I decided to soak some oats overnight Saturday night. I used (check online for more info) boiled, hot water, a pinch of salt and the oats. I think I did a 3 to 1 ration, but don't remember where I saw that online, sorry. Just stir in the oats, cover, let sit out overnight. Next morning cook with a little milk added, 1 cup raisins, 1 cup chopped pecans, 1 cup rough chopped home-canned apple slices, and a dash of cinnamon. I cooked about 20 minutes until hot and cooked through. It was wonderful, filling, frugal, healthy and will keep for about 1 week in the fridge. The nice thing is you could really vary this a lot. You could change the nuts, add berries, etc.

Aluminum Cans = Art

I snapped this shot at a local grocery store. It was part of a beer display, pretty cute! Some gloves, tin snips and you too can make yard art! I personally love the ball with petals on the top right! Love the recycling!!!