2014: The year of my dream shed

For years I have wanted a rustic shed with a greenhouse and it looks like this is the year for it and I am really excited.  Today we measured and squared up the layout, ready to dig the footing.  

This first photo is the area where we are working.  We had lots of large trees in the woods with dead limbs and trees that only had limbs on one side due to lack of sunlight, so the best way to start was to clear out this section to the end of the driveway, leaving the largest, nicest trees in place.  This  photo doesn't look so bad, but in actuality it was pretty awful.  There were lots of scrubby growth, some sort of wild huckleberry bushes (not edible fruit) and just trashy looking.

We had power lines coming through this part, so before cutting down the trees we had the power lines put underground.  That is a story in itself, but briefly while we were in the midst of having the lines moved, we had a huge storm that downed one of our largest trees at the very end of the drive.  It fell right across the power lines and pulled everything off of our house.  Since all we had to do was have the new breaker box inspected before the actual change-over, we decided not to replace & repair all the damage and have the power turned back on.  

We figured this would only take a day or two since we had already called for our inspection.  Ha!  It was 5 days before the power was turned back on and temps were in the high 90's.  Since we kept thinking we would only be a day or two without power, we went to my Mom's.  I dearly love my mother, but she is 85 and is really cold natured and she wouldn't turn the thermostat down past 78 degrees.  I'm overweight and don't handle heat very well and was MISERABLE, especially at night when trying to sleep in a hot room.  

  

This second photo was taken after the trees were cut.  We still have a lot of clean-up to do, but it's coming along nicely.  I have a nice, level area (about 60' x 200') for new SFG boxes, but I won't be using all the area for SFG. 

A glorious day!

Thank you, God, for this beautiful day.  A week ago we were waiting for the snow, today the temperature was around 60. 

Here in the Chattanooga area (about 2 hours north of Atlanta) we don't get much snow.  We usually have one, maybe 2, snows a year, but never much accumulation.  A couple of weeks ago we had less than 2 inches, which was mostly ice, which pretty much paralyzed all of the Southeast.  Then last week we got 10 inches of snow, which is VERY unusual for us.  As you can see, it was beautiful.  The best thing about it was that it melted off the roads quickly due to the above freezing temperatures.

Today was really nice and I couldn't stay out of the dirt.  Since I practice Square Foot Gardening and use Mel's Mix, my boxes thaw quickly and digging in wet "soil" doesn't pack it down.  In one of the 3' x 12' boxes we (I use the term "we" loosely, since my husband did most of the heavy work) added mushroom compost and worked it in well, then moved part of an asparagus bed into it. The roots were huge and I expect quite a nice harvest this year.  This was my newest bed, which is about 3 years old now.   I now have a total of 100 asparagus roots, so maybe we will get our fill of asparagus this year.