A Square Foot Garden and A New York Skyline

It's been eleven days since we arrived in Kansas and two since we left Kansas and settled back here at Lake Mary. I have to admit that, although we had a fun-filled winter on our long road trip, it's good to be home.

Just a couple of shots of the projects we worked on while we were at MJ's house. She wants to grow some veggies this year but didn't have a clue as to how to get anything at all to grow in the awful clay that passes for soil in Kansas. It's surely not that bad all over the state but where she lives it's not exactly a gardener's paradise - ha!

Jack created two raised beds for her. Normally, you'd either dig up the grass or spray it with a weed-killer before you fill the beds with good garden soil. Digging up the grass was a problem because (a) it's miserable to dig in that clay and (b) we just didn't feel like it :-). Spraying was a problem because you have to wait until the grass dies which can take a couple of weeks (at which point the chemicals aren't a problem) and we didn't have a couple of weeks.

So we solved the problem by laying down newspaper on top of the grass and then a layer of biodegradable weed block fabric on top of that. The top photo show one bed with the grass and the back bed already prepared with the newspaper and fabric. The second photo, of course, was taken after the soil and peat moss were added.

The second project took shape in eight-year-old CR's bedroom. It is such a cool room! Very industrial looking with a modern black wrought-iron loft bed with a desk area beneath the bed. The room lends itself to this perfectly because the ceiling soars to ten feet! MJ painted one wall a deep purple and the others are gray with silver brushed on over the gray. There are accents of hot pink. Very sharp!

There is a ledge above the closet and CR wanted me to create a city skyline up on it that she can see when she's up in her loft bed. And that's exactly what we did! I used foam-core board, cut out several so that we could layer them. Then we painted them with spray paint...dark gray for the front, silver for the center buildings and a light mauve for the farthest.

The moon is a light that MJ got somewhere...it has a remote control so that you can turn it off and on and also change it to the different phases of the moon. That is, you could do that if you had the remote...which is apparently lost somewhere in the house. Hopefully, it will be found.

After leaving Kansas we headed for Nebraska for a week. Had a terrific time with the four grandkids there...went to the world-class Henry Doorly zoo in Omaha one day. After I sort through the photos there might be one or two I can post.

Stay tuned...