Wrapping Up The Outdoor Chores, And A Few Good Links

I’ve been doing some good kitchen magic lately, and I recently made a batch of spinach burgers that turned out great.  I didn’t have any cheese (we’re mostly vegan these days) so I made cashew cheese by blending cashews, water, garlic salt, apple cider vinegar, and some spices.  It turned out creamy and wonderful, and I added it to the spinach mixture in place of cheese.  The dish was fantastic, and smelled great while it was baking.  I didn’t have bread either, so I whipped up a batch of tortillas, and we had spinach burritos.  Very yummy – thanks for the inspiration Kristina!

I also came across this article last week, with 100 ways to recycle a t-shirt.  My favorite?  The diaper, of course!

My husband is hard at work in the backyard right now, building two more mini-greenhouses to put over our other garden beds.  We’ve had to cover them with tarps for the last couple nights, as it’s been below freezing.  So it will be nice to have them covered now as we head into the cold season.  He’s using a lot of scrap lumber that we got for free from a lumber yard (check around, if there’s one in your area, they might let you come in and pick up offcuts).  We had to buy several long 2x4s, but all of the shorter pieces were free.

We’re starting to wrap up our list of outdoor chores.  I’ve been moving gravel in the front yard for the last few weeks, and finally finished this week.  We have a huge front yard, and it was all grass when we got here (well, sort of – it hadn’t been watered or mowed in a very long time… but it was supposed to be grass).  We didn’t want to be watering and maintaining all of that grass, and decided to xeriscape a chunk of the yard instead.  The previous owners had purchased gravel to go along the driveway and between the street and the sidewalk.  They had also put gravel back by the fence, and had apparently over-ordered.  The excess was in the area by the fence, which was over a foot deep in places.  So I got out the wheelbarrow and shovel, and started moving gravel.  We bought weedblocker to put down under the gravel, and I’ve filled in roughly 400 square feet of yard with xeriscaping.  We planted a few low-water plants and grasses, and I put in a wavy edge along the gravel using some old bricks that the previous owners left.  Even the plants were mostly free – a neighbor didn’t want them any more, and offered them to us if we’d come over and dig them out of her yard.  I love our new front yard.  It’s still mostly grass, but not as much as it was before, and we paid almost nothing for the new landscaping.  I also got lots of good workouts by shoveling gravel, which was an extra bonus.

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!