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Do you ever just have such a great weekend that it actually makes Monday not seem so bad? I know that sounds weird, you would think that if you had an awesome weekend you would just dread Monday right? But because I am the resident weirdo, to me, this weekend was just so fulfilling that even though I have to wake up at 4:30 in the AM to go to work tomorrow, im actually looking forward to it.

I know, I know your asking yourself WHAT could I have possibly done for my weekend to be THAT good. Well... I did some gardening. Yep. I am 26yrs old and I spent my weekend painting [more on that later in the week] and gardening. Does this mean I have officially crossed over into 'I'm old' status?

So here is part of the backyard. It's the 'side yard', that goes up along the side of the house. This area gets sunlight pretty much for the whole day. We have 3 large oak tree's back here so the rest of the yard is shady a lot so this was the perfect spot to create a garden.

First we measured the area and than got to work 'tilling' up the grass and dirt [talk about a major workout]!

After a trip to Lowes to buy some landscaping timbers and what seemed like a truck load of top soil, we returned home to cut and screw the boards together.

Next up... Reading about how I can score some awesome Tax breaks... or not. No this paper was going into the bottom of the garden [on top of the original soil]. Newspapers today are printed with safe inks, and pigments are binded together using soy-based oils and all printed with non-toxic chemicals [unlike papers from back in the day]. Lining the bottom of your garden with newspaper helps prevent weed-seeds from germinating because it keeps all light out and traps moisture and from what I have heard from other people who use this method is that it works FAR better than your plastic, nylon and or rubber products.

So we have the paper lined at the bottom of our garden, held down with clumps of dirt.

Lastly was filling the garden with bags of top soil [we used about 12 bags [$0.98 @ Lowes] for our 8x6 area] and than planted our seeds.

What did we plant you ask?

Some of my favorite Herbs and Veggies [I really can't wait for some of those cucumbers]!

On another related note, Josh moved the Solar panel over to the corner of this part of the yard also, because of all the sunlight. What are our plans for this?

We will be attaching a section of gutter to this end of the house [which is right next to the Garden].

Which will than lead to a future rain barrel that will sit in that corner [once the wire for the panel is moved of course]. Luckily we already have the barrel, we just need to buy the kit and set it all up. We're hoping to create some sort of pump [well that would be josh creating it, im just hoping] that will be hooked to the solar panel, that way whenever I need to water the veggies I can use the water from the barrel [hose and pressure].

So we will be growing veggies and helping them grow by using water from our rain barrel which will be run using energy from the sun. How cool is that!? Now let's just hope my veggies actually grow and that those pesky Box Worms stay away!!!

What about you.. Any Gardening this year?

Do you Green?

Happy early President's day... or better known as 'Happy I have a day off tomorrow - day' W00t! I hope you all have had a super weekend thus far. We haven't gotten any work done on the Master Bath this weekend. The weather has been so gorgeous that we have wanted to be outside every chance we've gotten. Right now our yard looks like a mine field. A mine field of leave piles. We have very larger old oak tree's in and around our yard and well you can imagine the leaves they left all over the place. So with the warm weather and Spring Fever in our veins we got straight to work. Josh was on 'Pick up leave pile duty' and I was on 'Raking leaves into piles duty'. In case your wondering, yes we do have a leaf blower but in all honesty I don't mind doing it the hard [old fashioned] way. A little elbow grease and hey... burn some calories while im at it. Score!

But sadly this post is not about dead leaves and how to intricately rake them into small piles [I know, you're just heart broken]. This post does have to do with the outdoors and more importantly the Sun!

Josh and I have really been focused on being more Green and helping to do our part in saving the environment. We recycle everything from 1-5. I bring all of our paper/newspapers... etc to work where they have paper recycling and last year was my first attempt at a vegetable garden, however I lacked experience and it showed and sadly, my poor little plants paid the price. R.I.P ol' little tomato plants.

This Spring/Summer we are focusing on finishing our rain barrels [we scored 4 large barrels off craigslist for $50.00!]. Making a 2nd attempt at the Garden and Josh is trying his hand at solar energy.

Source

Our long term goal is to equip our home with Solar panels. Not only will they lower our energy bills, but they are also safe for the environment by reusing the suns energy. How cool is it to be able to use what Mother Nature is basically giving us, for free? I, for one, think it's completely awesome.

So on Saturday a box arrived that Josh had anxiously been waiting for. His solar cell kit that he bought online. It came with a stack of cells and a few extras to use with the soldering iron [which he bought separately @ Radio Shack].

We're really excited to see what we can do with these little cells once he completes the entire kit.

For now he has taken up a corner of my craft room to lay out his soldered panels. He sat them in the sun and than tested them to see the voltage and just from being in the sun a minute or two, these few little cells already were producing 5volts!

We hope to complete a panel to power the pool pump, and maybe to charge the battery to our weed-eater. I can't wait for when we can put some panels on the roof of our house! -So that's what we've been up to. Enjoying the sunshine and making solar panels. How romantic ;)

Do you have solar panels on your home? Are you 'Green' or trying to become more 'Greener'?