Author Archives: Andrea Middleton

Currently at Reddit, I spent 10 years as a community organizer on the WordPress open source project. I'm also an avid reader, wine enthusiast, and parent of two.

Planter boxes, filled and planted

Happy May Day! Last Sunday morning, we got a delivery of what was supposed to be 2 yards of dirt for the planter boxes. I now think it was more like 3 yards. On Sunday afternoon (before flying to Texas for my brother-in-law’s funeral), I filled all our planter boxes and planted our new starts! It was a lot of work, but I’m really happy to have edible plants in our garden now.

Before:

Empty planter boxes
2 yards of dirt? More like 3.
Fruit and veggie starts!

Midway point:

The first two wheelbarrow loads
About 3/4 full.
Hardly a dent in the pile ‘o dirt!

The kids helped:

Amelia shoveling.
Using the wheelbarrow, like mom.
Baxter decided to move one shovelful at a time.
One load dumped, 3 more to go!

Finally, they were full of dirt:

Filled and tilled!
Seriously, if you want some dirt hit me up.
Covered against the rain.

So then we planted:

Amelia was wild to plant the strawberries.
Like pretty maids all in a row!

And here’s a close-up of each box:

Salad mix, carrot seeds, one lonely mint plant.
clockwise from back left: oregano, tarragon, basil, cilantro, cilantro, thyme, parsley x6
Arugula (it’s a vegetable) x6
“everbearing” strawberries x6 plus marigolds
Obviously not a planter box; our neighbor allowed us to put some tomato plants in her property because she's awesome.
Obviously not a planter box; our neighbor allowed us to put some tomato plants in her property because she’s awesome.

I can’t wait to harvest some salad! 🙂 We’ll plant one or two bush bean plants when the weather warms up a bit, sunlight permitting. I’ve never really been able to grow lettuce before, so if that fails I’ll definitely put the beans in that box. If the shady spot I put the arugula in is too sunny after all, or if we discover we don’t need that much arugula after all (they sold the starts in sets of 6 — the tyranny of plenty!), I might pull out half that box and use that for carrots instead of the lettuce box.

This is all an experiment anyway. If you are great at gardening and wish to advise me, please feel free. 😉

Just finished the first book in Rachel Aaron’s series, The Legend of Eli Monpress. I love reading good books, which so often have been published by good publishing houses and edited by good editors. My wallet is not as fond of me binge-reading novels that run $6-10 each and last me about 2 days, also each. Next series will have to be a cheap one, I guess. 

PawPaw Barney’s new gadget

Here’s evidence that Tom has taught Barney some elementary lessons in how to use his new email account on his new tablet. Barney lives too far out in the country to be able to get internet access, but with a tablet with cellular data we might get him to join us in the Internet age after all. 

He now has about 10 pictures of my kids in his inbox, so that’s progress at least. 😉