Busy Sunday

I have to work tomorrow. Which sucks, because Monday is usually my day off, and which sucks more because I had a headache Friday and called in sick, which means I already used up the comp time working tomorrow would have earned me.

On the up side, we crammed a lot into my one day off this week. Ron wanted a rain barrel and wasn’t keen on spending $80 to buy one, so we went to the lumberyard and picked up a big trash can and a few fittings.

We took the dogs to the park, which was about as busy as I’ve ever seen it — not surprising, considering this is probably the last 85-degree weekend we’re likely to see before winter sets in. Song and Riggy had a good time bouncing around with a pack that included two Labs, an old English sheepdog, a Scotch collie, a Pekingese, a Labradoodle and several other enthusiastic characters. They wore themselves out thoroughly. (Riggy is snoring loudly as we speak.)

After a stop at McDonald’s for their usual cheeseburgers, we brought the dogs home and headed to Carbondale to pick up some odds and ends I needed from the Neighborhood Co-op, and then I spent the balance of the evening turning a trash can into a rain barrel and making that ice-cream-bucket biofilter I’ve been talking about all week. (We haven’t finished all the ice cream, but I scooped what was left of it into an old cheesecake filling tub so I could start my project.)

I haven’t tested the filter yet, but if it works, I’ll basically have $50 worth of filtration for about $8 worth of materials. Assuming they work as well as I’m hoping, I’ll post instructions for both projects in the not-too-distant future.

By the way, that pond remains one of my favorite projects. It requires a little effort to maintain, but it’s provided a constant water source for my bees and plenty of habitat for toads. I heard one jump into the water today as I stepped out the back door to check on the quail.

In other garden news, the lemon balm next to the pond is ginormous, and the arugula I planted in the fire pit this spring reseeded itself nicely, so we had a nice salad the other day, and I’m planning to make another this week. The Darwin Garden is alive and well. Yaaaaaaay!

Emily