Blue Boat Home learning to live together sustainably

The shadow of the neighbors' fence is very visible in this shot. It casts a very crisp frost line in the spring. I located the spiral several feet away from the frost line. It's only in shadow in this picture because the sun is setting.

I did use the level (in the background) a little, but mostly I just eyeballed it.

I've wanted to build an herb spiral since we first moved into the house, but the back yard was such a wreck last year that I didn't get to it until this year. I followed the plan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Herb_spiral.svg roughly, and will plant it according to that plan. It took about twice as many bricks as I expected, but fortunately we had plenty lying around!

In preparation for tomorrow evening's Green Living Emporia meeting, which may or may not actually happen, here's a list of plants we grew in the garden's first year:

So back in June, we went on the Kansas City Urban Farm tour, and Jessie posted the photos quite a whle ago, but I just got around to posting the videos.  Here they are:

The most common question that Jessie and I got about our house during the winter was, "What exactly are you doing in the front yard?"  They'd never seen anyone intentionally bury the yard in 6-12 inches of leaves before.  Here's what we were doing, and why, and what worked and what didn't.

The front-yard garden was covered in sheet mulch all winter, but when the plants started to show their green I uncovered them... and then a late frost was predicted.  I bought a bale of straw, which I mistakenly thought would look better than the leaves, and piled it around the plants.  The afternoon before the frost, my row cover arrived by mail, so I used that to keep the wind off.  Everything that survived the winter survived the frost, so I count it a success, though the neighbors must think we're crazy...