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Category: country living

  • You only need one luffa seed

    You only need one luffa seed to feel like a master gardener.

    Luffa, sometimes spelled loofah, actually refers to the fruit of the vine. Luffa aegyptiaca is a member of the cucumber (Cucurbitaceae) family. It can be eaten in the young fruit stage, or it can grow big, allowing an intricate network of fibers to form that are commonly used in the kitchen or bathroom as a scrubber sponge.

    And you just thought it was a sponge from the ocean!…

    This vine is particularly in love with the hot and humid regions of the Gulf Coast areas of Texas. It seems like the hotter it gets mid-August, the more the plant thrives (as long as you water it every once in a while).

    The cool thing about luffa, is that it only takes one seed to look like this.

    Yep. This was 1 volunteer seed that found its way to this raised garden bed. Luckily, I knew what it was, so I allowed it to stay and grow.

    In the morning, the flowers open up to attract pollinators.

    In the evenings, the flowers close up and actually fall off.

    Do you see the flower buds on this one?

    Luffa has a very long growing season. I typically plant mine in March and I do not usually see fruit until July. To save you from having to do the math, that is about 150 days from planting seeds!

    Can you spot the long fruit hanging down?

    I stumbled across luffa seeds some time ago (like 2004ish). At the time, it was not popular to plant and there was little information about how to germinate them. I did what any good gardener does, I threw it in some dirt, and holy Batman! I can now feed the entire town with the number of seeds I have collected over the years.

    Baby luffa

    A few things I have learned after growing them for several years:

    *Growing luffa in the south is very different than growing in the north. We can basically ignore the plant and it thrives. No babying here.
    *Direct sow is the best way to plant. I have yet to transplant luffa successfully.
    *Due to the very long growing season, it is more difficult to grow up north.
    *One vine will TAKE OVER. Be prepared. It is seriously like Jack and the Beanstalk.
    *Bees LOVE the bright colored flowers on luffa.
    *You must be patient and let the luffa dry on the vine. Do not pull it up and try to dry it inside. You will get a moldy mess.
    *Luffa is pretty bug resistant (except ants seem to love the flowers) and the plant is very forgiving if you forget to water it.

    So what do I do with all of the luffa that I grow? Make soap scrubbers of course! Read about that here–> Luffa Sponges

  • Tree sale and firewood

    We braved the craziness of our local Master Gardener tree sale this weekend.  We were not prepared last year…the advertisements said come early to get the best selection. So we showed up at 8:45 (doors open at 9am) and o.m.g.  The line was wrapped around into the parking lot!  It was like a black Friday sale!  In preparation, we arrived at 8:15am and we were not the first in line.  (This is looking to the back of the line about 10 minutes before it opened up.)

    Once we got in, it was a mad dash to make sure we got a Meyer Lemon tree this year!  Our county has citrus restrictions due to a disease that is running rampant, so we cannot transport any out of the county.  The master gardener sale has great quality trees!

    We picked up another of each (that we bought last year)- lime, lemon, fig, pear, peach, and some more blackberries.

    While we were at the tree sale, Wade had some friends over and they cut up firewood.  (Yes…wonderful friends to come over and do manual labor for some beer!)

    And then we burned wood scraps (not freshly cut wood…it needs to cure about a year before it is good for burning).

    #countrylivingcomingsoon

  • Framing- Part 2

    At the end of week 1 of framing, the house looked like this-

     

    You can see it starting to take shape.  And to think the head guy told us they would have the roof on by Monday…

    Since we are building ourselves, there will not be anyone coming behind to clean up.  The trades will do their job and leave.  It is up to us to clean up.  It is like cooking in the kitchen, it is easier to clean up as you go along rather than save the huge mess until the end.

    The girls reluctantly helped.  We stacked all the long boards, burned all the small scraps, and swept the whole house. Daisy was so excited to get in on the action!

    Every afternoon after work, we go out and pick up nails so they do not rust on the concrete since we will be staining.  Sometimes we miss a few…

    Framing continued throughout the week.  They use long boards EVERYWHERE to square up the house (like across all the windows, doors, rooms, etc…), then add more structural support (like the osb on the outside) to keep it squared.  You can really see the progression below.

    Monday-

    Tuesday-

    Wednesday-

    Thursday-

    Friday-

     

    The end of week 2 of framing!

  • Framing- Part 1

    Framing started this week for the most part.  After a small misunderstanding with the place we were getting our lumber, it was delivered the day before New Year’s Eve. The power pole was also delivered by the electric company.  It was supposed to be installed before the new year…that did not happen.

    The guy that is in charge of framing came out and chalked the walls and his crew started on New Years Eve.

    And then it rained.  And rained some more.

    So, I sat impatiently in our super tiny apartment and designed all of the cabinets for our house.

    The sun finally came out and Monday, the guys were back at work framing.

    The girls had a day off from school so they spent most of the afternoon out there.  Sydney enjoyed taking panoramics of the guys working.  The girls were fascinated with them building a wall, and then standing it up and bolting it down.

    Tuesday had more rain, but it was nice and sunny Wednesday so they guys finished up all of the walls.

    More rain on Thursday, but by the end of the day on Friday, the ceiling construction was mostly complete.

    On a side note…this water had been sitting in this spot for over a month.  It needed a place to go so I dug out a trench leading to the ditch so it would finally drain!

    By the end of the day Saturday, they had the side porch ceiling finished and the dormer support finished.

    This wraps up the first week of framing.  Still no electricity.

  • Scoring to look like tile

     

    Our foundation has been curing for 16 days now.  Something we had planned on doing just after the pour (but got delayed due to life moving on…) was to score the concrete to look like tiles and then stain it.  After discussing the options, we almost did not go through with this.  Everything we read said to use a straight line and a circle saw for making score marks in the concrete.  Well…the thought of being on my hands and knees for hours…and the uncertainty of what it would look like…had us convinced that it would look ok to not be scored.

    I spent Friday working in my office and the more I thought about it, the more I decided I wanted to score it.  Luckily, I have an uncle that has built a few houses and done much of the work himself, so I messaged him and he told me to rent a walk behind saw to do it.  We have a Home Depot sort of close (we only have to pass 2 other HD to get to this one) that rents just about everything, including walk behind cement saws for $70 for 24 hours.  We decided to get the saw first thing in the morning, so that evening Wade and I made grid marks along the perimeter of the foundation.  Then we ran out of daylight.

    Morning came and it was go time!  We were at HD at 7am to pick up the saw.  The girls had to help because there was no way to chalk the foundation with just 2 people.  The girls helped stretch the line and then walked along snapping it to make the VERY faint marks.

    We made the lines on a diagonal spacing them 3 feet apart (roughly a 2 ft square).  Once we finished, Wade and I agreed we wanted bigger tiles, so we skipped every other line, making the diagonal 6 feet (roughly a 4 ft square).  Pythagorean theorem at work!  I decided to cut the first set of lines before drawing the cross lines so I did not erase them as I worked.

    (Yes it was VERY hard to see the lines!!!)

    Using the saw was not difficult, rather the hardest part was making sure the heavy saw stayed straight.

    What I did not realize was that the saw blade (that was on it when we got it) was so worn, it was simply leaving a black mark!  Seriously!?!?!  Off I went back to Home Depot to buy a new blade (for $70).

    ***Side note- the saw rental does not normally come with a blade.  This was left on from the previous user.  The guy warned us when we picked it up that we might need a new blade.  However, when we made the first line, it worked…barely…but it worked.  That is why I kept going after the first line because it all looked the same even though it was not scoring.

    I should have known I was not doing anything the first time, given this time there was dust flying everywhere as it actually scored the concrete!!!  It looked awesome!!!

    With something so big, I doubt a straight edge would have worked at all.  Looking down the lines, you can see how wobbly they are, but when you stand above them you cannot tell.  I think once we get the walls up, it will be even better.

    The cross lines took much less time since we actually knew what we were doing.  I would say the whole thing took about 4 hours…maybe less.  We were out there all day because it was a learning process (including the practice run making black lines, then an additional trip to Home Depot for a new blade).

    Total cost for the cement saw rental and a new blade= $150 and we have 4 ft tiles throughout the whole house.  SCORE!! (get it…haha…)

  • Foundation Pour

    YIPPEE!!!!  The day finally arrived for them to pour the foundation.  Just getting to this point is such a relief!

    Over the last week (since missing our first pour date) it has rained… A LOT.  The trench they dug in the back was full of water and the plastic they put around the perimeter were full.  The guys came the day before to pull the plastic and get any misc things cleaned up.

    The pour was scheduled for 5am so we left the house at 4:30.  Stacey was THRILLED to be up so early to watch a bunch of concrete trucks, so we bribed her with hot chocolate…this was probably the coldest morning yet this fall.

    The pumper truck was already there.  The electric was not up yet, so the guys put up some flood lights running off of a generator and also lit a fire to stay warm (and fix breakfast tacos).

    The cement trucks were behind, and the first one did not show up until 6:30.  Once they did, it was go time.  About 9 trucks were there right in a row, but then it slowed down about 9:30 and there was a truck coming about every 20 minutes.

    It was neat watching the pumper guy control the arm using a remote control.  Wade joked with him it was like playing video games all day long.  Yeah…something like that.  The pumper was brand new…we were the first pour with it.  As the guy moved his body, the arm moved with him.  It was fascinating to watch!  (That is him below standing just under the “elbow” of the pumper arm.)

    They missed the amount of concrete needed by about 6 trucks.  We ended up needing 22 trucks…about 210 yards of concrete for a 4300 sq ft foundation.  That is a lot of concrete!

    Our culvert took a beating but survived.  We have heard horror stories about culverts caving in with the weight of the cement trucks.  Not only do you have to repair the culvert, but you have to pay for a truckload of cement!

    The guys had to scramble at the end and did not spend as much time polishing the last bit (the art room).  Of all the rooms to not be perfect, I guess that one is okay.

    Tada!  I just need to add these guys are artists with concrete.  If you can call a foundation beautiful…this one certainly is!  It is amazing building your own house what a better quality you get compared to a speck house in a neighborhood.  A huge shout out to AMP Concrete.  We LOVE our foundation!

  • Foundation work

    Once we had access again to the property, the house building could continue.  The foundation guys came out and built out the most important part of the house.

    First they put the outside frame down.

    Next came the underground plumbing.

    Then more dirt and sand.

    Because of our soil type, we have to have 42″ beams around the perimeter of the foundation.

    This took 2 days longer than the guys expected…so we missed our foundation pour.  The main sub kept telling us that we have a VERY strong foundation!  There is a ton of steel in the design.

    This is the final day just after they put the re-bar on the top.  There is still a week before the pour, so they put plastic over the perimeter of the foundation in preparation for the rain we are supposed to have this weekend.  If it does rain, there is a deep trench in the back that will allow the water to drain out. And the guys also said they will bring in pumps to get out any remaining water.

    From start to finish, this took exactly 3 weeks.

  • Building a bulkhead for the culvert

    Just after the guys finished the house pad, the rains came in.  We had record flooding again…just like in May.  This time, it washed the sides of the culvert away. Just as we were getting started with the construction of the house, now we were on hold again since we could not get equipment across.

    One of our neighbors down the street had an impressive railing built around his culvert that Wade and I had been eyeing since we bought our property.  We eventually wanted to build what he had…but not until AFTER we finished the house.  That did not go as planned and we ended up with a railing on it sooner rather than later.

    There was a small section left of crushed concrete, just enough to get a backhoe onto the property.  And work began on the bulkhead around the culvert.

    Pouring another several thousand dollars into our culvert…we now have something that looks like this:

    On a side note…this is when we found out we did NOT have stabilized sand in our culvert.  If we did, it would have turned into concrete and would not have washed away and would have had to be chipped out to build the bulkhead.  Our fault for not checking up on that during the culvert build.

  • House pad

    The site prep and house pad took about a week to finish. First they cleared about 6 inches off the top, then came back and filled it so that it was about 18″ off of the natural ground.  The back slopes down, so the pad is about 48″ off of the natural ground.

    We heard several times from the foundation people that our pad guy did an excellent job!

    They finished just in time.  We had some heavy rain that weekend which led to more culvert drama…

  • Knocking the trees and weeds down

    One of the first things we had to do when we gained access was to mow again.  This would only be our 3rd time all year to mow, so the grass was tall.

    Wade and I had been discussing all year what kind of mower we wanted.  He was set on getting a ZTR like our neighbor in addition to a Polaris Ranger.  I wanted a tractor for the many uses besides mowing.  The tractor won out…and we have used it almost daily.

    Our first time mowing.

    We also had some major cleaning up to do.  Back in May when it flooded, we think there was a small tornado/micro-burst that broke the tops off of the trees.  We lost 3 trees and several tops of big trees.  In fact, we still have some dead branches that need to come down.  There were also trees that have been dead for some time that very easily were knocked over by the tractor.  (See the scary Halloween tree?  I wish we could have save it just for one year to decorate it…)

    Between a chainsaw and the tractor, we were able to make 5 very large burn piles.

    It took almost 2 weeks, but we finally feel like we have a handle on the land.