When's that package coming?

So, basically, we're waiting for a bunch of things right now. Our baby was due yesterday, but there's only a week that they'll let go, and then they induce the labour. There's my tax return, which the Canada Robbery Agency has had for 2 months, and I have seen nothing yet. Last, I'm waiting for it to rain, which it looks like it might today. We really could use the moisture, and my garden beds need a good soaking!
I took a day of vacation already, to start getting things ready for the baby. I spent a good deal of time outside, taking advantage of extremely nice weather (+12 C) to keep working at the garden.

This is the front entrance to our house, which was previously an extremely ugly patch of lumpy dirt, that turned into a big mud pit when the snow melted. I stacked the blocks, and hacked off the lumpy dirt (which was actually really good soil), and made a flower bed. The grate will stop the muddiness.


This isn't finished yet, but it will be a big patch of strawberries, interspersed with some various other veggies, beans, onions, and some flowers. The strawberries will be sold at the farmer's market, and will hopefully supplement our summer income a bit, and provide us with fresh strawberries all summer long. The tires on the left are ones that I cut to open them up a bit. I want to be able to fit around 7 - 10 plants in each tire, for about 200+ plants. If each plant gives me a pint of berries, that's about $3 a pint (hopefully), and maybe $500 or so. If I plant beans in the centre of each tire, the beans grow up over the strawberries, but will not block the sun too badly. They will also produce nitrogen on root nodules, which will be used by the strawberries.This is the second of probably 4 raised beds that will be in a row beside the house. I've built a ramshakle fence to protect from the wind, but this is still the most wind-sheltered spot I've got so far. This is where my mini-greenhouse is, and I've got a couple broccoli shoots coming up from a 72 cell tray of seeds. They will be going into these beds when they are big enough.

The beds themselves are only going to be about 1/2 dirt, or less. The bulk of the "fill" will be llama manure mixed with straw, with a layer of soil overtop. I might even layer more manure, then put more dirt over that, possibly with some newspaper in between. I'm running out of places to put fresh compost, which for us includes toilet waste, which we are composting. After 2 years, toilet waste will break down into excellent compost, which I will be putting under trees and shrubs to feed them. For those of you who might think that using human waste for growing food is absolutely disgusting, what do you think happens to the sewer sludge after it's processed? I'll give you a hint, it doesn't disappear into thin air!
It gets sold as compost! Mmmmm, sewer sludge!

Hopefully my next post will be to announce the birth of a new baby boy, so stay tuned...