Next step: soil

[miladycarol]

I spent my afternoon in the yard working on the veggie bed. I'm laying bricks where treated lumber once was. I had dug it all out two years ago, laid weed block, then run out of cash to buy the bricks and soil. I've been buying the bricks over the past year and have almost all of them. I was out there this afternoon shoring up the bricks so they lay more or less even. I'll need the soil to kind of plump up any remaining slumping ones.

Eventually, I'd love to brick in other areas of the yard and make nicer gardens there, too. I have an ornamental maple tree that I housed in a wooden barrel for 9 years. The barrel is falling apart around it and the tree has laid a tap root I'm not willing to break. I'm thinking I should just brick around the perimeter of the barrel and fill the rest in with soil. So many plans. So much dirt to move.

Comments

[wyliekat.livejournal.com]

If only adobe were useful in this climate. ;-}

[miladycarol.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? Well, I should think straw bale would be effective. I am led to believe the thickness of the walls insulates the interior temperature. If the house was heated to 18 degrees and it was 3 degrees outside, I would think it would take a great deal of time, after turning the heat off, for osmosis to even the inside temperature with outdoors. At least, that's what I'm led to think. There are people in Oregon who've built them and live in them. If I had enough land, I'd experiment with an art studio in the back yard built in straw bale -- just to see if it works for long term.

[wyliekat.livejournal.com]

I know there's been some talk in these necks of the woods too, about straw bale insulation. I don't know if it's made less practical by the extreme weather, or if there is some kind of adverse house insurance impacts. Or maybe it's flourishing and I just don't know about it!

Geo-thermal heating, on the other hand, is a growing trend up here.

[miladycarol.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've been chomping at the bit for geothermal heating/cooling for almost a decade and a half. In Oregon, it's mild enough that retrofitting the house for it would cost more than it would save for a very long time. If I were to build the house from the ground up, though, I'd start off with geothermal right away.

Yeah, geothermal with solar panels and a wind turbine... *dreamy sigh*

[wyliekat.livejournal.com]

I dream about that house when I win the lottery.