bluesgarden | Mmmmm, Diiirrrt

Right, not getting in through the front door then. Good thing there's a (much clearer) back door.

I was overdressed for working in there, though! (70°F = 21.1°C)
Too bad it doesn't stay this warm at night. As it was, I kept having to open
the screen door to let some cooler air in to keep from getting too hot.

Supplies are thin in the toolbox, but the essential seed starting bits were there...
Except for a Sharpie to actually write on the markers with.

My new seed flats! I ordered 5 (the minimum) when I ordered seeds - these should
be particularly good for onions and leeks which won't require transplanting.
There are 128 cells per flat.

All soiled up and ready to go - one for leeks and one for onions. The soil out there
was bone dry so it took a while to mix the water in. I could've used a respirator. Ack.

128 cells / 2 types onions = 64 each cultivar, and the same for the leeks.
Theoretically I could end up with 128 onions and 128 leeks come fall, but
that's assuming excellent germination (there are 2 seeds per spot) and no
losses after they're transplanted out.

Ta da!

Now where am I going to put them?! The boxes are all eBay things - either this week's items packed up
(with pink post-it notes) or empty boxes, mostly laying flat. The top shelf is assorted eBay items, a small stack
of mail, and gardening/canning books and magazines. Then there's still some canned goods.

The canned goods were the first things that needed to move, so I cleared out the canning
cupboard under the counter and managed to free up 3 small shelves in my back closet. There's
also the area above the hot water heater that already has some canned goods up there. (Some days
it feels like there isn't a level shelf to be found around here.)

Everything pulled out for re-organizing.

First I worked on filling the closet shelves as that was the preferred storage space. It's cool, dark,
and out of the way but still easily accessible. D had stacked the items in the area above the hot water
heater, so that meant some rearranging. :p All the green beans and most of the cherries actually came from there.
There are a lot of green beans, and everything you'll read will say something along 'eat within one year', but that's...
hmm. They'll still be good long after that, they'll just have started losing color and flavor, which probably won't
even be noticeable for a while. A more ideal situation is to store enough for two years so that if you lose an entire
crop in any given year, you still have enough food.

Then that area got the peaches, corn, some dry goods, and tomato juice.
(With the paint! Good thing everything is sealed.) Yup, still plenty of peaches.

That left surprisingly little to fit up front and I had more than enough room.
D's pancake syrup and Lipton tea mix had to fit in there, some more dry goods,
and mostly things that I want to have close to the cooking area (a couple jars of
peaches, some cooked apples, a couple jars of green beans and one of corn, etc.)

I did pull out 8 quarts of tomato juice with salt from 2009 that I didn't care for how it
turned out. (I don't add salt to my juice any longer.) I also decided that 14 pints of tomato
soup needed to go since I've come to the conclusion that the recipe's flavor just isn't
working for me. (I've also since found Pacific Natural Foods Organic Creamy Tomato,
which is very tasty and very worth it versus making and canning tomato soup in the
middle of August. I'd rather can actual tomatoes and tomato juice - which I'm almost out of.)

Woot! Mission accomplished! The empty boxes are now stored on the bottom shelf
and the next project will be the second shelf down. When I need it, though, the current
week's boxes will just take over the coffee table. (Space? What is this 'space' you speak of?)
The top shelf... well, that's the last one I'll need at least, and hopefully by then some more
major re-arranging will have happened.

(They don't actually need the lights on at this point, not until they germinate. I was just testing
them out. *g*)