landscaping, a fence and spicy goodness
over the past few weekends, some progress has taken place in the back yard!
also made some kick-ass escabeche… jalapeño, carrot, onion and garlic goodness.
just so i have this somewhere, the recipe:
slice jalapeño, carrot and onion… peel garlic cloves. sauté all of this for 10 minutes, until jalapeños begin to soften. add remaining ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. 
put it in a jar, close the lid and refrigerate once it’s cooled. the longer it stays in the jar, the better it’ll taste (assuming the jalapeño was cooked well enough… it gets a funky bacteria growth if not, that kinda blows the flavor). hot damn is it good… basically had that and jalapeño onion bread for dinner.
made 2 of our 4 rain barrels today, also. portland has a pretty good storm water disconnect program going on… $53 per gutter drain that is diverted from the sewer + a reduced sewage bill.
we’re using 55 gallon barrels to store rain water, then use it for irrigation when needed: basically a barrel with the gutter down spout running into it… a hose bib at the bottom… and an overflow tube leading to an area that’ll absorb the excess water. we’re putting one on the carriage house, two on the back of the house, one on the front of the house. the barrels catching the rainwater from the house should fill pretty quickly given the size of our roof.
back to the work week, now. the weekends pass much too quickly. at least it’s light outside until 8:30 or so, which makes me feel like the entire day isn’t blown at work : )
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May 5th, 2008 at 4:43 am
Dear Dan..so great to hear about your adventures-trials and tribulations in building your house. Great too that you are using Eco-Lawn-which doesn’t require watering, fertilizer and grows in most soil conditions with or without sun. I do the marketing for Eco-Lawn and would be very interested in your progress. We have thousands of Eco-Lawns across in North America
so nice to see another one pop up on our radar and contributing to the sustainable landcaping movement. One guestion, how did you find out about us? We are always interested in knowing our customers learned about Eco-Lawn.
Thanks as well for your Kick-Ass Escabeche recipe! Sounds like another great weekend project…
Best Marjorie
May 9th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Sounds like the “past few weekends” have been pretty busy around your house. This is the time to get stuff done though so you can relax and enjoy the summer when it gets here!
I noticed you have a spot for a play structure. I work for a swingset company and thought I would just drop a line here on your blog so when it comes time to fill that area, you keep us in mind. CedarWorks custom builds swingsets to fit the needs of our customers. From castle sized structures to modest swingsets, we can create a set to fit your backyard and your family. They are made from Northern White Cedar, a naturally rot resistant and splinter free wood. This means there are no chemicals applied to our sets and no need for you to treat it with any. They are beautiful and loads of fun for the kids.
I won’t go on too much, but check out the website when you have time some rainy day and play around with the customization tool, building your dream swingset.
Take care and have a great and productive spring!
Liz R.
www.CedarWorks.com
January 19th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Great comment, love the design of the site too.