This was the state of the stairs:

When we moved in, it had a very nondescript runner on the stairs. I never liked it. The runner had both bubbles and peanut butter spilled on it too. Finally one day I tore it off. I was left with this mess, as the previous owner had not bothered to paint under the runner.

It’s sat like this for far too long as we finished other house projects. Gradually, it’s moved up my to-do list and I started to get fun ideas. My younger sister came up for a visit and helped me transform it.

We made rainbow stairs! I was determined to not buy paint, but to use the assortment of random paint I had. We mixed many of the colors, and others directly match paint used on the inside or outside of the house. I’m loving them. It’s quite a transformation from an eyesore to something I’ll sit and stare at.

And when you have a bunch of leftover paint, a very boring stool and a bit of creativity, you keep going and make this:

A few tips: plastic utensils worked well for the splatter paint. We also laid the stool on it’s side after we applied paint to get some nice movement. And I’m glad I keep leftover sour cream/cottage cheese containers. Way to use #253: they work well for mixing paint.

• My favorite vegetable might be purslane, a commonly hated weed. I think most people think I am very weird because I keep recommending it to others. I have not had anyone try it that didn’t like it though.

• Peter picked Weeds of the West as his bedtime story. It is probably my most often recommended book to others. Including six year old boys.
• We had Kids club at the garden. When we needed something to do, I took them on a little nature walk…across the parking lot to look at a large, yellow patch of dodder. Because who wouldn’t want to look at a parasitic plant?

The garden is starting to take form.

Year two of planting my mounds. Plants were beaten back by hail, but have since recovered. They’ve doubled in size since this picture, taken about a week ago. 

In my front garden, I did hardly anything this year. Perennials I have planted for the last couple of years along with reseeding herbs and annuals have filled in. The fennel has taken over. I’ve got agastache, chamomile, yarrow, calamintha, thyme, columbine, and butterfly weed that are all doing well. All of my perennials are small-flowered and subtle, but many are fragrant and tough.

The food forest is doing okay. I had one bare root tree that never broke dormancy. Several other plants are not doing so well and have died back. Part of that was user error (like hacking off a grape by accident), but I also think the salts in my soil are a bit high. I’ve been using chicken manure in the garden (as both part of mulch and this area was a chicken run for awhile). I think that has increased the salt level, and wasn’t a good fit for the sensitivity of first-year bare root plants. If I do it in the future, I’ll clean out more of the manure before planting. Right now our flood irrigation seems to be helping flush everything out.

It’s one problem with permaculture techniques based on wetter climates: they have more water that both decomposes faster and flushes salts out. In the dry and cold climate I live in, many systems have to run a lot slower to be effective. I’ve noticed sheet mulching, hugelkultur take longer to break down, and now that salts in compost and mulch can stick around and must be used judiciously.

I still have a tremendous amount of work to do. And that’s just okay. I think I would be sad if I didn’t have years of projects to still experiment with.

I think this is a purple carrot gone to seed.