Tuesday Treasures #16 - Harvest Post and New Deck

While I prepare for my big move, I'm reflecting back on old posts on this blog.  I've scheduled one a week as I take a hiatus from blogging.
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This one first published in May 2012 received the second highest page views, though considerably lower than Ribbon Angels.

Joining Tuesday Treasure.

Here it is to read again with some edits.

Harvest Post and New Deck
(May 2012)

The snow peas are blooming so I'm so looking forward to picking those hopefully by week's end.  Check back at next Monday's harvest post to see if my prediction was correct.



As to this past week the harvests have been of salad greens (mesclun and freckled romaine), spinach and Chinese greens both baby bok choy and tatsoi.  The former is now done in fact the last harvest included the beginnings of flowers but we ate them any way steamed.  The latter is still going great and we enjoyed it twice in soup this past week.

 last of the baby bok choy

 tatsoi

 Sarah made Chinese pork dumplings

 Soup with leftover porkfilling that we poured over tatsoi below.

 

The other big news is our new deck.   Here are two before photos.

  
 I had to find a new spot for the grill away from the house so in thinking this through I came up with the idea of a stand alone deck that will also serve the purpose for gathering around a fire.  It's placed overlooking the pond aka raingarden.We haven't purchased the firepit and protective mat yet but we do have the benches that will sit on there.  One is on the deck already because it was by the pond.  The other three are on the other side of the house around a fire ring we never use.  The new location for fire will be more easily accessible and water is close by too.  Our deck builder took two days to get to this point.  He has to return to finish screwing down the composite decking, do some sanding of edges, and something else which I can't remember.  I will need to stain the pressure treated lumber edging to match the decking and of course landscape around it.

 View from the porch to the new deck.

 The surface is composite board.

I had to move some plants to make room for the deck but he worked around the ones I didn't want to have to move like a huge Siberian iris, a birch sapling from Arbor Day, and creeping phlox.

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Footnote:  Here is how that spot looked in 2015.  Now in 2016 after the auction the deck is bare.  Grill was purchased by neighbor at auction.  One bench went home with one daughter.  Other three purchased with fire pit at auction.