2 Engineers Retired

For the most part I like to write about stuff going well.   Granted life here has been one long learning curve but no one really likes to own up to all the failures it takes to get the knowledge that we now take for granted. So – I thought it might be fun to write a bit of a summary of Epic Cottage Fails Failure #1 – Gardening for vegetables Our year's harvest (in total) First a confession.   I love to garden – but – and it is a big but, I am really, truly, bad at it.   I love the feeling of the dirt on my hands, watering, trimming, putting in new plants, moving the older ones that I should never have put there in the first place, but for the most part am more adept at killing the plants slowly than nurturing them to anything beyond a starter. We originally placed our solar panels by the lake as we are on the north end and look to the south over open water.    So – there is an unencumbered light path to the panels.   The idea was to soft...

At the lake, of course, we are totally surrounded by plants – with the views out each window looking for all the world like a commercial photo.   I have been buying boxes of tissues for the bathroom that have a photo of a wonderful treed scene in a deciduous forest and frankly it could have been taken from the window that the tissues sit below. However – the plants that you have some control of are a totally different kind of fun. This year has been interesting from a plant perspective.   I have plants installed in 4 main areas – septic bed, around the house, near the lake in a raised bed and in a couple of planters on the deck.   In terms of size the septic bed is by far the largest and has taken the most fiddling over the years.   In case anyone has never put in a septic (kind of like most people I expect) this is what it looks like when it is going in.    Septic Bed 2012 - all sand The effluent from the house first goes through a tank...