A sunny day does wonders.

After three weekends in a row of rainy weather, we were very much looking forward to this sunny Saturday. We had a long list of things to do. In fact, it started on Friday night with a Straight No Chaser show at the IU Auditorium. This was the IU student group with an appearance by the Atlantic Records version. It was fun! We didn't want to drive the car or fool with parking, so we rode our bikes to the auditorium. I think we got the best parking of anyone there.

We have the appropriate front and rear lights equipped on our bikes, so riding back after dark was no problem.

Today, we got up early and drove about a mile to a sale of compost bins and rain barrels that I had heard about. In fact, my employer, Solution Tree, had just held a chili cook-off in order to raise money to buy a compost bin and a rain barrel for company use from the same vendor. The deal looked so good that I decided to take advantage as well. I got two rain barrels and decided to also go for a compost bin. We have a compost bin already, but this one is bigger and opens into the ground for better drainage and faster decomposition. It top-loads and then there's a door at the bottom for the finished compost. I set that up first.

Then the first rain barrel. This one is in the front of the house, and will be right in what will soon be my vegetable garden. I'm very excited about this. I plan to use the water mainly for gardening.

We also rode down to the farmer's market and got a few things (local asparagus yummmm), but most of the rest of the day was spent working on the vegetable garden. We've made good progress on it, but it's been a lot of work. We keep getting wrenches thrown at us, like this:

That is, a large leftover tree stump from when the previous owners cut down a tree next to the house but didn't remove the stump. It's pretty sizeable--the severed trunk is a good eight inches in diameter. I'm taking a break and Mark is still out working on it...he seems to have declared it his nemesis. Meanwhile, I went ahead and planted a row each of snap peas and carrots. In another couple of weeks, after our last average frost date, I'll transplant the seedlings that I started back in March (tomatoes, broccoli, green peppers, etc.). I had hoped to get more done today, but considering that tree stump I'm happy. It's supposed to rain more tomorrow, but hopefully we'll have this garden completely ready to plant soon.