The little pallet garden is doing great! Mostly! There were a couple days after we transplanted where everything looked pretty bleak. And, as you can see some of the chard still isn’t doing well. But the lettuce, cabbage, and kale all seem to be happy. There is still some space on the sides and where the sick chard is, if we pull it, so some time this week I’m going to be stopping by at Ace for some herb seeds and see if we can put them in. Fresh basil and thyme sound nice.
Anyway, it’s going to be a month or so before we can eat any of this but I’m excited for it anyway!
I bet you thought I’d forgotten all about this, hadn’t you? Well, you’re only mostly right! I hadn’t forgotten! I just got really busy and then the de-make got really hard. As easy as it is to create rooms and items in Inform 7 it isn’t so easy programming for how said objects, and people are supposed to interact with the player.
My first hang up was not having all the items the player can pick up in each room simply be listed whenever they typed ‘look.’ Then it was getting a Character to reply to the player when the player talked to him. Next, I realized I needed to explicitly tell the game that some items couldn’t be picked up and carried away by the player (like trees, rocks, rivers, etc…) It dawned on me that I might need, no I definitely needed some help.
I did some research and this book: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 kept popping up. So, I ordered it. I’d taken myself to the limits of winging it with Inform 7, I have the map, I have the various items, and I even have some characters in the code. But, none of it works together.
I hope to fix that soon! Barring that. I might put the de-make on the back burner and try something a little simpler, and original first. You wouldn’t think a 20+ year old game would be such a complicated beast. And, I’m sure for coders and designers it might not be. For me, though this has been quite the challenge! I’m dedicated to seeing it through to the end though!
Diana saw this project on a blog she followed where the person made a raised bed garden from discarded pallets. She shared it with me and I thought it was a clever idea. Unbeknownst to me she then started hunting for a pallet and contacted the manager of our cottage and asked him about putting in one of our own. Eventually, he approved the project and she found the pallet… The end result is above!
It was all very easy to do and everything cost us less than $30. If you’ve been thinking about gardening but don’t have a yard, or you rent this might be the solution you’ve been looking for. More pictures below!
The ingredients
One pallet, a 2×4 cut into 40″ pieces, three bags of garden soil (we only used 2 1/5.) I hammered the 2×4 pieces onto the ends of the pallet so that the soil doesn’t just spill out of the sides, then we filled the pallet with the garden soil.
We used Miracle-gro soil because it was right by the check-out counter and we were both really cold and didn’t want to spend more time looking around
After putting the soil in we watered it down to help it settle and then filled any any low spots or gaps, next came the transplanting and then more watering:
If you couldn’t tell, D is super excited and happy about this project!
The spot we picked was bar of grass and doesn’t get a lot of light so we decided to put plants in that like that sort of thing. We planted lettuce, cabbage, chard and kale. I’m knocking on wood that this new little garden is as successful as our old one in Davis. If not as big.
If you google images of cleaning supplies you’ll note that MY picture conforms nicely to the standard.
Cleaning it’s a Sisyphean task. As soon as you’re done you’ve got to do it again. Just another front of Humanity’s endless war against entropy. But you don’t have to help entropy along by using harsh chemicals that muck up our waterways, damage our skin, and do harm to our fellow travelers (critters and such.)
So, here are some “friendly” alternatives to the more common cleaning agents!
Comet: Used to “disinfect and clean tough stains” Comet usually finds duty in the bathroom where it’s used to clean tubs and toilets. The primary ingredient is dichloroisocyanuric acid that reacts to water and becomes hypochlorous acid, a chemical similar to bleach. Instead of using Comet you can use Bon Ami’s powder cleanser it is biodegradable, non-toxic, and hypoallergenic.
Pledge: Used to clean and dust. Pledge is mostly propane, butane, and lighter fluid mixed in water. Instead of covering your wood products in propellants and fuels every week try using Earth Friendly Product’s furniture polisher with olive and orange oil.
Formula 409: Used as a general/all purpose cleaner. Formula 409 contains 2-butoxyethanol a carcinogen and ethylene oxide a highly toxic material. Instead of using Formula 409 try Seventh Generation’s Free & Clear all purpose cleaner. Free & Clear contains only plant derivatives and baking soda.
Windex: Used to clean glass surfaces Windex is mostly water with small amounts of ethylene glycol (antifreeze) and rubbing alcohol. Give Citra-Clear a try it contains natural plant ingredients suspended in ethanol (booze.)
There you have it some good alternatives to the chemical rich, petroleum derived cleaners we usually use. If you make the switch let me know what you thought of any of these products. Or, if you use something else share it in the comments below!
