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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

New garden


January 5th

Today Mr. Schmidt has been working on creating a garden patch for me. I am by no means an expert at gardening, but I'm going to try. He bought a hoe for me the same day he got the generator. He's been raking the rocks that the yard is made of out of the garden area that the old yard man had. The back yard is not very big. A wall surrounds the whole compound, a space of about a quarter of an acre. This includes the house. In the front center of the wall is the gate. The driveway leads up to within about ten feet of the front door. To the left of the drive, if you stand facing the house, are three small buildings of wood. One is pink, one yellow, and one green. On the opposite side of the driveway is a building that looks like a pole barn. In fact, it looks a lot like our barn at home. In three of the corners of the compound there is a cement building. The one on the right as you come in the gate is an outhouse. This is used for diaper disposal. The one on the left is empty right now- it needs fixing up and to have a mouse and rat proof door put on it. Hopefully someday soon it will be available for storage. The third building is the one in which the generators are kept. This is called the depot. It is in the back left corner. About five feet to the right of the depot is the cistern. From the cistern, a couple feet further to the right is the water tank. It is up on legs so that we can have gravity-feed water. This makes life a lot easier. Still further to the right are the plantain trees. In front of these, in between them and the house, is the garden- to- be. Mr. Schmidt says that maybe we could get some better dirt to put in it. Hopefully I can get seeds, and then manage to get them to produce.  Any advice on this point would be appreciated!

I'll try to have more photos on here ASAP.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for describing the compound, Alayna. I was wondering what it looks like. Do y'all have to use an outhouse too? What are the three small colored, wood buildings for? As for the garden - that sounds great. I wonder if you can make a raised bed with some top soil...kind of like the square foot gardening. I wonder, if the current dirt has a lot of rocks...and if it's mostly sand anyway, if adding soil on top of the ground with retaining boraders would be easier. Do you know what you'll try to grow yet? Are seeds hard to come by in Haiti? I am sure the children . . .even if they are not able to help yet & hopefully they will improve to the point where they can . . . will enjoy seeing something grow. I love you. I pray that God will encourage you daily as you follow Him.
    Aunt Gie-Gie.

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  2. Hey Alayna,
    I hope you succeed in your gardening!
    ~Your loving sister~
    Savana

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