Inside the Coop de Jardin

 The last time you saw the Coop de Jardin, it was full of scrap wood and buckets of broken glass.  

Still very much in the middle of a work zone.  

I can say now, after moving the wood scraps out and spending hours and hours (and hours) of picking up broken glass (which still continues to appear as if by magic, even to this day) from that broken concrete floor, that the garden shed is as good as it is going to get at this point.

And, in my opinion, that is very, very good.

Come on in and I'll show you around....

That swinging chair was bought at Aldi, after the season was over for $9.  My intention was to give it as a gift to someone but when the garden shed was built, I decided to gift it to myself instead.  ;-)

TEMU allowed me to get lots of beautiful canvas prints of girlie paintings that I love for about $2-3 a piece.  Many times, just a buck!  That was thrilling, because I've always loved the idea of an art wall but that isn't something I could do easily in our house and without cheap alternatives, would be super expensive to do.   

I asked Matt to make a slotted area in the workbench so that dirt could fall through into a bin below.

He built it after it could be used this year to start seeds but I know next spring, Lord willing, it will come in very handy.

I have a stash of old glass jars for filling vases to give away.  

And for the spring and summertime, a few plants in the windows.  

They need to be brought in before they freeze to death, now that I think about it.

Adele' painted this lovely art for me on my birthday.  

(She copied the design from a canvas I admired online)

This framed photo is an ariel view of our home back in the earlier 1940's or 50's, (I think... not sure of the exact date.)  You can see the original chicken coop beside two dark trees behind the house.  

I hung battery powered twinkle lights from the beams in hopes that it would illuminate the building in the absence of electricity.  

Not quite.

But it does provide a magical, twinkly ambiance.

This is the garden shed mascot.  

Moses painted a piece of scrap wood into an alligator for me. 

Matt's dad made us a GARDEN SHED sign for Christmas last year which is extra special to me as his hands shake quite often and I am sure that must have been very hard to do.  But he did it for us anyway.

I cherish it.

I hung two mirrors on the walls of the garden coop.  I did this for a few reasons:

1- They were here when we bought the house and have been getting in the way ever since.

2- It's a miracle they haven't been broken in the granary yet.  On the walls is a much safer place to be.

3. I hoped they would provide more reflective light to a building that does not have electricity.

But mostly, #2.

Matt made it very clear that this was my building to with what I want, but I am not sure that he figured I would make it soooo.....  girlie?!  

From the beginning of Matt's big plot, I've thought how unnecessary a building this size is for garden tools.  You can see how much space that takes up...

not much.

I still feel guilty at the excess and extravagence.

I am not sure how we will utilize this space to its' fullest potential~ I guess we will 'grow into it'. 

 I have dreams of making it an inspiring place that I might eventually be able to use as a writing shed... a quiet and reflective place away from the busyness of a bustling household.  And I think I have done that- all except the fact that winter is fast approaching and it will be freezing cold.  Maybe next spring and summer?

It has been a sleepover shed where girls can laugh all night long without a Papa and Mama bear getting grumpy with all the chatter.

It has been a hangout and visit spot when company comes.

It's been a reading and lounging spot on a hot summer day.

And in August, when Matt's and my anniversary rolled around, I wanted to do something special (read: NOT COOK) but Matt had just returned from a week long work trip in which he stayed in hotels and ate at restaurants... the last thing he wanted to do was go out.  

Instead of being sad about it, I figured I could make our anniversary special and give us both what we wanted.

I strung out an extension cord to plug in some proper lights, I moved the porch bed in there and Matt and I watched a movie and ate take-out while kiddos stayed in the house and watched a movie.  It was all fun and games until a terrible thunderstorm erupted overhead.

(Thunderstorms above and around you in an uninsulated shed with a metal roof are very loud and very scary.  Then add the fact that you are laying on a metal bed... and we hightailed it inside pretty quick.)

(Aunt Holly strikes again with just the perfect anniversary gift.)

And that's the coop de jardin, in all her glory.

It wouldn't be spring without...

... a trip to Iron Kettle Farm.

I remember taking Corynn and Andrew to Iron Kettle when they were the ages of Ineke and Moses.  And then again with Adele' and Judah. The same people owned and ran it back then so it is a little funny when I walk in for the 20th-ish year, still with one little "big"girl and a hand-holding boy.  

This has been a busy spring- too busy to plant the garden in any reasonable amount of time- but I still managed to sneak in a trip to do some garden dreaming.

I saw a pretty patch of flowers and demanded that Adele' go sit in them.  It was all fun and games until we realized that the purple ones smelled DISGUSTING.

Kids these days I have noticed (surely not just MINE???) do this strange finger to the chin sorta thing when they take pictures of themselves.  Adele' in particular.  I don't know where they got it from and I don't know what it means but I found it kinda hilarious that Moses unintentionally did it to Adele' in this picture:

I wouldn't say things are slowing down necessarily... but the hotter it gets, the more I am becoming  motivated to sit down for a blogging break.  And it just so happened before the downpour a little bit ago, I finished planting ALL THE THINGS. (Finally!) 

So that is one less excuse.

I guess I'll be seeing ya...

Now if only animals would stop eating it...

All the photos from garden-getting-in-day look entirely too chipper to accurately represent our feelings at the end of the day.  Probably because I only had the idea to snap photos within the first hour of working.  

But the end of the day, ain't nobody was about to ask for a free hug from me...

That's exhaustion, not rage.

Putting in the garden never takes just one day- more like a week.  And it happened to be the hottest, driest week (and month to follow) of any spring I can remember.  Very few (if any) seedlings even sprouted.  I never got to plant potatoes, instead opting for a profuse (Lord willing) pumpkin patch.  I think I will have to rely on storebought corn this year which leaves a large chunk of the garden useless at this point, but planting corn three times is a bit much.  (I might though.)  My cutting flower gardens may wind up just being weeds and already animals have eaten the tops off of almost all of my pepper plants and some of my tomatoes.  (Turns out, having a dog cuts down on the wildlife.  I knew it!)

Ah, the trials and triumphs of garden season.  And, of course, the oft-needed reminder that even our best efforts to grow and flourish things are still entirely contingent upon the Lord's will and good graces.  It is HE who makes the harvest and not we ourselves.  

It was awfully cute seeing Moses pushing around Matt's childhood wheelbarrow and thinking on how the Lord made a harvest of children from one little towheaded, wheelbarrow pushin' country boy, many years ago.

Speaking of Moses- he asked if he could have a piece of paper in order to write his name and I, being the distracted and busy, hastily shoved the companion planting reference paper at him, knowing he would likely scribble the thing to bits.  "Great idea, Moses!  Go for it!"  I had too much to do to care (gardening Mothers understand) and zero expectations of him forming a single letter on his own as he hadn't ever done so in the past.

And then a bit later he showed me the paper with perfectly formed letters that he had written out himself (and remembered the spelling order!) and boy howdy was I surprised!  What a little genius!  He doesn't even need a homeschool mother!  :-)