Homemade Furniture

This past summer I took a stab at trying to make some furniture. It had been a very long time since I had built anything in terms of furniture. I had built an entertainment center, but that didn't really require too much wood work.

Our deck is rather spacious, and felt rather empty for us, so we played around with some design schemes, and decided we were going to make an outdoor living room area, so the sofa was the going to be the first piece to that. I found plans online at ana-white.com, which by the way is a great place to find furniture plans. the plans I used were for the Simple Outdoor Sofa. My cousin Nathan was here to help me do the cuts, and then over the next few months (yes, months, sometimes it takes me a while to finish things, but hey, I did) I put it together, and then applied a grey stain to have it match our chairs that we have in our outdoor dining set.

One of my sons trying it out before we finished it.

Under the Snow Covered Glass

I brushed off the snow from my cold frames, and was happy to see the arugula, mâché, and lettuce growing. There was even new seedlings coming up. There nothing fancy to it, just old storm windows laying over my raised bed. 

Cold Frames

I decided I am going to try my hand at growing vegetables in our garden through the fall and winter here in Philadephia. So far my cold frame set up has been working well as the nighttime temps have been dropping into the 20's the last few nights. 

First Freeze

We had our first freeze of the season last night. I set up some glass cold frames over our lettuce to help keep them growing. I also turned off the water to the exterior faucet but it hasn't been cold enough for me to need to empty out my rain barrel.

Tomatoes

So, we harvested the last of the tomatoes that were in the garden, as the temperature is supposed to drop into the mid to low thirties the next few nights. 

Antonio even drew a still life of the pile of tomatoes that were on the kitchen table. 

Last harvest before Frost

This may be part of the last harvest before the temperatures drop. 

this weekend. 

Fall and Winter Vegetables

Today we transplanted the kale, arugula, rougue di'hiver lettuce, carrots and spinach into the raised beds. We then also sowed some mâché and mizuna into the raised beds. I never truly have had a successful fall/winter garden, I'm hoping that changes this year. 

We also harvested some tomatos, okra and jalapeños.