Holidays at home. Project time!

It might be a stupid realization to have at age 30, but holidays don't always have to mean traveling. Ever since I remember, holidays were spent in far-(or not-so-far)-away lands, in tents, shelters, hotels and cabins of the world.

But it's a holiday week y'all! And yet for the first time in a long while it doesn't mean traveling for us. We love exploring new places and in the last couple of years we've spent our holiday time visiting Scotland, Portugal, Thailand, Germany, UK and Poland. And the list of places yet to visit keeps growing.

But this time we've decided to stay put and work on our love project, the house and garden. The first project on the agenda was the covered patio. The space is beautiful, gets a lot of afternoon sun and is surrounded by greenery so, understandably we love it.

Unfortunately, the previous owners left us with a poorly isolated flooring, covered with an ugly beige carpet. The carpet was all dirty (duh!) and the wooden construction underneath was half-rotten.

We removed the carpet and rotten plywood, put in new beams, isolated the floor and laid down hardwood floor suitable for outdoor settings. See the before and after photos below. Doesn't it look way better now?

And let me tell you, the feeling of working on the project together and accomplishing something that extensive with our own four hands is pretty damn great. Despite the fact that with have a very different ways of working, doing something like this brings us closer together and makes the house a little bit more into a home.

 All I need now is cozy, handmade carpet. I am thinking of this one or this one.

I also had some time to clean up a few more flower-patches and start the work on the kitchen garden. I planted rhubarb plants I got from my friends, american blueberry and elderflower bushes. I cleaned up raised-bed with herbs and dug vegetable patches, well at least part of it.

And oh boy, nothing charges my batteries like meditative work in the garden!

Gardening

Since the spring has started for real in Denmark, we have started cleaning up our garden. We've only moved to the house last autumn so this is the first time we're seeing our paradise in this lovely season.

The garden is old and has it all: old trees, apple trees, bushes, grass and moss, flower patches, a shed and 3 patios/grilling spaces. It is a lovely piece of land but it hasn't been cared for for the last 2, maybe 3, seasons. It is therefore rather overgrown and needs a good deal of attention.

So far I am mostly working on weeding the flower patches and removing grass that has been crawling over on the patio spaces and Peter, my husband has been replanting and mowing the grass.

Once most of this is done, we can consider adding some new plants, building beds for edibles and planting herbs and veggies.

We are also looking into building our own patio furniture out of pallets but more about this later. Meanwhile here are some of the moments of our lovely day.

The spring has sprung - starting my herb garden

Here in Denmark the spring is slowly beginning. Winters are never very hard here but they tend to be grey and dreary. If you add to this the long winter nights (up to 14 hours!) you can imagine how it sometimes feels that spring will never come.

But now, at the end of February, it has finally come. The sun rises about 6:15, the birds go crazy every morning and the early spring flowers snowdrops, crocus and the yellow aconites are budding in our garden.

And all of this means, that it is slowly time to start working on my big plans for herb garden this season. I spent a lot of dark winter evenings browsing for ideas, inspirations and tips. Today, I put some of them to work.

I begin today with two ideas for seed starting. Both are DIY, ecological and upcyling which I really like - gardening on the cheap for the win!

Instead of expensive planting systems, I used the cardboard insides of toilet paper rolls cut in three parts and empty egg containers. I love the simple idea because these are common household byproducts, that virtually anyone has in their trash bin. So why not using them for something fun.

I actually have a mini glasshouse tray, I used previous years. But a plastic salad or mushroom containers, like the ones you can get in any supermarkets, will do the job equally well.

I planted basil, oregano, rosemary, spearmint and cress. I can't wait to see what happens next!

 And as I was planting the herbs, I thought of something, I didn't think about in a while. My grandparents lived in a flat on the 10th floor of a typical soviet-era block of flats. They never had a house or a garden, but they always planted plenty of flowers on their balcony. This was especially the realm of my grandfather. He had green fingers, if I've ever seen ones. The plants I remember best were his geraniums of all colors, that smelled in a very intriguing way. They crowded every windowsill of the apartment.

I also remember that he collected little yogurt containers to use for his seed sprouting. So, the internet resources for gardeners are not inventing anything new. They are just discovering the old, tried ways. This thought makes me feel good, connected in some way.

Other useful resources about planting seeds can be found here:
- Frugal Gardening Tips
- Hazel and Company: Egg Carton Greenhouses
- Just Joanna: 10 Best DIY Seed Starting Pins
- Treehugger: 7 DIY Seed Pots from Common Household Items for Starting Seeds Indoors 
- Garden Betty: The No-Brainer Guide to Starting Seeds Indoors