Met up with Olivia tonight.
zuky:
On a gardening day, the discarded bookshelf on the sidewalk out front looks like a good idea for a raised bed!
Brilliant idea!
It does look good at a glance, but first you should to remove the backboard and tie the raised bed into the soil below for proper drainage, and also ideally raised beds should be built with pressure-treated lumber or even PVC which resists rot from moisture whereas the particle-board and veneer used for most bookshelves is pretty weak and filled with glue and stuff and, well, will probably bend and rot and break apart in a hurry while leeching chemicals into the bed…but at the same time, it’s always worth a try! Won’t be me trying, but I’d like the hear the result.
I wouldn’t suggest growing plants you plan on eating in it, but I’ve grown plenty of plants in particle board bookshelves. It’s great for a season, so I usually grow annuals or farm succulents in it. When the season’s over, the shelf goes in the trash.
pressure treated wood is full of nasty heavy metals, particle board is just sawdust compressed at high pressure and heat , i compost it in the garden, it swells and falls apart in no time, back to sawdust.
Wafer board sheeting, oriented strand, or aspenite, is made with formaldehyde glue, stands up a little longer but also recycles after a season or two, sowbugs love to chew on it, but no problem in the compost either!
best bet would be plywood, it does not cup or warp or turn to mush, sheet metal sides work too, prevents drying out the soil, which can be a big problem in raised beds, esp when they are small.
I just noticed this discussion on my upcycled Ikea bookshelf raised bed. Before lugging in the bookshelf from the street, I consulted my farming expert, Erin, who confirmed that it should work and I that could leave the cardboard on the back. Since our Brooklyn backyard is all concrete, there is no soil below for it to intermingle with, anyway.
I did plant lots of things that we plan to eat in it, so I hope that there isn’t leeching happening to worry about. There are certainly better ways to create raised beds, but none of them were as free and available to me as this one! I’ll report back with how it holds up throughout the summer.
Just cancelled our Netflix subscription after having it for more than 6 years, and it feels weird. We watch things on Hulu and Amazon most of the time now, so it hasn’t felt worth the $7.99/month lately. We’ll see if we end up crawling back…
On a gardening day, the discarded bookshelf on the sidewalk out front looks like a good idea for a raised bed!
I just used Ramit’s Negotiate It app to ask the simple and direct question above and get $20 in overdraft protection fees reversed from my checking account.
I had planned to just pay the fees, as I was embarrassed that I had forgotten to transfer money from savings and had gotten myself in the negatives in my checking twice in one week. Thank goodness CR reminded me that I should try to negotiate!
Turns out $2.19 for a fancy hazelnut chocolate bar was too good to be true at Duane Reade. After several bites with no sign of a hazelnut, I noted the subtle words, “with hazelnut mousse.”
I will not be purchasing this one again.
Just in time for Easter, pumpkin beer is buy one get two free.
This week’s great idea: Agreeing to an ongoing “last-week’s magazine swap” with a coworker.
Yesterday, I fell into an internet spiral on the blog 100 Days of Real Food, where the author featured a roundup of photos of the unprocessed school lunches that she’d packed for her kids.
With a feeling that I had nothing at home to bring for lunch today, I was inspired to put together a bunch of random things in the way that she might. Not too shabby!
Dear Shoe Goo,
There’s a big wet snowstorm coming on Saturday, so I appreciate your help in advance.
All best,
Adrienne
Tonight’s 5 minute craft/organization project: Brooch holder!
Supplies used:
quilt hoop
old pair of CR’s black work pants
It surely comforts modern parents who have spent fortunes educating their children to know that these children are spending money on pork belly and not, for instance, cocaine. But what solace can it offer to realize that $300 a week put into an S. & P. 500 Index fund over the past five years would have provided an annual rate of return of 10.34 percent and grown to $100,354 today? Even saving $300 a week at a 6 percent rate of return would have yielded about $91,000, Mark X. Chemtob, a financial adviser at Ameriprise, said, adding that in both cases, the sums would qualify for a down payment on a starter apartment in New York.
New Generation Confronts Unaffordable Luxury of Food (NY Times)
Reading this, I was patting myself on the back, thinking, “I’m glad that I’ve never valued fine dining like other peers and instead am so good a living frugally,” BUT, that’s only if I don’t count grocery purchases. I do value cooking good natural foods over many other things, and buy more organic/local/CSA foods without feeling guilty about the additional cost than ever before.
Getting a juicer heightened this, as every juice book recommends organic fruits and vegetables, and mentions the dirty dozen which are highest in pesticides. If I’m making such an effort to eat well, I should think about avoiding pesticides too, no?
So, this is just another NY Times piece that leaves me feeling like a NYC millennial cliche, even though I’ve learned enough from Ramit to know better than to spend $300/week at restaurants.
