Another cardigan, more garden projects

 Here's my newest cardigan, knit from a lambswool/angora blend yarn.  It has 3/4 sleeves, and I've been wearing it almost every day now. 

 Partner rebuilt the chicken house;  it used to be six straw bales stacked in a U-shape, two bales high.  He added another layer of bales and made a front from some old fence posts and an ancient plastic table top--classy, I know!  But it works great, and the chickens have perches on two levels now, which they take full advantage of at night.  I've put in a request for another four chickens from our favorite hen charity--hoping to pick them up within the next month. 

I have built/rebuilt three raised beds in the veg patch now, and all three have seedlings coming up.  I laid a criss-cross of sticks on top of each, mostly to keep stray chickens and neighborhood cats off them. 

I've also sheet mulched three existing veg beds, and planted up two of them.  The first got various brassicas, leeks, and a few flowers.  The second got potatoes, as an experiment  (Partner and Franklin also planted some potatoes the usual way).  I'll plant what leftover seedlings I've got in the third, but I'll give it a couple of days--I put a load of fresh weed clippings on top as mulch, and I want them to wilt down before I plant. 

I built another raised bed on the patio, using some paving bricks we had lying around;  that makes three brick raised beds on the patio, although this one is partially on top of a flowerbed, too.  I put in a layer of well-seasoned branches, then filled it up with a mixture of topsoil and sand, and sowed some carrot and shallot seeds.  I edged it with some scented geranium cuttings as well.  Geraniums are really easy to grow from a cutting:  I just snap off a small branch, pull off all but the top two or three leaves, and stick it in some soil.  Then treat it like a normal plant--water it when it's dry, and it'll grow some roots.  I've had almost 100% success with my scented geranium cuttings.