Rain!! Glorious rain!! Last Friday it rained here, and then it poured throughout the day. We were celebrating, it was exactly what we’ve been hoping for– not just a light sprinkling, but a heavy rain. We’ve been getting some rain this week too, and we sure are appreciating that. Just what we need to cool the fires.

On another subject, my pictures have been piling up from the summer and it’s a challenge to find the time to sort through them, so rather than one big post, I’m sharing a bit at a time. In August we set up a sink in the garden. Jeff found one for a great deal at Habitat for Humanity, and we knew it would be perfect for that. At the time we had so many projects we were working on simultaneously that when Jeff suggested we take time out from the other projects to set up a sink outside, I said something along the lines of “An outdoor sink would be nice… but we’ve lived without one for this long… we can live without one for awhile longer since all these other projects feel higher on the priority list right now…” 

However, setting up the sink was a pretty quick project (Jeff did most of it, I helped him finish it), especially compared to everything else we were working on… and it turned out to be a game changer. We were bringing in lots of garden produce to process every day and in order to get all of it washed, we needed to have the sink in the kitchen clear. The kitchen was such a busy place that we didn’t always have all the dishes caught up or the sink completely clear to wash the lettuce. (Lettuce can be time consuming to wash, my favorite way is to fill the sink up with cold water, and rinse each leaf in there before putting it in the colander.) Being able to go out in the garden in the mornings and harvest everything, and then wash everything in the sink outside, and then to be able to bring it all inside already clean… was seriously awesome! It really helped the flow around here, and helped keep things from getting boggled up in the kitchen since we have limited space in there.

Jeff not only built a stand for the sink, he set up working surfaces on either side so we could have cutting boards and knives and do any other processing we needed to do out there. He also directed the water that comes out of the sink to water the garden. We’ve been using our garden sink for over a month now and it still amazes me that such a little thing could make such a difference, and bring me as much joy as it does. I’ve spent mornings outside, barefoot in the dewy grass, listening to my family busy around the yard, washing homegrown vegetables and smiling so big because that simple sink makes me so happy. It’s more than just the ease of it, and how helpful it’s been, it’s the fact that I absolutely love the feeling of being outside while I’m working at the sink.

When the weather is nice here, our family wants to be outside as much as possible. We’ve dreamed of building an outdoor kitchen… an outdoor shower… an outdoor bathtub… an outdoor toilet… pretty much setting up as many daily activities outdoors as possible. I told Jeff that setting up a sink outside feels like a little step towards our outdoor living dreams…