WEIGH IN 8-7-17

185/ 171 /135

I swear fall has arrived in the Ozarks. The past week or so has been beautiful. I've had the AC off, the doors/ windows open and spent quite a bit of time outside. Maybe that accounts for the one pound loss. Not enough to win me the challenge but I'll get there. $200 is at stake!

I managed to get the base for the butterfly garden in and most of the weed eating done before my weed eater died. I wonder what the life expectancy is on those. I've had this one almost six years. Funny how I can determine how old something is by how old my eldest granddaughter is. She was almost four when we had to buy this one. She'll be ten in November.

Here's the base of the butterfly garden:

The bed is about 4' deep by 16' long.. the width of the garden shed. I laid down multiple layers of newsprint followed by three layers of cardboard. Then I broke two bales of composted straw down into sheafs and laid them on top of the cardboard. Everything was topped off with eight bags of Top Soil. The top soil barely gave me any covering. I think I'm going to add sixteen bags of inexpensive potting soil to the top before adding plants. But I don't have plans to go to town until later in the week. 

I didn't sweat much as the temps were in the low 70's with very little humidity but the 2-3 hours of work gave me exercise, for sure.