Mid summer dreams and work

It's finally getting hot at WinSol3.  about time!  I've only tapped my large white tank once to fill the holding tank.  What that means, is that until August 1 the irrigation has used less than 500 gallons of water... and i've got more vegies, strawberries, fruit trees, berries, etc. than ever before.  What a wet year.
I think all my tanks will still be 1/2 full when the rainy season starts.  That's good, because one of these years we will have a VERY deep and long drought....we've been in a wet cycle for pretty long now, and nature always does things in cycles.  When that dry cycle comes, I'll be smiling and singin' in the stored rainwater.

Yesterday I had to pull out all the blooming radish plants and harvest their seed pods.  As the queen song goes... 'another bites the dust.'.. i will never again have to purchase radish seeds.  i have over thousands of harvested radish seeds and now will focus on storing them in large jars with dehumidifiers (natural desiccants - like rice, etc) inside.  My goal is to have 1/2 my pantry filled with seed jars, and then start sharing and trading seeds.  Next up will be dill, beet, tomato seeds.  From the permies forum it doesn't seem to much matter about following a darwinian approach to seed harvesting.

My next big job is the triple the amount of patio tiles in the courtyard to have a bigger gathering area - especially for the upcoming open house.  I am getting a steady stream of visitors up here, and the courtyard is getting to be the favored sitting area.  I've already torn down the 'temporary' fire pit that was there for 5 years... and am extending a masonry wall (fire barrier also) down the ridge, building a circular fire pit and sitting area (with a small rocket stove mass heater in it), and leave some room for a pizza oven (way, way later).

The Living Roof deck structure is finished.  I have already put down 7 layers of hi-thickness visqueen and roofing tar paper left over from WinSol3's original construction.  And now there's two layers of thick EPDM single ply roofing, drain pipes all around, and i've already started the big and long job of hauling up soil to cover it all to about 4" to 6" depth and then native plantings and sedum in the fall.  it'll be interesting to see how this living roof fares over the years and how much maintenance/repair is REALLY required.

I've finally figured out where to store all the big stuff out of sight... a long lived dilemna since all the unsightly junk was piling up on the east side of the house.  So I've built some posts+rails to put in the redwood pallets (from HP) lying around and am putting up some bamboo and cedar bark screening.

I hope those of you who are reading this will come over on the September open house and help celebrate another year of progress at WinSol3 and it's slow evolution as a true closed-loop and energy-plus learning center.