Ditching Friday Night and Morey the Moringa Nut

Is it odd that Brandon and I were actually excited to spend our Friday evening digging a ditch?  What's happening to us?  It's probably not odd to anyone who loves a big project, like we do, and we've never had a bigger one that renovating this old house.  This is my first water line trench too, so I was glad Brandon quit hogging the shovel and let me in on the action.  At least I was glad for about twenty minutes, and then I was ready to let him take over if he wanted.  Unfortunately we had multiple shovels and picks, so I couldn't get out of it completely.  I'm truly amazed at how much dirt a person can move in just a few hours.  I'm also amazed at the mess we have made of the yard.  We finished the entire trench this evening, but still have to figure out how to dig under the stone foundation of the house to get the water inside.  

In the first part of the trench the soil had a lot of clay near the bottom, which is two feet down.  But toward the house we hit a dense clay layer much closer to the surface, which is why the dirt is in perfect shovel shaped clods in the picture above.  It was sticky, and heavy!  The only thing more frustrating than trying to get the dirt off my shovel was when it would come off in a big clump and roll back into the trench.  Arg!  This happened to me over and over.  I ended up just using my hands to pick up the clay balls from the bottom of the trench.  The good news is that if I ever want to harvest clay for a pottery, I can just step out the back door and scoop some up.  Of course, I'm sure the clay doesn't stop there, so I will have many exciting challenges trying to grow a garden on a clay bed.  

To fuel our shovel muscles, this morning I made a carrot, apple, spinach, and lemon juice and added a teaspoon of the dried algae, Spirulina, and a tablespoon of the ground up dried leaves of a plant called Moringa.  The ability to purchase things using my phone while on long drives for work is a dangerous thing.  Jamie was telling me of moringa, a tree he heard about through the grapevine, so I did an Internet search.  I ended up on a webpage of some moringa fanatics who bragged about all the vitamins and other super qualities of the leaves of this tree.  As you know, I'm a sucker for super foods these days, so we ordered some of the dried crushed leaves to give it a try.  I really hope it's not grass clippings or something.  I only worry about that (just a bit) because the very wordy reading material that came with the package made me a little nervous when it said that if I had questions to call their jewelry store.  Not that I doubt "Morey" the moringa nut's word or anything, but you never know what you could get when you order green powder from a jewelry store.  

The light green powder is the moringa, and the dark green is the algae in the photo above.  Looks tasty, huh?  

Just for fun, I ordered some of the seeds of the moringa tree to see if I could grow one.  I would have to keep it in the house during the winter, or put it in a green house, but if the leaves are as tasty and as healthy as Morey says I wouldn't mind growing some for myself.  

It wasn't until I opened the package of seeds tonight that I understood why Morey looked like a duck.  His picture is on the package of powder, which was very confusing to me at first.  Green powder that I ordered online from a jewelry store with a duck mascot?  Sure, I'll drink it.