Huffing things in cans on ladders

It's been a smelly weekend so far. I stained the valence boxes above the living room windows and I've touched up a lot of walls with paint.




More painting tomorrow and hopefully mantel pictures to follow.

Veggies Galore

Here's the backyard garden (view from the deck):




This is the first year we've had paths in the garden making 6 sections. Back here we have:
58 heads of lettuce
2 onion
2 leek
8 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, yielding about 15 plants
6 bell peppers, all different colors
1 jalepeno
1 serrano
1 mucho nacho pepper
5 blackberry bushes
4 head of garlic
1 Rosemary bush
4 borage plants

Here's a close up of one plot.


I planted the blackberries in buckets and buried them so they don't take over the garden or the neighbors yard.

This weekend Mark put a gate in the fence so we could get to the front & backyard gardens conveniently.



And it is indeed convenient.

Remember the front raised beds?



There's the currant bush! The first bed has 3 tomato plants, 2 tomatillos, a row of basil, a row of cilantro, a row of fennel, 1 chive, 1 sage, and 1 parsley.

The second box has all seeds so it doesn't look very nifty yet: 2 zucchini, 2 crookneck squash, 2 acorn squash, 5 borage, and 4 echinacea.

Here's to hoping the weekend cold spell doesn't kill anything!

Garden boxes finished

I planted three kinds of squash in one box last night. Waiting for a little more sunshine to drop the herbs in. You can't see it very well but we got the currant bush down as well.












The scraggly bush in the last picture is the currant.

I garden

Apparently. I'm not a big flower gardener which is why all of my flowers are bulbs. Low maintenance and beautiful table decor.




Now if it would just warm up enough to plant the veggies...

Front yard fun

Well...more work than fun right now but that will change soon. We haven't done anything to the front yard since we bought the house. But now that we're in destruction mode, we've made up our minds to make it a usable space.

Our front lawn wraps around the north side of our house to make a nice side yard and a good buffer between the neighbors. It had a nice looking line of hedges that we ignored for a long time. Because our backyard gets a lot of shade, we decided to take out the hedges and put in raised garden beds, seen here under construction.








The neighbors were so happy that we removed the bushes (which apparently are thorny and were overrunning their driveway) that they let us have the garden soil delivered and stored on their driveway while we finish up.

This is my bad: I forgot to take a before picture. So please enjoy this multi-colored rendition of hedgelines past.

Hudson now enjoys the hedge graveyard as his own personal fort. They are awaiting bulk pick-up/mulching day in the backyard.

Life, etc.

I recently had a request for a personal update on general happenings. In no particular order:

I won a homebrew contest on April 10. It was the 2nd annual Real Salt Lake Section 26 home opener brewing competition. I won with a California Common (that's the style of Anchor Steam, in case you aren't familiar with it) and must say it was delicious!! In my acceptance speech, I vowed to put it on my new mantel...and there it sits.




Yes. That's a 5 gallon keg with a handle on top. And even more hilarious...Mark and his buddies are the competition organizers so I spent that morning cleaning this bad boy. Doesn't it sparkle?We had a full house for the game. Both of my siblings and their love buddies joined us for post game fun.


On a more professional note, I am presenting at the AERA conference in Denver May 3 & 4. This falls right in the middle of finals week = rather stressful.

I come home just in time for summer break! Oh wait. That's right...I don't get a break. I have a 1 week stats class starting Saturday May 8. And that unfortunately is the day my dear sister is graduating! Congrats Hai Mo! Other summer plans involve working at Pearson and continuing grant work at the U. I am also headed to the Intelligent Tutoring Systems conference in June and hopefully an intelligent tutoring camp in July, both in Pittsburgh.

Otherwise, Mark is loving his work at the brewery. He now works in the cellar mostly cleaning tanks (he was formerly in the warehouse and distribution). Hudson is now 4.5 but still acts like a puppy.

In general, we stay incredibly busy. Enjoy the influx of greenery in my house. Cannot wait to these babies in the ground outside...I am out of window sills.

Growth and Decay

I can't believe it's been nearly 2 months since I've updated this thing. Well here's a little something for anyone still reading.

It has been croquet weather the past few weekends down here. So naturally, we got distracted and started to play outside, leaving the interior of the house for those inevitable rainy April days.

We've been wanting to compost for a long time but we never really got serious about it until now. We needed something dog proof and cheap and Mark has found us just the solution. At the brewery, they get apricot puree delivered in giant, blue barrels for that delicious Apricot Hefeweizen. As they emptied the last barrel, Mark cleaned it and brought it home. Then he went Dr. Frankenstein on its ass.




He cut a hatch into the top of it, added some sweet hardware (it locks shut!) and stuck a ventilated piece of PVC pipe from top to bottom so the compost could breathe.





We can tip it on its side and roll it across the yard to mix it and Hudson can't get into it. We've had it 3 weeks and so far no racoons have gotten in either. Unfortunately, it still smells like apricot so opening the hatch is an unpleasant experience.

I started vegetable seeds a few weeks ago as well. Our library never quite recovered from the kitchen experience so it was only natural to turn into a greenhouse this spring. I transplated the sprouts last night into bigger pots to encourage larger root growth, but they all started out in the little pods in the big tray.

Mark has been busy this week doing renovation to the front yard...Pictures of that next time.