BEDM Day 28 & 29 - Planting Out Day 2 & More...

Well I failed to blog every day finally.  Yesterday was so full that I couldn't find a spare moment to sit down and add some pictures to some words for you.  And though I didn't join in until 8 days into May, I was giving it my best effort to blog the rest of them.  And I think I'll prepare you and say that I'm not going to be blogging the last two either.  Those were planned ahead of time and I'll blog them in June for you to see...

So yesterday started with planting out the rest of the garden, mostly all the seeds.

I have a notebook filled with planting maps from all the years I've been vegetable gardening which helps me to rotate crops appropriately, not plant things together that won't get along and just to generally be OCD.  This year I even went a bit further than the random "pumpkin" where I wanted it and wrote down the exact thing I planted with the average days to maturity.  I'm tired of wondering when I should harvest some things, so I'm hoping this will help.

After that Mom and I had to run to town for errands and then I came home and made my infamous Pineapple Coconut cupcakes for a coworker who is leaving us.  I hope he appreciated them!

See you guys in a few days...

BEDM Day 27 - Day Trip to Seattle

Today Mom and I drove over to Seattle VERY early in the morning for a doctor's appointment.  See a few years ago now I announced that I was trying to get pregnant by IUI using a donor.  I don't have a partner and time was ticking.  Well after 3 different doctors, 3 years of trying this and that and losing 50 pounds to get my BMI down I have come to IVF.  My cycles just wouldn't sync up and I tried two rounds of IUI with no success.  They said IVF was my only option.  So this April I started my first IVF cycle with 12 eggs recovered.  Out of those 9 were injected but only 7 fertilized.  Out of the 7 only 3 made it through to day 3.  On day 5 my doctor called and said that it didn't look like any were going to make it, but they would hold them to day 6.  On day 6 the embryologist called and said that one matured to a 5A-B(close to the best embryo possible) and another was a 2B-C.  He froze both of them together.  Day 7 my doctor called me and said I had 3 embryos.  I told her, "No only 2 made it," and she said that the embryologist had held the last one another day (which they don't usually do).  This one also matured to a 5A.  So I currently have 3 babies in the freezer section at UW waiting to be put back.  I'm currently running back and forth trying to get ready for my first transfer.  So we are used to leaving at 6 AM for the approximately 3 hour drive (with morning traffic) to Seattle for 9 AM appointments.  Today was one of those days...

We typically drive half and half on these trips.  Mom drives from home up to the top of Snoqualmie Pass, we get coffee and take a bathroom break, and then I drive into Seattle.  It's the reverse on the return trip.  I get the joy of driving in Seattle traffic because I'm decisive enough to stick my car in the next lane in a tiny space.  And because it's my car we're driving and Mom doesn't want to be responsible if it gets hit.  After the appointment (about 10-15 minutes for 3 hours of driving) we usually do something fun and eat at a nice place.  Today we went down to the University Village Shops and strolled around.  We found a lovely garden shop called Ravenna Gardens that had an adorable little building outside it.  I'm thinking of building something like that in our yard and call it the Reading Cottage.  I'm hoping to find old mismatched windows at the ReStore in town and just making it really quaint.  This gives me some good ideas!

They also had amazing plants and grouped them together in color families which I loved!!

There was also a cute little covered bench that I just wanted to curl up in with a blanket and read a book...

So many ideas, so little time.

Next we went to Teavana and picked up some herbal teas.  Mom got a Pomegranate Cranberry Crush tea and I got a blend of Pineapple Kona Pop and Blueberry Bliss Rooibos teas.  They had my blend made up for tasting as an iced tea.  Wow.  It was so good!  I think both of our teas would taste great on ice on a hot summers day.  With also got a couple of their tea storage tins, which I had been told were awesome by the Great and Powerful Tina, who had already been.  Next we strolled over to Mrs. Cook's, because I cannot go to UVillage and not stop there.

This time I picked up two hammered tea spoons for tea time.  We still had some time to kill before the restaurant we wanted to eat at was open so I went through Eddie Bauer.

And left with a shirt and two more being shipped to me.  My will is weak.

We also needed a bowl to give the dogs some water (because of course they come on these road trips!) and I didn't have anything in my car.  We were over by Williams-Sonoma at this point so we stopped in and picked one up (and some of Mom's favorite brownie mix).  Then we needed water and stopped at Starbucks to pick one up.  It was close to $3 (nothing but the best for my babies) while the guy in front of us got a drip coffee for a dollar and change.  Seriously?  Brewed coffee is less than bottled water?  Only in America folks.

With our time well spent it was time for food!  Today's eatery was Tutta Bella up on Stone Way.  We started off with Bruschetta and Minestrone soup...

Always delicious.  Their Bruschetta is so fresh and I love the basil and tomatoes.  The Minestrone soup is a little spicy which just makes you want to eat more!  And I love the little bread slices on the side...yum.  For lunch I got the Lasagna (which was the BEST lasagna I have EVER tasted, I cannot stress this enough, if you want to taste a piece of heaven order the lasagna)...

And Mom got the Pizzeta (small 8 inch personal pizza) in their signature Tutta Bella combo.  It has pomodoro, fresh mozzarella, italian sausage, mushrooms, onion and basil.  She had them hold the onion for my side because we always go splitzy on our meals.  I eat half of mine, she eats half of hers and we switch.  Really the Tutta Bella is the way to go on pizza there.  Sooooo gooooood.

Then we finished off our meal with gelato (because at a certified Neapolitan Pizzeria how else would you end?).  I had Pineapple...

Mom had Salted Caramel...

And they were divine.  The meal was so good that I fell asleep on the way home (but not during my half of the driving!).  I think the look on Mom's face says it all...

BEDM Day 26 - Planting Out Day 1

Today was the big plant out of the garden.  It was time for the tomatoes and peppers to be put in the ground.  They had been living on the woodbox on the deck for 2 weeks, after their initial start indoors, and were ready to go in the ground.  They told me so themselves, "Please put us in some dirt!  Or are we going to live our whole lives in water?"  So Mom and I headed out to the garden this morning and turned beds, added fertilizer, smoothed out beds, divided the plots into square feet and planted.  See the square feet marked out?

And then each foot gets a plant, be it tomato or pepper...

Then we laid out the soaker hoses, hooked them up to my amazing PVC watering system, tested out the hose (and added extra washers where needed) and then covered the plants with fabric.  I started doing this last year, when the year before I didn't and sun scalded all my tomato plants.  It took a while for them to recover and my harvest was diminished because of it.  I use Gardeners Supply's summer-weight fabric so it transmits only 85% of the sunlight to the plants.  This is a little more than they were getting on the porch under the all-purpose fabric which transmits 70% of the sunlight and when they only were getting morning sun.  With sun on them all day and a little more transmittance they will work their way up to full sun without getting scalded.  The same goes for the peppers, although they still have the all-purpose fabric on them but only because I ran out of the summer-weight.

Things were looking good for the potatoes, onions, peas and carrots we planted out a little earlier this spring.  See spring in the eastern half of Washington state starts off with plenty of nights that still get below freezing.  Our "last frost date" is May 15.  This is when you have a 50-50 chance of it still freezing after that date.  I usually wait until closer to May 30th to plant out because your chances go up to 80% of it not freezing and because in the 4 or so years I've been gardening I would say it still froze (or got close enough to freezing that I went out at 3 AM to put plastic over the tomatoes) on half of those years.  But potatoes, onions, peas and carrots can handle temps that still make it to around freezing, so they went in to the garden in April.  See how big they've gotten!

Also the plants that winter over are doing well.  The strawberries plants have little berries starting to show up and the rhubarb is overachieving as usual...

Look at all that yummy rhubarb!

We turned all the long beds as well which are the ones that usually get the squash, melons, corn, pumpkins, etc.  We didn't think we'd have the energy to seed all of them but they are ready to receive seeds on another day (Thus the "Part 1").  We were right about being very tired and mother nature encouraged us to go in when she turned a passing shower into a mini downpour (or what Seattleites would call "air").

While I've been gardening this spring I've noticed that there are a pair of hawks that have decided that the VERY tall conifer across the street would make an excellent nesting site.  I see them come and go and have wished for a pair of binoculars to see them better.  Well using my fancy 55-300mm lens I got a couple of pictures of them...

Just one...

See how tall that tree is!

And there's a pair!

Looking up hawks in eastern WA I think they might be a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks or American Kestrels.  They have dark heads and light colored chests.  They are very lovely and I appreciate their rodent control as our Mr. Smudge is no longer around to keep them in line.

With one good day of hard labour down there will be another soon to follow...

BEDM Day 25 - Messing Around With My f/1.8 Lens

When I got my camera I also got an f/1.8 50mm lens.  This has been a highly recommended lens by multiple bloggers, so I figured that since I liked their soft focus photography I'd get one.  I was surprised by how far away I had to get to have the image I wanted.  It looks like I'm right up on everything, but that's probably the 50mm part of the lens.  It's almost the full zoom of my 18-55mm lens that I've been using so far.  Today was a long busy day at work for me and then we came home, ate dinner and ran back to Mass at 6.  I've racked my brain for blogging material, but can't think of much.  So all you get today is some playing around with that lens.  There will be much more interesting things tomorrow...

One of those shawls I've started...

Mum's eggs never looked so pretty!

My precious teapot