Spring Apple Blossoms

I wandered outside today to do some yard work after work today and was struck by how beautiful our apple trees were. There were bees hovering in and out of the blossoms, some with legs so full of pollen they were orange. I just had to take some pictures and share them. Enjoy!

Look at them grow!

So I looked at my last post and my veggie starts are huge compared to those newborns I had pictures of! These are pictures from when the tomato and pepper starts were about 2 weeks old and we had just started all the cucumbers, pumpkins and melons and also pictures from two days ago when the tomato and pepper starts were close to 4 weeks old and the cucumbers, etc. were 2 weeks old. Can't wait to plant them out cause my craft table is full! We also went to Home Depot and got some plants that were buy one, get one free. We got some herbs, an orange pepper and a bunch of strawberries. The strawberries are for an upside down strawberry planter that I got for a friend who has been very generous. I also bought an upside down tomato planter so I can buy one of those double hooks that plants into the ground and they'll balance each other out. I thought about using one of our tomato starts to plant in it, but I talked to her and she really loves cherry tomatoes. There is a plant sale that is put on by the Master Gardeners (who sponsored all the seminars we went to) and they have some amazing cherry tomatoes I am told. So I plan on buying her tomato plant there ( and possibly a couple more for us ;). You see this friend, Kiersten, is someone I work with and she is really good at winning radio contests. She called in and won tickets to see the Black Eyed Peas at the Tacoma Dome. And I am very lucky to work with her cause then I get to call dibs first. We are also going to see Daughtry when they come to the Sundome in May. And that's why the plant gift will work out perfect, cause they can go outside at that time and I can bring it over before we go to the concert. I also finished the fingerless mitts that I had been working on since January and they are totally cool. They keep your hands very warm, even your fingers even though they are not covered. They will be great for doing computer work or...knitting. I knit them on straight needles, but I would love to try doing some in the round on two circulars since I don't think I am talented enough just yet to work double pointed needles. I downloaded a whole bunch of free patterns that have beautiful cables in them but I am going to try a plain set like mine for Mom, just to get familiar with knitting in the round.

So Kiersten and I went and saw the Black Eyed Peas at the beginning of April. She is completely insane because she had to work that weekend and the concert was on a Saturday. I volunteered to drive the whole way so that she could sleep on the way back. She got off work early and we headed over so that we would have time for dinner. She loves Q'doba so I found the closest one to the Tacoma Dome and that was a lot closer than the Cheesecake Factory that I wanted to go to. We ate and then headed to the Tacoma Dome and planned on milling around, but the parking lot was filling up so we paid and parked. They had one of the opening bands, LMFAO, outside and you could have your picture taken with them. So I ran back to get my camera and by the time I got back they were leaving. Then we got in what we thought was the line to get in, which was more of a mass of people. They all ran to the doors when we were let through the gates and were crowding around to get in first. We finally heard that that was the general admission line and we needed to go back up. They had put out a sign later that told which was the general admission line and which was the entrance for seat holders. So we got in the right door and decided that we needed beers before we went much further. We walked around to get to our seats and they pointed us up, up, up....hey! the tickets were FREE okay?! The angle of the top stairs were so steep that I got vertigo and it felt like if you fell down you were going straight to the bottom. After all that the concert was awesome! The beginning act was alright, then Ludacris was on as the second act and then it was time for the main attraction! With all the people around us you could stand and sing and dance a bit, knowing they'd break your fall if you tumbled! At one point they shone all these lights on a disco ball and it threw a million lights onto the inside of the dome. It was really beautiful. We left just a bit early at the last song (which was neither of our favorites) and got out to the car before the masses. We made it out of the parking lot and back to the freeway before the rush! I ended up getting Kiersten back home around 2 AM and she had slept from about highway 18 on, though I don't think I would have been able to get up and be to work at 6:30. It was a blast and I am sure that Daughtry will be even more amazing!!

Busy, Growing and Going

Another month has slipped by us, so I decided to update the blog with what's going on with us. My birthday was a little more than a week ago and it was...decent. It's just not fun getting older anymore. I thank everyone for the birthday wishes though!! The weekend before my birthday, Mom and I ran down to Cannon Beach for a long weekend. We had nice weather the full day we were there and then it was pouring the day we left, just as it should be ;) . We both bought a whole bunch of yarn from Coastal Yarns to knit up into some beautiful sweaters for ourselves. Other than that we were pretty short on funds so we just enjoyed the beach and the time off with our puppies.



For my birthday instead of a cake Mom made me a lemon curd crepe "cake". It was in the most recent Martha Stewart magazine and it was soooooo delicious! Layers of lemony sweet/tartness and light tasty crepes in between. I got some knitting patterns and a book on fair isle sweaters from Mom as well as some expansion packs to our game Carcassonne and the New Moon soundtrack. The movie came out the day after my birthday and showed up in our mailbox a few days later. So all in all it was a pretty nice birthday.

Also this month Mom has been going to a series of Master Gardener seminars. I could only go to two of them, but Mom is going to all four. It has really helped us out with our raised beds for our vegetable gardens. Like the fact that we made them the perfect width across at 4 feet. We also learned that "double digging" or loosening the soil 2 feet down will help drainage and allow the plants' root to grow down instead of out when they get to the compacted soil. Since our beds were a foot deep we just had to dig down an extra foot inside the beds. This weekend we got a 5 yard load of top soil/compost mix delivered and filled the beds with most of it. We also made a mounded row on the outside of the garden to grow corn in. We learned that if the soil is mounded it will warm up quicker than what is down in the ground. This will let us sow into the soil earlier. We were pretty pooped after hauling all that dirt but had fun with it too. So did Toby and Ariel...they just love fresh open dirt.

Speaking of planting things we also started some of our seedlings in seed starter systems in the house. I have been keeping a gardening journal so that we can see when things started and what went wrong and hopefully how we fixed it. We are keeping them in our craft/solar room that warms up very nicely when the sun is out. Our broccoli and cauliflower seedlings came up first and looked to be doing well. But then they got really leggy. You see the sprouts aren't supposed to be very long before they set out their first true leaves, you want the plants short and stalky. But our sprouts just keep getting longer and longer. We looked at our seed starter's book and it said they weren't getting enough light. So today we went and got a shop light and some cool white and soft white fluorescent bulbs. The book said that it is the range of visible light that the seedlings need to grow and that the cool/soft combo works well, you know red to blue light. The tomato seedlings have come up too and are just as leggy, so it looks like we will have to start over with all of those. Its' all a bunch of guess work but I think it will pay off. So needless to say we have been thouroughly busy!

Visions of Spring

The sun had finally broken through the clouds this week and spring is on everybody's mind. The raised beds we made last year had to go into the ground sometime and this seemed like a good one. The ground was moist more than a foot down, which is where we had to dig the holes for the bottom anchoring posts on the beds, and made it very easy to get them in the ground. We just got the last two beds down today and my green thumb is itching. We've already ordered all the seeds we'll need to plant a huge garden since some will have to be started pretty soon. Growing in our garden this year will be peas, carrots, pumpkins, garlic, onions, leeks, squash, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries and different kinds of lettuce. Since we already have 50 chickens supplying us with fresh eggs I only need my Jersey cow, goats, sheep and a donkey to complete our small farm! I would love to make more cheeses but just can't find the time (I don't know why ;). We'll be overflowing with vegetables when harvest comes around, but we plan on canning some things, pickling others and just letting anyone who wants the extras come and pick some yummy veggies.

February Blahs

So it's February in the Pacific Northwest, which means rain, clouds and more rain. Everyone is begging for the sun to peak through the constant clouds we have had since December it seems. Once a day the sun comes out for about a half hour, usually while you are at work and you look out the window and plan all the things you are going to do when you get home because the sun is out, but by the time you get off of work it's raining again. You start to personify your pets to the point that they seem like better friends than any human being and that's mostly because you have a severe case of cabin fever and are close to being a hermit. We have had two such visitors to at our home that aren't exactly pets but are pretty close. The first is a pheasant that made his home in a spruce tree in our backyard this fall and has been around all winter. We named him Philip and have been feeding him and all the other wintering birds from a bowl on the back porch. He is terribly tame and not very skittish so you can walk right by him and he'll just look at you like you are a pedestrian passing his porch. We've even seen him in the open chicken yard a time or two. Our other visitor is also a customer of our seed bowl on the porch and that is Chester the mouse. He enjoys the seed and especially appreciates Philip knocking the bowl on it's side so that he can feel safe while he's eating and make a quick get away when someone with a camera shows up. Philip knocks the bowl over when, after he spends too much time conversing with the house finches, sees them sitting on the sides of the bowl, taking their time in the middle. He tries sitting on the side too, because it looks like such fun, but ends up tipping it. He feels pretty embarrassed after this and goes and sulks in his spruce tree. As you can see we here have some major cabin fever.

To break out of our hermit shells I convinced Mom to drive over to Tacoma this weekend to go to the Madrona Winter Fiber Art Retreat, not to take any classes (though they looked like fun) but to go to the Fiber Market Place. We drove over on Saturday and stopped at the North Bend outlet mall, because being from the east-side you have to do that sort of stuff. We made it to the market around 2 or 3 PM and it was raining buckets. We sort of wandered aimlessly in the beginning and then I told Mom that she could have an allowance as part of her birthday present. The wandering became more intent and we first bought some hand dyed roving to spin into some fabulous thread. Then she saw a bunch of very beautiful colors of yarn and picked three of those. We discussed how we should have brought some patterns so that we would buy yarn with purpose, rather than the skeins and skeins we have laying around with no pattern to go to and not enough to make much of anything with. We saw a booth with some beautiful shawl pins and I mentioned how that always sounded like something I wanted to wear some time, a shawl with a shawl pin. So that got us really on a roll and we went and found a pattern for a lovely shawl, then bought enough yarn to make it and went back and got some shawl pins to match. It was a lot of fun. My shawl will be made out of the blue yarn on the left and Mom's is the violet variegated yarn on the right. Then for her birthday (thought it's not until this Friday) I took Mom to the Cheesecake Factory, which is one of her favorites. It was quite a wait for a table and I heard somebody mention something about Valentine's Day, but it is always that full when we go. We had a delicious meal and shared a pineapple upside down cheesecake. Yum yum.

And I am blogging on my new netbook! He was so cute sitting there at Best Buy on sale because nobody wanted him cause he is pink. I named him Arnold the Pygmy Puff because it seemed appropriate.

Things coming out of nowhere...

So this was going to be a happy post about a yarn filled Christmas and all the cute animals that come visit our bowl of seed we have for the birds on our back deck, but life often isn't so nicely planned. On Saturday my Aunt Rae Ann passed away suddenly. Mom was devastated of course. I was perming Mom's hair when my cousin David called to tell us. Rae Ann had been doing so well when we saw her in November and Mom had sent her a photo album for Christmas because she had enjoyed the old pictures Mom had printed off her computer from scans. She had been able to stand and was working on walking because she wanted to come down and visit us at home, rather than us always driving to Spokane to see her. She had also been working on eating whole foods again, instead of all her food being pureed to a consistency that she could swallow. This was what ended up causing her death because she choked on a prune. Of all the things that could have killed her, the strokes, excessive smoking her whole life, living the life she led, it was a prune that was the cause. My Uncle Fred said that since the strokes she really had been just living on borrowed time. She came back to God and truly appreciated the people in her life and maybe that's what these past few years have been for. For us to be able to grieve with the knowledge that she is with all the rest of our family that is waiting for us when pass from this life into the next. So while we are all shocked and sad about the events that have occurred we must move forward with God at our side and not turn away with the heavy hearts we are bearing. We must find shelter in God because he lightens our burdens and without him they would truly be unbearable.

First Snow!

A nice snow storm blew in last night and dumped a generous portion of snow in our valley! This morning on the local news they said the snow fall was only 1/2 an inch...right.... I went out this evening and measured on our lovely front yard decoration, the old toilet from our remodeled bathroom. How about 4 1/2 inches!! I shoveled the walk and Toby (who always loves the snow) was running around romping in it. Every time I would throw the snow in his direction, he would run around underneath it all excited. Sooo cute! Then when we came in the house he spent a good 15 minutes biting out the snow-clods that form in the fur on his legs. While Mom made dinner I made some fudge from a recipe Pam (she went to Hawaii with us) gave us. You take 2 cups of chocolate (or any) chips and 1 can of condensed milk and microwave it for 3 minutes. Stir it up until it gets smooth and well mixed and then mix in anything else you want in the fudge...walnuts, candy, etc. Spread it all out in a cake pan lined with wax paper and let it set, you don't have to put it in the fridge. I used Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips and added walnuts and I can tell you what I licked off the spatula was d-e-licious!