A blustery Date Night

This week is Spring Break for our kids. They all go to the same school right now so they all get to get off at the same time. Today they went down to Salt Lake City to visit family and get to see a concert. They were going to spend the night afterwards so tonight got to be an unplanned date night for A~ and I. We got some dinner at a local Mexican place where we haven't been in ages and then went and caught the movie "Clash of the Titans" courtesy of some free passes that we've had, literally, for nearly a year. I remembered this movie from when I was a kid and was really looking forward to watching a new version of it when they could really make it seem the way I think they wanted to back in the 80's but just couldn't. It was good, pretty much what I had expected. It wasn't spectacular, but it was certainly entertaining!

The real Titan tonight turned out to be the weather though! We went in and it was raining a little and dropping the occasional snow flake. It was forecast to snow a little but hey, we've heard that before this year. I expected a little snow over night, nothing to stress over. WRONG! An hour and forty-five minutes later we left the theater and walked smack into a whole new and very white world! There was already close to four inches on the ground and more on our car. ???Where the heck did this come from?

We drove home slowly and I went about the farmers duties. Its funny isn't it, that in our modern era of automated everything that when we make the decision to slow down a little and produce more of our own food it comes with a lot of responsibilities. I went out to make sure the chickens tarp was pulled down to keep snow from blowing into their run, ensured the portable greenhouse cover was pulled tight over the kohlrabi starts (that have already had a tough time thanks to some serious wind storms I might add) and added my recycled window frame cold covers over my cabbage starts and their cloche covers to keep the bulk of the future snow from burying it. They were already essentially covered by snow like miniature little snowmen in my garden bed. It will be a really good test of the covers effectiveness to see how they perform through this storm. Particularly since it's supposed to snow most of tomorrow too.

Well, I guess we'll see how it turns out... Wish me luck. How's the weather been this spring in your neck of the woods?
Stay tuned!
P~

Goings on.

Still much happening around the homestead. I'll narrate, while letting some pictures tell most of the story...

Plants have been in the seed starting unit in the east window for almost a month now and are coming along nicely. Lights under reflective material. I used one of those .99 cent survival blankets that you can pick up in the outdoors section of may stores to concentrate the light back onto the sprouts. This picture was actually taken 10 days ago and the difference is impressive. (I'll try to get some more of them up soon.) I started running my oscillating fan over these a couple of days after this picture was taken. It simulates the weather that the plant would be exposed to outdoors and helps to keep the legginess down and build stronger plants. Iceberg lettuce sprouts under the lights. Starting these indoors let's me get enough of a head start that I can get some from them before they bolt. Last year they did OK. Hopefully even better this year!For those following the progress of my last robust little cutting from last years tomatoes. I've now got it split into the original cutting and two other "daughters". I placed the cuttings into soaked vermiculite and let them sit for about 2 - 3 weeks until I began to see roots along the edges of the cups. They've now been transplanted into soil and are coming along well. She's a tuffy!Here's a little plot of salad greens that I'll be using for cut and come again salad harvests until I can get more from outdoors.
LOOKOUT!! ALIENS!! OK I'm a dork, we all know that, but don't they kind of look like the invasion of the body snatchers or something? These are some "Garden Cloche" that I picked up at a local thrift store for 1.50 each last year. I've seen this same exact type of Garden Cloche for sale for 20.00 a piece so I was pretty happy to find these. So is my Chinese Cabbage I think.Here's a close up. The only noticeable difference with these is that they don't have the neat little glass knobby thing at the top. I think they were for displaying figurines or something originally. See, just goes to show, a little imagination goes a long way.I finally got out and got the greenhouse cleaned up over the last weekend too. It needed a lot of work but is in a much better state now. Soon the nights will be warm enough I won't feel bad putting out the sprouts! Those are recycled buckets of water to help hold some of the days heat through the night.Did you notice that little bit of green in the back of the G-house? Those are one of my biggest greenhouse successes and for some reason I have yet to mention them. Last year I tried to grow Artichokes in two largish pots. They didn't do well. Didn't die, but never thrived. I did, however, manage to overwinter them in the pots in the greenhouse. As soon as the weather started to warm at all, they started to throw up new shoots and really took off. This past weekend I split the second of the two plants into new starts and now have a total of twelve! The four on the left were split from the first plant a couple of weeks ago. I have a place I'll be planting these babies out by the potato garden this year and with any luck, I should have at least enough artichokes to enjoy fresh through the summer and then can get them thriving enough to over winter again!This weekend also had me cleaning out and prepping some of the harvest baskets that we use. Just seeing them there makes me excited about filling them!
As you can see, Things are coming along. There's more queued up, but just not enough time to get to them.

Hope Spring's coming along well for you all as well. Care to share your progress with everyone? Drop a comment and feel free to link to your own blog if you have one too. This is a community isn't it?

Namaste all...
Paul~

Knock knock knockin...

On Springtimes dooooor....
Oh man! Can I tell you how bad spring fever has kicked in with me? It's crazy I tell you, I can't wait to get growing!

This afternoon, I ended up having to come home early because I had a hurt little one. (He's 14 but hey they're ALWAYS your little ones right?) Anyway, when we got back to the house, the sun was out and it had to have been a balmy 45 degrees (F) out. Now I grew up in Southern California and in years past I would have been coated up on a 45 deg. day but today I just had to get out and fork some dirt!!

I was able to get our whole potato patch forked over along with one of our back yard raised beds and another smallish bed that's along the house. It felt soooo good to see the rich black soil turning over. Getting to reach down, pick up a healthy sized clod and easily crumble it in my hand. I found the clippings and chicken manure that had been turned in last fall was making it's way nicely into becoming nourishing humus for the upcoming years garden and had helped to grow an incredibly healthy population of earth worms over the winter.

Soon I'll be setting the seed starter up in our east facing sliding door window and getting things started there too. Then in another couple of weeks things will be filling the greenhouse in preparation for planting. In fact, A~ and I had wonderful Valentines day together and then treated ourselves to a breakfast out together on Monday morning as we were both off from work, and being the the madly in love, nano-farming couple we are what do you think we did? We ate breakfast, chatted about exactly how in love we are, and then whipped out our garden journal from last year and started hammering out our list of things that we'll be growing and where we want to put them of course! What? Isn't that what you'd call a romantic morning out? I mean what can be more romantic than talking about your goals together, planning for the things you want to do together and then working out the details of how you'll get them done together by working side by side? Ha! got you thinking now don't I?

Well anyway, I suspect this is just the beginning of the suffering that is Spring Fever in the inter-mountain west. Today will be warm and inviting then tomorrow it'll rain and snow but by evening it will all melt off and be warm again but too wet to work. Oh and I wish I were kidding, alas, I am not. But never fear, Spring is on it's way, so if you haven't started planning your attack you'd better start thinking about it soon.

Best wishes and Bring on the Spring!!

Paul~

Spring is for lovers...

Yes it is. Spring is when I met my wife. We would take walks around along the riverside, sit in the park and talk about dreams and life and generally just enjoyed every minute being together.

Sometimes the day to day of life, work and parenting get the better of us and we forget to just be a couple. The last couple of days we got to remember. The boys went down to SLC to stay with family and go to a concert while they're on Spring break and we had a chance to re-connect.
Yesterday we took a walk, and had dinner together and today we took a ride on the "eco-hog" to a nearby park and had a picnic dinner together.
I have to say I love riding around with her huggin me and I can't say I took the long way home on accident *wink wink*.

I just wanted to leave a message here to let her know I love her and I love our time together.

SHMILY baby...

P~

Cycles

Spring is coming, or it's here, depending on your perspective. I guess it's kind of a glass half full / half empty kind of thing. Any way you look at it, things are changing.

To the left is a sorry looking dead bunch of sticks that was once a very full and very pretty snapdragon. Why is it still in the yard? Because those pretty flowers, when not dead headed toward the end of the year, will dry up and do their natural thing; go to seed and propagate. In fact this particular snapdragon is the second generation as it is. In fact there's another one just around the corner where we had never planted a snapdragon before.

Here's another favorite waking up for the season. Can you name it? Did you guess Honeysuckle? Before long, the kids will be sitting on the porch swing, sucking on fistfulls of these and leaving Mom and Dad to sweep em up, can't say I blame them though, (or that they're the only ones to ever do it.)

Here we have another little volunteer. This is a columbine that we planted our first summer here, three years ago. This flower has only one flush of blooms each season and after every one I let the plant go to seed. It's not the most attractive thing in the world I guess, but it's the cycle of things. It's the way it's meant to be.

And last but not least, everyone has their favorites, and here's one of mine, Daffodils. I can't help it, ever since I saw that kid having tea from a tulip and then eat it on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", I've loved em. They come up early every year, give us a big ole splash of color and, well heck they just make me smile.

It's fun to watch the cycles come around. Enjoy this time, it is fleeting and before long it'll be full blown summer, and though that brings many gifts of it's own, there's just something special about Spring.

I've had a terrible Fever!

I’ve had a really bad fever lately, I can’t stay focused; I’ve got it bad. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a web developer, having to try and stay focused on coding and staring at a computer screen all day when you’ve got a world class case of Spring Fever? I mean it takes everything in me to not go out and just sit in the sun at the break tables all day long and just watch the flowers bloom. I had to leave an hour early yesterday just to go get some work in the yard done. Mind you it wasn’t imperative that it get done, but in my feverish state I couldn’t think rationally! It was like going to the Emergency Room; I needed immediate treatment! I have heard of people with “seasonal affected disorder” which, best I can tell, is depression caused during the winter months when they can’t get enough sun and outside time. I think I have an inverse case of this. I get really depressed at this time of the year, every year. When the sun starts shining and there are good weather days, I start getting really depressed that I am stuck inside all day instead of out there in it. Thank God for my ambitious wife, she always seems to have some good idea for something I can be working on in the yard. I just need to make sure that I take my daily recommended dose of one part weeding and two parts planting, washed down with a healthy gulp of drip irrigation and press on. At least it looks like we’re supposed to have a beautiful weekend finally; some long term care will do me good.
P~

Spring Weather... Gotta love it!

Beautiful weather on the Wasatch Front! I told A~ about a half hour earlier that it looked like there might be some rain tonight. I was wrong yet again!
Not rain, half inch hail. Kids being kids had to run right out and gather up some samples!
P~

Some spring beauty!

I thought everyone would enjoy a little glimpse of the great rebirth going on in my yard. I know I love seeing it every day.


Apple on the left, pear below.















A cherry blossom just "popping" out!














And what garden doesn't light up every year when the bleeding hearts come out!

Strangly heavy pollen this spring???

Well as you can see, No snow today, I willed it so. Although I must say the Cottonwoods are pollenating very early and strangely heavy this year..? Another beautiful spring day in the Rockies... You've got to love it right?

Keeping Life Simple

In the sping, even before you can get your hands into the dirt, you will be tempted to buy all manner of specialty items...DON'T
~ paraphrase from "Keeping Life Simple"

Square foot Garden.

Can you tell I finally got out to take some pictures. This is one of my square foot beds with the overhead frame that I use to vertical train my tomatoes. I swear by this method!














Here is one of my five bed garden.

A picture is worth a thousand words

A~ and I planted bulbs for the first time this last fall. We're really happy with our first showing so far this year. We have Tulips, Daffodils and Hyacinth poppoing up all over. We have been taking regular walks around the yard to check out the progress. We're like a couple of proud parents.

The garden begins.

Ah yes, life is good. Hands have been in the dirt, and the sweet smell of spring is in the air.
I got a trailer load of really good compost the other day. If you have not looked into it, your local community landfill may very well be in the business of making and selling a very good quality compost. They will generally collect green waste, leaves, branches, grass, etc. etc. and "cook" it over the fall and winter. This will result in a compost with a lot of different types of micro organisms and organic goodness that your plants will love. You will most likely not need to fertilize your garden if you have a good enough soil base.
Anyway, I did get out into the garden tonight after work, and am trying a new technique. I removed the soil from my garden box that I will be growing my early veggies in. (see my previous post regarding square foot gardens.) I then lined the base of the box with a layer of cardboard. The cardboard will allow water to flow through it, but will organically repel the dastardly morning glory weeds that attacked my garden last year. This will leave me with six inches of undisturbed light and fluffy compost rich growing medium.
Yeah I said six inches, it really works, I swear. You should have seen my tomatoes last year. I couldn't have gotten better at the grocery store. Not a blemish and mmm mmm good with fresh mozzerella and basil. I'll post again with the results. I have faith.

If you haven't gotten out yet, I sure hope it's because it's still frozen where you live; otherwise you need to get up get out and enjoy! After the garden time I took a quick walk with A~ and remembered the main reason I love spring. It always reminds me of when we met. We took walks and gathered Lilacs, said hi to the neighbors and just enjoyed each others company. Spring is about renewal, and I will always look forward to renewing my love with her!
Have a good day.
P~

another B E A utiful day

Well, today was another beautiful day! Did a little running around this morning with the missus, then took my three boys to the park. The air was cool, but not cold, no wind. A~ (that's the wife...) and I took a stroll on the river walk while the boys hit the swings and playground. It amazes me sometimes how big they're getting, while on the other hand they can seem like such little boys; this is a great age. Tomarrow I'll be taking them to the local skateboard park to tear it up a bit. They're so lucky to have all of the amenities that they do. They always say that I was so lucky to grow up in CA in the 70-80's, surfing and skateboarding everywhere. We did that because we didn't have all of the great city paid for spots that we do now. I'll probably hit it a little tomarrow also, after the bad arm break I had last year, I've been taking it easy all year. Time to start working back into it!
Well, that's all for now. More later.
P~

Spring fever

Well, I can feel it. Spring is coming.
For the first time this year, I was awakened at night by the winds of a storm coming in and didn't wake up to shovel snow. This is a small miracle hear in the Rocky mountain west where I live.
I'm sure we're in for more cold, but I can see the green light at the end of the tunnel. I say green light, because at this time of the year I get a major case of the garden giddies! Time to plan all of my plantings; figure out what new plants I'll try this year; plan my little experiments that are sure to crop up. For instance, can I make a Teepee big enough for my kids to play in out of bamboo and green beans? Why not? I do square foot gardening, and love it. I've never had such perfect tomatoes and veggies.
I'm already starting to think about all the summer stuff we'll do this year. Last year we were putting our home on the market and spent most of the weekends making sure that the house was clean and tidy in case someone wanted to see it. This year we've decided to stay put. Our kids like the neighborhood, and we have a good home here so we will just enjoy the summer and make up for all of the stuff we didn't do last year. I hope to share lots of picture with you all this year so you can enjoy it with us!