Garden update and Rattlesnake Ledge

I think I am ready to blame the iPhone for my lack of blogging!  I hardly take pictures with my camera anymore, and I haven't figured out a good way to move photos from the phone to the computer.  Hmmm.  Well, this weekend I took some photos with the phone and some with my digital camera, and I'm just going to muddle through this until I can get a better handle on things!

We seem to finally be warming up just a little bit here in the Northwest, having a few sunny mid 60's days the last few weeks.  Time to really get working on the garden!  We had already planted garlic, red onions, Walla Walla sweet onions, bunching onions, radishes, snap peas, lettuce and spinach.  Somehow that seemed like a meager start, but when it's all written out it sounds pretty great!

 We also wanted to get some tomatoes, basil, squash, and zucchini going!  We ran out of really great sunny spots in the already made vegetable beds, and we just never really figured out a great spot to put in another one, so we opted to try something new.  We are planting the tomatoes in pots!  I'm excited by this idea, and hope that we have more success than our meager harvest from last year, a whopping half dozen tomatoes from 5 plants!

The other issue we had last year was with our zucchini plants.  We got one zucchini the entire season, because squirrels or some other animal kept nibbling away at them, finally actually felling the entire stalk of the plant!  It was awful!  No chocolate chip zucchini bread!  No sauteed squash!  The horror!  They won't keep us from the most bountiful of summer veggies this year!  Kevin put up a nice fence around the hill where we plan on putting them in a couple of days.

Then we were down to the basil, and Kevin had a stroke of brilliance!  Why not build a little terrace in front of the squash plot for the basil? It's a super sunny spot and it came together really well!  Looks great!

Today we took off with Tristan and Robin for a nice hike up Rattlesnake Ledge.  The weather was supposed to be pretty nice today, so we were hoping for better views than the last time we headed up there with Taylor. No sunshine today, but the clouds were a lot higher so we got a better idea of just how high up the ledge is from the lake!  Woowee! 

 Tristan poses with his Swiss Marmot friend.

 Rattlesnake Lake, supposed to be good trout fishing in there!

 There is a direct drop of 1000 feet here, I just couldn't get brave enough to get the right angle!

 Me and my boys!  :)  Kevin, Tristan, and Robin.  Yes, I am that much shorter than Tristan, Kevin is standing on a rock though!

 I love this boy.

We tried to hike further to East Peak along the Rattlesnake trails, but were thwarted by snow a couple miles in.  I would guess we did about 7 mile all told today, which managed to thoroughly wipe us all out!  Looking forward to the snow melting so we can get going somewhere new and higher!  Love alpine hiking!!

Tomorrow we are looking forward to a brunch with other friends, and perhaps an afternoon barbeque, or maybe planting the tomatoes and basil which are hardening off now.  So glad to have a long weekend, my first since January!