A Productive Weekend!

Our little chicks are growing quickly, so we took advantage of the great weather this weekend to get some work done on the coop, and also I got many projects done around the garden! It's really great changing to face of our yard week by week, and I love owning my own space that I can do whatever I like with!

Friday evening, I got busy ripping out some excess candy tuft to put in a little herb garden. There was already a great rosemary bush planted at the top, and it's right off the deck so it will hopefully encourage us to use fresh herbs in our cooking a lot!

After work on Friday, we made a visit to the Re Store, which is a great place for used building materials. We found a bunch of 2x4's and cedar boards we'll use for siding. We picked it all up on Saturday, and actually managed to swap out the 2x4's we'd picked for some brand new ones that had been dropped off that morning!

Yay for salvaged lumber!

The site of the coop, at the top of the backyard

We got the site all measured off and squared with string, and felt very proud of managing to get the right angles on our sloped yard!

Sitting inside the "coop"!

Today, Neal came over to help out. He has a bit more experience than Kevin does with construction, and it was awesome to have his help. Not to mention, it gave me time to work on other things around the yard! :) Thanks Neal!

Digging holes for the pier blocks.

Putting the fancy saw horse we got from my brother Matt was definitely the most difficult portion of the day!

Making the first cut! Many times he was reminded, "Measure twice, cut once!" :)

First post up!

While the boys were busy building, I got lots done around the yard. I put in the zucchini and cucumber in their awesome bed, repotted tomatoes, planted a fuchsia and some lavender cutting, and weeded one of the big garden beds!

Happy little tomatoes! Leggy girls, eh?!

Kevin got our rain barrel attached to the gutter today, too. Hopefully we can get it filled a bit before the heat of summer is fully upon us!

We have a giant sage plant that I am slowly cutting back to make room for more veggies, and am trying out drying them for the first time. We'll see how it goes!

Kevin is off to California for a training session, so I'm in charge of the girls this week! Hopefully we'll be able to get a lot more done on the coop next weekend, and hopefully the weather will be nice for us!

A Holiday Feast

For Valentines Day, Kevin wanted to make me a Chinese New Year Feast to celebrate, and I do not turn down husband-made food. My man can cook! :) He wanted everything to be a surprise, so he went off shopping on his own, and came back with vast quantities of Chinese ingredients, and set to work at 10am! First on the menu were pork pot stickers, or Jiaozi, which are said to resemble gold nuggets and bring wealth in the new year! Let me tell you, once you have had homemade potstickers, the frozen ones from Costco just won't cut it anymore! Luckily, he made lots, so we have some frozen for when my next pot sticker craving strikes!

Pork+ginger+garlic+green onions=YUM!

What a pro! Perfectly filled!

Yeah, you can start drooling anytime now!

The final one was a fatty, needed to be photoed!

He served these as appetizers before he got down to the business of dinner cooking! I just kept "mmmmmm, mmmmmm"ing the entire time I was eating them!

On the menu for dinner was Chow Fun, a beef, bell pepper, and noodle pile of deliciousness! It is traditional to eat noodles for the new year, and one is supposed to eat each noodle without breaking it. This is difficult for the chopstick-impaired! I couldn't believe how good this tasted, and I have been thoroughly enjoying leftovers! We also had Jiangcai, which were amazing sauteed bok choy and broccoli veggies in oyster sauce.

For dessert, he made nian gao, which was...interesting. It wasn't the best thing on the menu, but it satisfied the need for dessert nonetheless! :) Overall, a totally amazing New Year/Valnetines celebration! Thank you for spoiling me, Kevin! :)

Yesterday, Kevin had the day off to celebrate some presidents or something, so he took some gorgeous photos in the yard while the sun was shining! Everything is so pretty! So excited to continue seeing what comes up in the yard!

Camellia I mean azalea, thanks Susan!

Vinca

A much better photo of the pink thing!

Crocus

Pussywillow!

The crocuses just keep coming!

In addition to viewing the Olympics, I'm also participating in them. The Knitting Olympics that is! I know, I'm such a nerd! :) Basically, the idea is to knit something that will be challenging to complete between the lighting and extinguishing of the Olympic torch. I don't have the greatest sense of how much I can knit when I set my mind to it, but I think I chose a good project. I can't show exactly what I'm making, because it's a present for my baby niece coming in July (squeeeeeeal, a girl!!!!!) but here's a sneak peek at it! It's coming along quite nicely, and I have full faith that I will be able to finish before the torch is extinguished at the end of the Vancouver Games.

Early Blooms

An unseasonably warm January and beginning of February has resulted in all kinds of flowers coming up in our yard. Since we moved in at the end of October, we didn't get a chance to plant any bulbs, and I had been lamenting not having any spring blooms to enjoy. But over the last couple of weeks we've been noticing all kinds of shoots coming up in the front and backyard, and this week, some of the crocuses started blooming! I couldn't be happier! It's funny since we never planted flowers at any of our old places, and now we really want lots of them everywhere. Something about it being "our" house, I guess. :)

Some pretty dark purple crocuses. They were stretching to follow the sun all day yesterday, it was fun to watch them change positions and arching toward the warmth. It was nearly 60 degrees yesterday!

Lighter purple crocus, these guys are everywhere!

Sedum, holding in the morning's dew in their lovely little rosettes.

Not really sure what this is, and the picture isn't showing how pretty and pink they are!
Probably a weed knowing me! :)

Periwinkle, myrtle, vinca, whatever it is called, the little flowers are so pretty! We have this all along the back of the property where the fruit trees are, and had originally thought about pulling it up and putting grass there, but these flowers are so pretty we might have to keep some of it!

There is also a ton of what I think are irises coming up, as crocosmia, and something else that has little tufts of grass looking leaves that I assume will flower into something! Who knows what else might come up! I'm so pleased that I get to enjoy some flowers this year even though I didn't manage to get any in myself! This yard is just full of surprises!

Yesterday we spent part of the morning at a pruning class at our local nursery and learned some good things, and got home and went straight to work in the yard. Kevin mowed, and I cleaned up some of the rhodies that had been poorly pruned. Then I whacked back a bunch of the dead wood on our chrysanthemum, and I can't wait to see what it does later in the spring. It looks so much better! Then we went a little crazy and started removing a ton of the forsythia that has taken over the back of the yard and is crowding on our fruit trees. We had originally thought we would just cut it back a bit and see if that worked, but we removed almost one entire plant and now have several months worth of yard waste piled up in the backyard! Looks like we'll need to borrow a truck again to get rid of it. But, it opened up the back so much, we think we'll probably just get rid of all of it. I'm not a huge fan of it anyway, and I'd rather have the fruit trees get the space to produce fruit! :)

Next on the agenda is cleaning out the rest of the garden beds to get ready for planting veggies. Time is moving very quickly, we usually are getting ready to plant our snap peas around now, and we still haven't figured out where to put them! Yikes! We're also thinking about putting in at least one bed in the front of the house, so we'll have to do some terracing. Then it's time to get the chicken coop up! Wow! We've got some busy weekends ahead of us.

Yellow Plums Make My World Go Round

Over the weekend, Kevin and I cleaned his parents tree out of all of the plums that would have otherwise gone to the deer or rotted while they are on their vacation in Utah. I LOVE yellow plums. They are a most fantastic treat, especially straight from the tree when kissing on my husband! Kevin prefers his on the hard side, very tart, while I like them when they are just about to fall off the tree and super sweet! We picked a ton, and since they were all nearly ready to rot, we had to do something with them quickly!

When life gives you plums, make plum sauce!

Just peel the skins, moosh the flesh off the pit into a bowl, add a little sugar and some cinnamon, and enjoy! We froze a couple pints worth to savor the flavor later this year when yellow plums are the stuff my dreams are made of!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Woowee! I have had a nice busy wonderful weekend, and have thoroughly enjoyed having an extra day off with all this great sunshine! Friday night we had some friends over to try out the new Thai restaurant in our neighborhood, Tangerine Thai. It has only been open a few weeks, and we had been itching to try it out! We were beyond pleased with it, and can't wait to go back again! We split 4 dishes and appetizers between us, and each one was excellent! I was especially impressed with the red curry, which is my all time favorite dish to have at Thai places. I give it 4 stars! Afterwards, we just sat around our house and chatted while we worked off the immnse amount of food we ate!

Saturday morning, Kevin and I headed out to get more gardening supplies. Our new upstairs neighbor doesn't have a green thumb, so she said we could use her plot! We jumped at the chance to grow more veggies, and some new ones at that! We got another bunch of compost, basil starts, a cucumber, a green bell pepper, and jalapeno pepper, and some radish seeds. We worked in the garden for a while in the afternoon prepping the soil and planting the radishes. We also built a trellis for our snap peas which have been growing like crazy! We think it turned out pretty great!

Trellis!

The new garden!

Then it was off to babysit Jackson! Matthew and Terri needed a night out, so while they enjoyed Star Trek and dinner, Kevin and I had a great time with Jackson, playing in his activity tent, going for a walk, playing at the park on the swings, eating some good grub, and many wild games of chase.

We like peas and bananas, string cheese is okay, but turkey must not enter the mouth! He would go to great lengths to avoid getting turkey on his other food, and every time I tried to trick him, would would manage to spit out only the turkey but kept everything else in!

We had a great time, and are constantly amazed at how smart Jackson is. Can't wait to see what he learns this week!

Sunday we got up early to head to the Ballard Farmers' Market, and got a great tomato start, as well as some good mixings for dinners this week. Then I was off to the Mariners game with my friend Sarah and her sister who was in town visiting. It was a great game, Felix pitched an awesome game, and we won 5-4!

Three happy baseball gals!

When I got home, we decided that cooking was for suckers, and headed down to Totem Fish and Chips in Ballard. We walked down from out place, got our fish and milkshakes, and headed over to the Locks to watch the boats go through. The sun was setting, the boats were gorgeous, the food was stellar!

My absolute favorite fish and chips!

Today, we got started it the garden early, planting all of our goodies! We are very excited about trying out some new things, like cucumber, radishes, and peppers, and glad to have zucchini make a reappearance in our garden!




Now we are grilling bratwursts and about to tuck into homemade potato salad and rhubarb cobbler! What a great weekend, we sure know how to pack it in! Hope everyone enjoyed their weekends and have a good short week!