By popular request, I'm going to suspend my recap of the year to do a few current events. And it doesn't get too much more current than last night - Halloween! I asked Liam a while back what he wanted to be for Halloween this year, and to my utter delight he said "I want to be Jedi! I will be Qui-Gon and you can be Obi-Wan!". I tried to explain to him the relative ages and the whole master/apprentice thing between the two, and that I should be Qui-Gon and he should be Obi-Wan, but he was having none of it. And for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, shame on you, and click these links for info on Qui-Gon (light and heavy reading versions) and Obi-Wan (light and heavy). I digress. Our costumes arrived at the house on Wednesday, and Liam was instantly infatuated - he didn't want to take off the costume and he wouldn't stop playing with his lightsaber for anything! Here are a few great shots Kristen got from that first day.
But on to the main event! Liam and I got geared up yesterday afternoon and I got my nice camera all set up. Then the Jedi training began! Camera lover sidenote: I had recently bought a wireless trigger for use with a remote speedlight flash, which also doubles as a wireless shutter trigger for the camera. This came in crazy handy here - I just set up my camera on a tripod with the wireless trigger, got it focused on the part of the yard I knew we'd be in, and had the trigger in my hand as Liam and I had fun. Highly recommend this.
We really had a fantastic time together. We went on to trick or treat around the neighborhood with some neighbors that have similar aged kiddos, and Liam had a great time. He was a little shy at first but quickly warmed up to the whole idea of getting candy - he would run on up to the door and give a hearty "Trick or treat!" when it opened up. But I think we both had the most fun during our fun photo shoot in the front yard - I know this was one of the most fun Halloweens I can remember. These were just a few of my favorite photos - for anyone who wants more awesome Jedi action head over to our flickr album. Well that's it, short and sweet for this post. I hope everyone else had a great Halloween! Drop me a note in the comments below or shoot a quick email, would love to hear from everyone.
Hey gang - only 2 weeks since the last post, this might be a new record! At this rate, I'll catch up to posting about current events in another...3 months. Hmm. Well, I might have to compress some months together in our recap of the year. At any rate, in this post we're looking back to:
April 2014
I remember this last spring being wonderfully mild, and looking back through my photos of the month this was definitely confirmed. At the beginning of the month the three of us took a trip down to south Texas to help Kristen work at the ranch. Liam is actually a pretty great helper, and loves to help us work. Here's a great video of him scooping and moving the cottonseed around.
If you're wondering what the cottonseed is all about, that's one of the byproducts of growing cotton that is unused by the textile industry. It can be pressed for oil, or, as Kristen uses it, as a food supplement for cattle. Hence the large amounts of bags of cottonseed against the wall there, waiting to be taken out to feed Kristen's girls. Here's a great (and rare) shot of the three of us a little later that day, out at the working pens.
Meanwhile, back at home our spring garden vegetables were busy growing! We got everything planted right at the end of March - here's what everything looked like about 3 weeks later, right about the middle of April.
Our tomatoes really took off! I was really happy the way my custom cages worked out, I feel like they provided a lot more support than the usual ones we bought before. And another 2 short weeks later - the growth on these plants was phenomenal, especially the tomatoes! Here's our non-tomato bed:
And the tomato bed - look out!
We really did have a wonderfully cool spring. We even had a light freeze, right in the middle of April - completely unheard of! Fortunately, I had a lot of training over the winter with how to cover these raised beds to keep the plants alive. Another great benefit of the raised bed in general, and the design I used in particular. Here's our tomato garden all covered up and happy:
As quite a few of you know, I love to have at least a few projects going on at any given time, something to hone my handyman skills on (and hopefully use at least one power tool). I tackled framing our bathroom mirror as a home project this month. This was a fun one that wasn't too hard and turned out pretty well. First, our large, blank bathroom mirror:
I assembled a fairly large array of clamps next. Why, you ask? Just wait.
To frame the mirror I bought baseboard in a pattern that Kristen and I liked, painted it the trim color, then cut to length and mitered the ends. Pro Tip: It's worth checking the 45° stops on your miter saw to see that they are actually set at 45°, both initially and after heavy use. Mine weren't - learned that one the hard way on this project. After my geometric fun, I literally glued the cut sections to the front of the mirror, creating a frame around it and hiding the edges of the mirror. The hard part of this project was gluing the pieces to the mirror - they had to be braced in place, or they would slowly slide downwards and then dry in the wrong place. How to fix this? The large amount of clamps you just saw. Check this out - that's right, I'm using clamps in reverse to push against more clamps clamped to the countertop!! Bwahahaha!!
Once the bottom piece was clamped right, I got the other 3 up as fast as possible and then braced them with my homemade 2x4 bracket. This actually worked really well.
And the final result - looks pretty sharp!
April also marked the time the wildflowers in our part of Texas really hit their stride. As most of you know, they're usually very good out at my Mom's place in Brenham, and this year was no exception. Kristen's sister Amy made plans to take her two boys out to my Mom's farm to take pictures in the flowers, and we were planning on meeting there so we could get photos of Liam as well. At this point I don't really remember why, but we ended up getting taken surprise by Amy's visit, so Kristen and I didn't really look our best (more me than Kristen, she always looks awesome). But we still ended up with some great photos, particularly of Liam. Here are just a few of my favorites.
The last big thing in April for us was Easter - it was super late this year, April 20th. We took the quick drive over to my Mom's farm in Brenham and did some Easter egg hunting! My brother Tim and his now wife Jennie also made a surprise visit, driving up from Houston - it was great for us all to meet her!
That about wraps it up for April - all in all a great month! Stay tuned for more updates, hopefully I'll keep on this good roll. Last post I mentioned working in the country - turns out I jumped the gun, the real work is coming next post.
Ok, wow. Opening up our blog for the first time in a while, I see that it's been over 6 months since I last posted anything. So much for getting better about posting more often. I think I'm just going to have to start writing in posts in sections at night after Liam goes to bed (which is what I'm doing this instant). I love that kid to death, but he's not too keen on me sitting on my computer and not doing something fun with him. I digress. There is a ton of stuff to catch up on since early March. I haven't been too good about taking photos with my nice camera, but I have captured a lot of moments with my phone camera. I started looking through my archive of phone pics to get a sense of what all happened in our lives here since then, and I was right, there was a lot. I was going to break it into sections and have a blog post dedicated to each theme, but that seems too ambitious for my recent track record, so I'm just going to go month by month and hit the highlights. So, let's go back to:
March 2014
The first big news of the month was that Kristen and I decided to get Liam a pet rabbit for Easter (a bit early, as Easter was super late this year). Kristen decided on a Mini Rex for the breed and found a local breeder who raises these little guys. The verdict? Adorable.
Liam decided to name him Rex (naturally), which we quickly familiarized to Rexie. He was pretty tiny, and pretty much stayed that way - I think he only weighs 3-4 pounds even now. Here's another heart-melting shot.
Rexie has been a pretty fun addition to our little family. Kristen had had some rabbits growing up, but they were raised for showing and never really interacted with as pets, and I have no real experience with them. So we were both a bit surprised by how much personality this little guy has. One of the funniest things about him? Zero fear of our other animals, and in fact, inspires terror in Chloe, who pretty much rules over every other animal here with an iron paw.
Kristen, Liam and I also took a trip to the Houston Livestock Show that month, and had a ball. Liam loved all the farm equipment they had there, of course. A few of many, many photos:
A rare shot of all three of us together:
And the always super fun pony ride. This might have been his first ever? Kristen would know for sure.
Speaking of firsts for Liam involving horses, here's a random one from just a few weeks later of him sitting bareback on Kristen's old ranch horse, Lucky. He was super sweet and let Liam stay up there just fine, and even though Liam was a little nervous he was still a brave man.
We were lucky enough to have a nice prolonged, cool spring, but towards the end of the month we figured it was getting warm enough to start planting our second annual spring vegetable garden! We keep a compost pile going all year, and by this time it was looking just about perfect. With the help of my right hand man, we emptied about half the compost and started mixing it in to the garden dirt. Look how pretty and black it is!
Anyone who wants a good workout should skip the gym and just mix a few wheelbarrow loads of compost into a raised bed garden. Seriously. And now, the victory pose:
And the horticultural genius behind our botanical bonanza, planting our new generation of tomatoes!
We learned a bit from last year's initial garden, and spaced these tomatoes out quite a bit more than last time - 1 full square foot per plant. I also decided to make some home grown tomato cages instead of the usual store bought ones - I took 2"x4" rectangle wire fencing and just made a circle out of it. This worked great, because I could make the diameter whatever I wanted by how long I cut the fencing, and the wire spacing was just big enough to squeeze a hand in but keep most varmints (and our dogs) out.
For our second spring garden we now had 2 raised beds, so we could really go a bit crazy. The one shown above was basically all tomatoes - we planted a cherry variety, a sun gold-type variety (cherry but they get golden, not red), a handful of various big beefy types, and our favorite heirloom we tried last year, Cherokee Purple. Our other raised bed got more variety: yellow crook necked squash, zucchini, patty pan squash, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, and maybe something else I can't remember right now. Ah yes, okra, how could I forget? More about that later. The last big thing that happened in March was that our little family packed up and took an overnight trip to go visit my brother Jake and his family in San Antonio. Liam's cousin Eli had just had just turned 3 a few days prior to our visit, so we brought our gift for him - a nice new sandbox I made for him, same design I made for Liam the year before. He seemed to really like it!
We had a good, relaxing, low-key visit, just some good time to hang out. I remember a nice little cold spell blew in and we had to bundle up a little, which I always love. Here's one of the boys enjoying a nice morning story.
Then all the boys went outside to enjoy the weather and just have fun. Here's a great video and some awesome photos. It was really cool to see Liam and Eli together now that they're finally old enough to actually play with one another, instead of just around each other.
I think that about wraps up March (at least from what I have in my photos folder). I'm going to try and keep on this roll and get more posted for the rest of the year - there's definitely a ton to catch up on! Next up, we put on our boots and big boy pants and get to workin in the country...
Wow it's been a while since I last posted something, just at 5 months. That just happens to be about the length of time we've had our fall/winter garden going, so I thought I'd share how that went for us.
Kristen and I decided we wanted to keep our gardening going through the fall and winter after the success of our spring/summer garden. Neither of us had ever planted cold weather plants before, so we were pretty excited to see how this would go. By the time we got our plan together and found some plants we wanted to try it was mid October. It hadn't gotten very cold here yet and we actually still had a few tomato plants still hanging on, so I built another raised bed to use. Having built the first one already, this one only took a few hours to knock out (and then we'd have two for the spring!). I went and got the dirt for our new bed (mix of top soil and compost) with my truck - I know none of you are used to seeing my truck, but believe me - she's weighed down to the max here!
It was a cubic yard of soil that pretty much completely filled my bed. The back end was a good foot lower than usual and the springs were basically fully compressed. I filled the bed a wheelbarrow load at a time (again, forget the gym, just build a garden) and went with the same basic design I used before:
The finished bed was ready to go, with twine marking out 1 foot squares and the PVC hoops you see ready to hold bird netting or frost blankets if it got really cold - I had no idea at the time how much I'd need that protection! Kristen pulled her usual magic in getting a plan together for planting and finding some excellent starter plants for us to transplant into our garden. By the time we got to planting it was October 22 - it was cooler in the mornings by that time but still warm in the middle of the day, and we hadn't had our first really cold snap yet.
After a solid weekend of planting we had our initial baby winter garden going! Here's a shot a few days after planting:
It's a bit hard to describe what's what because we decided to plant like plants in a zig zag pattern, interspersing the ones that will get large with smaller ones (lessons from our spring garden). But here goes. On the left side of the garden above, we have: something in the onion family (I'm convinced their green onions, Kristen thinks small bulb onions), broccoli in the upper left section, cauliflower in the lower middle section, and carrots in between (the leafy looking ones). On the right side of the garden above, we have: brussel sprouts (or what we thought were brussel sprouts, more on that), red Swiss chard (you can see the red-pink stems), baby spinach at the bottom, and Buttercrunch lettuce on the right (a leaf lettuce variety).
We had our first big lesson in the difference between warm and cold weather plants about a week later. Our first big cold snap of the season hit, driving the night temperatures down into the lower 40's, with the day temperatures no higher than the upper 50's / lower 60's. Our tomatoes instantly deflated, but our winter garden plants all took off! Prior to this they had just been kind of sitting there - not failing, but not flourishing. As soon as it got really cold, everything started growing like crazy!
Here is the garden 15 days after the photos above:
And another 18 days:
And another 14 days:
In the interest of saving time and not boring everyone to death, I'll fast forward 2 months to mid-February:
I think we had a pretty successful run overall. It turns out that all these plants love the cold - if you can just keep them from freezing, they're fine otherwise. And that turned out to be quite the chore this winter - I lost track of how many times I had to trudge out there in freezing rain to put my frost blankets on the garden. Those PVC hoops paid for themselves many times over! But it was worth it - we had some great harvests from this one. Everything turned out really well, but the real stars for me were the Buttercrunch lettuce and the Swiss chard. As I mentioned earlier, Buttercrunch is a leaf lettuce variety (as opposed to a head variety like Romaine) - once the plant got established after a few weeks, I would go out and pluck 5-6 leaves off the outside ring from each plant, and without affecting the individual plants much at all, would end up with a salad for us like this:
The Swiss chard was equally bountiful - just run out, pluck a few stems off each plant, and suddenly you've got greens for dinner! Kristen just rough chopped them up (stems too), sauteed them in olive oil with salt and pepper, and maybe some garlic - delicious.
We had really good luck with the broccoli and cauliflower as well. They took a little while to really get going, but by the end of the season we had some really nice heads of those to harvest. Here are two main broccoli stalks just before Kristen turned them into ginger chicken and broccoli:
Liam was a great helper throughout the season, always wanting to help with whatever we were doing with the garden. He got especially excited any time it was ready to harvest something - this is one of my favorite photos of him right after we cut our first big cauliflower:
If anyone ever wondered what happens if you don't harvest cauliflower in time and just leave it on the plant, we found out. It goes from a nice domed head to something out of an early Star Trek episode:
So there's a quick overview of how our fall/winter garden went, a first for our family. I also took my nice camera out here and there during the growing season to capture some cool photos. If you'll permit me to get all artsy on you, here are some of my favorites.
