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.
