garden

Saturday

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It’s Saturday and that means farmers’ market.  There is a nice pictorial over on I Hate My Developer.  It is accurate for us as well since she apparently walks the same route we do.  Today’s bounty included some peaches and some hot peppers for some homemade salsa we are going to make.  They let us try several peppers and find the ones that were the perfect heat.  Unfortunately, many of the booths seem to be missing this time.  I’m not sure what the deal with the inconsistency is, but I guess it is the first year after all.  And we always find something to buy!

Of course that also means a trip to the garden.  I think our garden is running out of steam a little bit, and none too soon!  Oh the food we’ve gotten out of it this year!  We have tomatoes like mad but we are busily eating them on everything from fresh salsa, to pizza, to sandwiches, to homemade marinara sauce.  We got tons and tons of beans, so much so that we ended up throwing some away.  We didn’t want to but we just couldn’t get to them in time.  We also have 4 more squash to deal with, and another on the way.  So the garden was an unqualified success!  We are already plotting for next year (pun intended).

Finally, since it was my first free Saturday in like months, I finally tackled a problem that has plagued us since the dawn of time…a bad ceiling fan remote!  The ceiling fan in our bedroom doesn’t have any strings, so if you want to turn the fan off and on, you have to use the remote.  This usually means a 10 minute dance around the bedroom waving the remote around like a magic wand and mashing on the button a million times.  The dance finally ends with me standing on the bed pressing the remote against the fan base and then trying to withdraw my hand fast before the blades start.  Even this had been working less and less lately until we gave up on it altogether.

So today I decided to swap the receiving unit from the living room fan because it not only works, but we never use it and also the fan has strings making the remote unnecessary.  Sara was not behind the project since it was an ordeal the first time, but I persisted.  It actually went really well.  I had the remote out of the old fan and had it rewired in like 10 minutes.  Then on to our room which took a little longer only because I clipped off like 2 feet of extra wire, which is partially what made it take so long last time.  It was tough fitting the remote sending unit and all of that wire up there before!  But here’s the thing!  I discovered that the remote receiving unit and the remote itself were set to different frequencies!!  I don’t know why it worked at all, even though the codes were very similar.  So, surprise surprise, when I put it on the right code, it seemed to work much better!  So, consequently, I put it all back together without using the remote unit from the living room.  I didn’t put it back in the other fan though, just in case.  I can’t believe all of the headache that thing has caused me and all because I put the stupid switches in the wrong position.

Oh well, what’s done is done.

City Rodents

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When you live in the country you have to worry about pests like rabbits and raccoons that ruin your garden.  You have to assume you are going to lose X percent of your crops to these nuisances.  In the city we also have rodents, but they walk on two legs.

We lost about half (~10 ears) of our corn and a decent number of tomatoes.  It’s not that I didn’t expect there to be poachers, and its not like we don’t have tons of food from the garden, but it is a little disappointing to weed and water and watch a plant grow from a seed and see it fruiting and then finally after all of that go to enjoy the fruits of your labor (no pun intended) and find it missing.

Starting to pay off

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The time we spent getting the garden ready is really starting to pay off

tomatoes the size of your head

tomatoes the size of your head

Now here’s the ironic thing.  We have delicious fresh tomatoes and green onions from our garden and we use them to make…nachos!

The irony is delicious.  Literally.

Ma Ma

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Well, the day has finally arrived, just over 10 months in the making and Evie finally said “Ma ma”.  (Well, more like “mamamamama”)  It’s funny because on T.V. and cartoons and stuff, that is always the baby’s first word.  Anyway, Evie has been pretty sick all weekend and she has been extra-extra-clingy to Sara.  I was trying to entertain her while Sara was busy but she really wanted her mommy.  And finally she said it!  It is also weird because it is the first time she’s ever made the sound and yet she meant it.  Contrast that with “Da da” which she was saying for months without really meaning anything.

In garden update news, holy cow weeds.  They just grow like crazy!!  It seems like a never ending job but I swear all the other gardens around us never have any!  Ours is like weed heaven.  Last week we weeded 4 times and never spent less than an hour and a half at it.  But the good news is, our “crops” are growing as fast as the weeds.  Well, the carrots are a little iffy, but everything else is good.

Speaking of garden-based updates, the farmers’ market is really taking off.  I previously reported that it was sort of lackluster but we’ve been back every week since and it gets better every time.  There are more booths now offering more things and they’re not sold out by the time we get there.  We’ve tasted fresh salsa, admired the fresh cut peonies, investigated the spinach, asparagus and mushrooms, bought organic Amish bread, considered the lamb and we’ve never been able to avoid buying something from the organic baker.  There is even a drummer now for entertainment.  All in all, much improved and much recommended!

Finally, a condo based update.  We bought like a big hutch thing to contain, among other things, our china.  So we can finally get all of those boxes out of the closet and unpack them for the first time (although it was convenient for moving that they were still all packed up).  Also, we finally put up some tie backs for the curtains in there so we can let some light in.

And now also I suppose I have a blog update ::publish::