ducks!

the hardest parts are done!

When it wasn't raining, the weather over the weekend was beautiful, and we took advantage of it and got quite a bit accomplished. Neil put all the strings up on the trellis so I could get the tomato seedlings in the ground.  

It's still chilly out at night, and we're not quite past our last freeze date, so I put little makeshift greenhouses over each seedling. I pushed the soil up around them and they steamed right up, and have kept the little plants plenty warm through a couple of light frosts now.

Sparky has learned to bury his bones now. He used to do a half-assed job of it by kinda sticking one between a couple of couch cushions, but he has moved on to outdoor burying!  It started in the straw... (bet you can't tell where he hid it!)

but quickly progressed to dirt. We didn't actually SEE him bury one in the dirt, but the evidence is strong.

Let's see... Neil worked on irrigation, his favorite! He got water to all the boxes and the automatic timer set up, so we can leave for a couple of days and not worry about the garden melting. 

And I worked on getting everything in the ground. All the seedlings that I had started indoors and had sprouted are now in the ground (not just the tomatoes, but the peppers and herbs too!), and the seeds that had to be planted directly in the ground are in now as well. 

I love old things. And boxes. And jars. And carts, things with wheels. Baskets, and dirt! So planting involves many things I love... my seed box is an old wooden delivery box, filled with jars of seeds. I brought them outside while I worked, and set it all up on my cart along with reference gardening books, tools, and dog bones. The sound of seeds rattling against the glass when I push the cart makes me want to create reasons to move it around, so I can hear it again.

Anyway, Neil also got the trellis for the grapes built and installed - it looks great! All that's left to do on that is tighten up the wire supports, but he needs to let the concrete footings for the posts dry first. 

While he did that, I took pictures of stuff.  Look, sunflowers!

And geraniums! I love all the bright colors geraniums come in. They always remind me of spring.

Another tiring weekend!  Oh, check out my awesome hat! Neil made me that the other night.

I made him one too.  Unfortunately this is the only photo I got of him wearing it, and it's a shot of him through the window doing the dishes. So it's not a great picture, but trust me, it's really really nice.

I guess that's about it. We got just about all the hard prep work done, and now it's just waiting for things to grow for awhile. I'll end with a pretty good overall view of the farm!

Our Wedding Valentine's Day Six Month Anniversary Quick Trip!

We went to Santa Barbara for Valentine's Day! We just stayed overnight - it's not a very far drive so it's a great weekend getaway.  We got up early on Saturday, packed up the car and the dog, and got on our way.

Neil forgot his wedding ring, so we had to go back for it. This is Neil getting back in the car! He says not everyone can pull off a badass motorcycle shirt and plaid shorts the way he can.
So, we got back on the road and made our way up to Santa Barbara. It was too early to check in, so we stopped at a little roadside market and got some food for brunch. They had little fresh-baked pies that looked too good to pass up, so we bought the blackberry rhubarb. Unfortunately the only utensils they had were chopsticks. And while Neil doubted my chopstick-pie-eating abilities at first, it didn't take him long to steal my technique.

 No shame...!

Then we explored a little bit... we walked around looking at some of the cool old adobe buildings, and made our way to State Street to look at the neat shops.   Oh, and look at Neil's glorious beard!!!

So then we decided to ride bikes (Carmen lent me hers... thank you!!). With Sparky. Now, while we think our dog is pretty awesome, we know he's not very bave and new things freak him out. You'd think that knowing this, we would have maybe practiced bike riding with the dog beforehand, but we're not really like that. We like to learn the hard way, from experience!

So we rode out to the pier, and almost died a lot because Sparky kept running in front of the bikes and stopping. He was terrified of the bikes and developed a new sideways walk, and we ended up finding a park and sitting by the much less stressful koi pond for a little while until we could check in.

We stayed at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort, and we had a beautiful room with a great patio and ocean view.

We spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening on our balcony, enjoying the sunset with wine, cheese and pistachios. Room service for dinner!

I watched the sun rise the next morning, then we checked out and headed back to State Street to do more window shopping and get coffee. Neil bought me an awesome coat at one of the resale shops :) 

The dog beach was next! We took Sparks to the beach, let him off his leash, and he had the best time chasing all the other dogs and getting filthy and wet. We spent our time collecting and skipping rocks.

After the beach, we were all tired and ready to go home. The drive home was just a little foggy, and all the recent rain has made everything so green, so it was a really nice drive back down the coast.

We had a really fun time, and can't wait to go back!

Please!

Movin' Right Along

I'm really loving living in LA. When I first moved here, I wasn't so sure... it's very different from new and shiny Las Vegas, and even Orange County. Things here are old and close together, and there are a lot of people. But I've quickly grown to love it - the climate is great, the people for the most part are laid back and nice. I know my neighbors, am getting to know my neighborhood, and I'm comfortably settling into a much slower paced life.

We did a lot this weekend, and we're both sore! With each new task, I seem to discover some new muscle I didn't know I had, and didn't know could hurt so bad!

We've been wanting to get a tow hitch put on our SUV for awhile now, so we don't tear up the inside of the car so badly with all the stuff we haul around, and also to increase our hauling capacity, so we got one put on last week. Neil likes to wield it with his angry face on.

And while we were at the shop getting that done, we were talking about how we'd be keeping an eye on Craig's List for an inexpensive trailer, and another customer there was wanting to sell his trailer. We met up with him and it turned out to be a great trailer for an even greater price, so we are now the proud owners of a trailer and the means to haul it. It's our first farm equipment!

So, trailer in tow, we picked up the lumber we needed for the trellises for the vining plants, and spent Sunday afternoon building them. Neil swore a lot, but they ended up looking great! We're planning to grow all our vining vegetables up strings on these trellises, so we can grow them closer together and take advantage of more vertical space.

And you can see the straw we put down between the raised beds to keep the dirt down. Eventually we'd like woodchips, but they seem more permanent so we want to make sure all the boxes are where we want them before doing something like that.

Sparky mostly got in the way a lot.

Our seedlings are all sprouting and doing really well, and several varieties are getting their first real sets of leaves. I spent some time thinning out the seedlings and repotting the ones I could, and I also started a bunch of marigold and nasturtium seeds to hopefully help deter some pests.

The tomatillos sprouted, which I planted later than everything else. We planted them specifically for Cali so she could make us her homemade chile verde with homegrown tomatillos! The peas are growing like crazy, and reaching out their little tendrils looking for support.

As we've been digging up the yard, we keep finding "treasures" buried in the ground. Our landlady's dad used to live in this house, and from what I understand, he did a lot of welding, and we keep finding strange pieces of metal and other things. My favorite is the little army guy whose limbs and head were forcibly removed from his body.

Our landlady, Beth, is great, by the way! And I'm not just saying that because she might be reading this. She's quick to respond and fix things, and doesn't mind our garden experiments.

We also made some plant markers with some scrap wood...

and observed how fat our animals are becoming.

Oh, and this is Hamilton. He was feeling left out of the blog.

It was another beautiful, productive weekend!

Distractions

I'm so glad we started this big, challenging garden project - it has become my happy place that I can focus on when I want a nice distraction. My grandma Quete died last week after a long illness, and my mom told me when her grandma died, she stayed home and watered the lawn instead of going to the funeral, that was the way she needed to grieve, and I understand perfectly.

So over the weekend we worked more on the garden. While Neil built the boxes for the squash and corn, I worked on leveling the ground they'll rest on, and the pathways around them. I hoed and shoveled, and put those awesome leveling skills to use that my dad taught me a couple of years ago when we did our backyard in Vegas. I told Neil he had to get a picture of me doing manual labor so it wouldn't look like he does all the actual work, and I even showed him where the camera was, but he failed. So you'll have to take my word for it!

And now, I'm off to Vegas for work, while Neil holds down the farm :)