Now on 2 Wheels!

The best method was taking off the pedals. Today we put them back on and here’s what happened:

HELL YEAH.

Victory is near…

A WHILE AGO:

A LITTLE BIT AGO:

TODAY:

This is the Atlantic Giant Pumpkin that has overgrown the garden:

I put two in there “just to see what happens”, and it took off running. If all the gourds that have appeared turn into pumpkins, I will be hooking peeps up with jack o’ lanterns galore. Also need to check on some recipe for ‘fried pumpkin flowers’.

They Live, zucchini version:

Cauliflower finally shows up. This is one of 5:

Here is the newest bed with (in the distance) bush beans, and some newly planted stringless pea seeds. I have one last section for some new plantings in 2 weeks or so. The bench planter just got a fresh planting of carrots. The other side holds the last of the lettuce that hasn’t bolted yet. The foreground is 3 squash hills that seem to be doing aok.

Strawberries in the front have already yielded fruit, but more to come!

No Pics

The Gardens are looking great, but I’m too tired to take pictures! Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Planted 2 Better Bush tomatoes in the front yard. I did these varieties 2 years back in containers on our old deck, and they went crazy! Tons of tomatoes, and fast.

Ripped out the existing ‘flower/weed’ bed in the front yard and put in hydrangeas and wildflowers.

Cleaned out around “Hole”, our giant sequoia tree seedling we picked up a few years back in NoCal. Weeds were trying to choke him out after his transplant last Fall. Hole is now over a foot tall, and the same wide. Weird.

Built a gate from front yard to back yard. Built a gate and arbor from backyard to parking area in the back. These gates make the backyard look like, well, a backyard.

The red oak lettuce we planted in the half-whiskey barrel is GOING INSANE! Salad every night, give it away, it keeps coming. The cabbages next to it are also getting quite huge. My little nephew was over munching on all of it, and his mom said that was the most vegetables she’d ever seen him eat. I guess they’re about to plant to sustain his new found likeness of vegetation.

Strawberries in front yard are bearing fruit! 2 red berries, and a bunch of budding fruits right now. I can almost taste the buggers. Whoever the jackass was that said they would never grow in a planter box so close together is not getting any of these red beauts.

In the backyard garden, I have now 4 cherry tomato plants, 5 cauliflower, 2 zucchini, 2 pumpkin, and even more lettuces scattered throughout. The cherry toms are already in cages, loving these sunny days. Cauliflower are getting huge…wonder if they’ll give me anything. They were pretty much a ‘toss it in the ground and see what happens’ kinda deal. Pumpkins are also going off.

I also put in two 8×2 foot planters. One has 3 hills with summer squash seed, the other has the first planting of bush beans. I’m going to do 3 plantings of bush beans to see if I can make something happen.

I also have Hops (Centennial and Tettnanger) to figure out where to put in. I’m thinking along the fenceline.

Pics soon!

V is for VICTORY

Been busy around here. Had an awesome flood of sewage in our basement, which the City of Tac is reimbursing me for (whew). Here’s the start of our gardening projects:

Front porch herb garden. Rosemary up top, with cilantro and dill down one step. The other two planters are for whatever we bring home next time. The Rosemary is growing crazy fast.

Strawberries in the front yard. All are blooming, but the pic is all washed out. This is why I serve beer and am not a design dood with mad photoshop skills.

Well look how hippie-dippie we are! Made this out of fence-posts and wood that was left when we bought the house. The posts were actually still in the ground with no fence. I bought the cedar board on top for a buck, and a can of paint. Everything else was found here. Works like a charm.

The raised bed. This was a carport, now a “parking area”. We built a wall with concrete blocks, tilled up the inside, and filled it in. 26 feet long, 3 feet wide, and about 20 inches thick of fresh mushroom/chicken manure/soil mix to fill it. The tomato and squash starts are acclimating in the garage for transplanting. The blocks were put in so the “holes” will be small planters as well. This is 3 feet off the ground so I can work it without bitching about my gimp back hurting. Damn we crafty…

Red oak leaf lettuce is going off like crazy! Daisy in the middle is doing grand.

Cabbages, chives, and a ton of onions all at different depths just to see what happens. Daisy in the middle is NOT doing grand.

Apple trees and beans on the way. Might be doing a parking strip garden as well with cherry toms. We are so urban it hurts!!!

Cleaning the Alleyway: $37.50 and 2 hours

Having a clean alleyway again: priceless

Today me and the wife picked up a total of 660 pounds of others people bullshit, but at least we have a clean alley again.

Mattresses run $11 flat rate for those who need to know at the Tacoma landfill over by Home Depot on Center. Apparently the people who live behind us didn’t know, since this mattress has been outside for 2 months now…but I’ll just consider it a neighborly gift. The alleyway is NICE now.

Please people…just give a shit, and life will be easier for all of us.

Almost an inch…

…and falling fast here on the south side of Hilltop. Crystally light snowflakes that make for tight-packed snowballs that HURT.

Pierce County Absentee?

Some of us voted days ago…

I have been, and always will be, an absentee voter. My wife is, and will always be, a poll voter. Her polling place had a 30 minute wait at 9:30am this morning. She said she has never waited in line to vote. I hope this election decision has a positive outcome. We’ve seen tons of lines to vote here in Tacoma while out and about. That’s pretty positive in itself.

CHEESE, MOUSE, CAT…Stadium Halloween

On Halloween, the fam went as The Big Cheese, a mouse, and a cat.

Yes. We are indeed adorable. We headed out to Stadium District’s Street of Treats event with Pat from the mighty King’s Books and his daughter. Here’s some shots I fooled around with while the kids were loading up on huge amounts of candy:

Dry Wright Park

On Monday, we picked up the kid at school, and seeing how the forecast called for nothing but upcoming rain, we shot over to Wright Park. Here’s a few shots on a killer sunny Fall day:

Tons of people were out, and the park was looking nicer than ever. Back to home improvement…

Basement and Fence stuffs…

This weekend, amidst seven-hundred and thirty-four other home projects going, I took some time to clear out the basement. Our basement has become a catch-all for where-do-we-put-it junk, and I wanted that remedied. I need room for brewing, rocking, drinking, and laundry-ing. First up was to go thru it all, then junk what we didn’t need, then organize. I am proud to say that not only did I clean it all, I set up Tacoma’s Best Record Collection™ for my forlorn ears to be nurtured by:

That’s as far as I got, but it is a huge accomplishment. The rocking area is out of frame, as well as my brewing area. Pics to follow.

When I was screwing around, me and the wife decided to build a fence for our fierce guard beast, as well as keep out the roving gangs of whoevers. The last owners actually removed their fence but left the posts, so instead of cutting them out and adding new ones, we just re-used theirs. Problem is, in my perfectionist carpenter’s mind, the posts were not all equal distances apart, nor we they as straight as I like. I think we came up with a nice staggered design using what we had to work with, tiny gate and all:

The gaps are larger then the picture shows, but whatev. We didn’t continue the fence down the side because we actually like our neighbors, and talk to them at the fence regularly. The ‘gate’ on the end is more hidden on the front side of the fence, but I don’t have that picture. I need to trim the post tops and add our fancy post caps, then build a gate on the other side of the house.

Next up: raised planter beds, more basement mayhem, garage door a-go-go, upstairs bathroom finishing, and tons of other homeownery crap!