A peak at the weekend

It was a very full but very fun weekend. It seemed as though I was able to fit in a bit of everything. One of the bigger "bits" was a collaborative home improvement project with the husband. I will share more later (we aren't quite done yet), but for now the picture above is a little preview. Every now and then Mondays are a welcome return to routine for me, today is one of those Mondays, I hope your week is off to a great start!

PS - Welcome February, you are usually kind of a grey month here in WA, could you maybe spare a bit of sunshine for us?

Ahhh Color!

I was drawn in by the gorgeous color of these primroses!
Sure we've been having a bit of a pseudo spring lately here in the Pacific Northwest...but that doesn't mean that my color cravings are being met. I can't wait to get these in the ground in front of our house. A little bit of color goes a long way right now.

Have a fantastic weekend, it is going to be a busy (but fun) one around here!

Seedy

Territorial Seed Company is the supplier of our seeds this year...they are a family run company from Oregon whose focus is on seeds that grow in the Pacific Northwest.

I still may pick up another packet or so, corn and possibly cucumbers. There are also seed potatoes and onion starts to be picked up. But for now I'm all set up with the following:

Sweet Red Peppers

Easter Egg Radishes

Brandywine Heirloom Tomatoes

Heinz Sauce/Slicing Tomatoes

Sweet Basil

Mokum Carrots

Brussels Sprouts

Black Beauty Zucchini

Broccoli

Small Sugar Pumpkins

Eggplant

Butterhead Lettuce

Sugar Snap Peas

....

A Morning Off

I have felt a bit quiet in this space for the last couple of days. This morning I was thinking about why that was and honestly it's because I have been busy with life's tasks, there hasn't been a ton of time for creativity or reflection. It hasn't felt like there's been much to share. The fact that I even came to this conclusion was probably because I took the morning off. No work, no substitute jobs, no Zumba. Instead, I spent more time than normal putzing around outside with the chickens, watching the sun come up, playing a bit with Bam in the yard, and then making a nice breakfast for myself and the husband - red potatoes with onion and green pepper, eggs (from our hens of course!), and thick sliced bacon from our town's meat shop - yum!

Then it was off for some fun errands. My first visit to a small but wonderfully stocked and priced antique mall (I left with a few small treasures), then to a Food Co-op to pick out this summer's vegetable seeds - I can't wait to share what I picked out and even more I can't wait to get started with planting, our mild temperatures lately are giving me spring fever. I also hit up Joanne fabrics with my 50% off coupon to finally get an OLFA self-healing rotary cutting mat as well as quilt batting for the master bedroom quilt I want to soon start. There was a quick stop for lunch - tacos and then over to Costco. We went in for ground cover fabric, it's needed to line the new raised beds that are going in. While in Costco, I also checked out their selection of office chairs - I've been dealing with some neck/back/shoulder/hip pain lately, I think it's been a combination of the constant Zumba-ing and other working out, and sitting at my desk in a horribly unsupportive chair, working for hours.

I think life gets that way sometimes, the things you feel like you *have* to do can make your neck/back/shoulder/hip/etc. hurt. Sometimes it's nice to stop doing the things you have to do and go get a new chair instead. It also didn't hurt that buying vegetable seeds made me excited for spring to come or that getting set up with the cutting mat is making me excited to start my dream quilt. The morning I just had left me quite re-energized!

I hope your day is filled with things that take the pressure off rather than adding to it! Happy Thursday!

Sunny Tuesday

Happy Tuesday!

I'll be spending the day substituting in a kindergarten classroom,

should be fun, or at least interesting!

5 New Fruit Trees

I spent my Monday morning doing some yardwork. I finished doing some weeding and edging on the flower beds on the front and side of our house...the ground is soft because of all of the rain we've had, so both tasks were very easy. I also spent sometime in the orchard, driving stakes into the ground so I could train down the branches of our fruit trees. I went to a seminar about orchard maintenance about a year ago at a local Country Living Expo. The gentleman who taught the seminar is an expert with fruit trees and he explained that branches that are horizontal product more fruit than branches which grow vertically. It has to do with the way that the tree sends sap into it's limbs and blossoms. It is easiest to train the branches to grow horizontally when the tree is young and the branches have not yet hardened. The trees in our orchard are young, so we are focusing more on training them than on pruning. It was a great workshop, I'm hoping to take it again this winter.So Saturday we went to a local nursery and picked out five new fruit trees:

Sweet Heart Cherry and a Variety Cherry (it has four varieties grafted to it),

Red Nectarine, Nijiseiki Pear, and Jonagold Apple.

At the nursery the trees are in sawdust, so they come home bare rooted.

We haven't been overly particular about the spacing of the trees in our orchard, but they do all have a 15' to 20' radius around them...it's been easier to make this kind of space for our newer trees because the husband has removed several junk trees (alders). The alders had been a problem from the start, they shaded the orchard from sunlight, took over the soil with their roots, and were the source of pests and disease that have harmed our trees.
Having the excavator on our tractor makes it much easier to put the trees in the ground. Before we had the tractor it used to take a while to dig holes big enough for the root balls. The process is much quicker now.

In some areas our soil is very clay-like, so for new trees it is helpful to mix in some of the soil used in the raised beds in the vegetable garden. I even mixed in a bit of chicken manure to as fertilizer - the manure was a few months old. Fresh manure is hot and could burn the tree's roots.

Just as we were putting the last tree into the ground it began to rain.

But then of course part of the sky cleared to let the sun through and I caught this picture of the rainbow...kind of a nice sign for our new trees.

House of Chicken

As promised, here a look at our new and improved chicken area.

The netting came from the Fisherman's Terminal in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. Friends of our recommended going there to find it. To our plesant suprise it didn't cost us anything but time and the gas we used to drive there. It is used netting, so it had a bit of an odor - sort of a light fishy, salty, mildew kind of smell. Considering it is being used outside, the smell really hasn't been any issue, it was just a mistake to take our Jeep to pick up the netting rather than the pickup truck.

The hens have been enjoying themselves, flying around in their new area and perching on their coop. It took a day or so for them to adjust, but they seem to be pretty happy.

We ended up using some pvc drain pipe that the husband had left over from an old project to hold up the netting, otherwise I would have to crouch down when retrieving eggs.

I think the way the pipe and fence posts raise the nets gives them a bit of a circus tent appearance. Between the wire and the fence posts, this project cost us about $200...So you can understand why I was happy to get the netting for free.

I was more than just a bit upset at the hawk that killed my hens and forced this little renovation upon us. Though I am relieved that my birds are going to be safer now, I have not worried about them since we moved them. It is also nice to not have to let them out of their tractor in the morning and close them in at night. The new area allows for a more low maintenance flock, this will be nice for us when we travel, our chicken sitter will only really have to collect eggs and monitor food and water levels.