Good day

Today is setting up to be a very good day. The last few weeks at The Company have been an experiment in focus and behavioral modification -- care less, do more. It's beginning to pay off as I am returning to the center of action without any tangential antagonism. Today a conversation with the Boss Man left me feeling empowered and appreciated. Also, my directs were supportive of my plans, which in this environment has been an ongoing challenge. Also, folks really love my charts and data visualizations -- adoption rates are increasing and productivity is, at least on paper, getting better. The phrase "better living through reporting" has been circulating. Love it!

To top the workday positive changes, I'm buying a new-to-me truck today. Pictures to follow, of course. It's a red 2002 Ford Ranger. Quincy and I decided that the new house expenses squashed the hopes of a new Toyota Tacoma, so we went for the inexpensive, reliable, frill-free used Ranger option. The pickup will come in extra handy in the Biggest Move Ever coming up in a couple of weeks.

And really, we're moving into our dream home. We spend a good part of last night pouring over graph paper sketches, trying to fit couches in rooms and fences in the yard. So much fun. We close on July 2nd; we have July 3rd off from work; we scheduled the movers to come to 906 on July 11th. I'm picking up boxes from coworkers this weekend and next week -- with my new truck.

As for the drop-in buyers of 906, that's all still pending. There has been considerable interest, but I think I might end up listing with an agent once we move. If that fails, renting is still a very viable option -- especially for just a year or 18 months. Worst case, we'll rent and rescue some of our plants to the new place as the front yard fills in more and more.

I went for a run yesterday. Only 2.5 miles of run/walk, but it really raised my spirits. First real outdoors exercise in a while. Considering Seattle just tied the all-time record for consecutive days with no rain (in May-June) at 29-days, it's hard to believe I haven't been running more.

But we have been eating well. Our garden has produced an outstanding amount of snap peas, which are just as good as a snack as they are in a stir fry. We've probably eaten three pounds in total, with many, many more on the vines. Strawberries are starting to ripen, as are the raspberries. The tomatoes are bushes with many small blooms. Our garden will be missed!

So, that's my news. I'm going to eat some gluten-free quinoa pasta in peace (most of The Company went out for a goodbye lunch at a Jason-unfriendly restaurant) and work on test plans.

Giving away the farm

Today I handed off nine of our Yellow Pear Tomatoes to coworkers. We’ve had great success with the starts so far. We’re keeping seven plants and giving away sixteen! I just up-potted them into environmentally friendly 6” coconut fiber pots.

Last night we walked down to Fred Myer to get some larger plastic pots for up-potting the brussel sprouts and shallots (and maybe the dill and some basil). I’m wishing I had saved all those unrecyclable plant pots from all my initial plantings in the front yard! I would have had so many pots of all kinds of sizes. Currently, we’re using 2” square pots saved from last year and washed in the dishwasher. I’ve got a few 3” pots and a couple 6” pots for up-potting. With 36 more 3.5” pots from Fred Myer, we’re ready for the summer!

Of course, everything will go into the garden soon. The last frost date is upon us! Tonight I’ll up-pot whatever is ready, and plant the sunflower seeds in coconut fiber 3” pots. These guys will start inside, but then move to the porch, then outside quickly. I have had very good luck with sunflowers, so I don’t worry about them.

Also to arrive last night were two new sea holly tubers (or plants, I can’t tell). We’ll try to stick those in the ground tonight or at the latest this weekend. I’m sure Quincy is psyched.

Here’s to the sun!

Beautiful Weather, Beautiful Weekend

This weekend was a blur! Quincy was out of town with her girlfriends in the mountains. I spent the weekend with Grete and the gardens.

I pulled up all the weeds in the back yard beds, redid all the edging, put up a new fence to keep Grete out of the beds, planted three new plants, put down a yard of mulch, mowed, and repotted/staked all of my indoor succulents. In all, I spent about 16 hours in the garden.



Almost the whole time Grete was by my side, dropping the ball and chasing after it. She got pretty good at bringing it close enough so that I didn't have to move from my weeding spot. As a reward, we went to the Green Lake dog park for some long-throw fetching. The weather was perfect all weekend.



On Monday Quincy and I woke up with headaches from all the pollen in the air. We decided to stay home and take it easy. This lead to a trip to Marymoor dog park, which led to me going to Fremont for lunch at Silence Heart Nest, which led to us washing the cars.

In other news, we found a house we like. And... it's right down the street! More on that later, we're going to stop by tonight to check it out with our realtor. We're not getting our hopes up, but after seeing the back yard, Grete is already packing.

Ta-ta for now!

Weekend Gardening, continued

The planting of four new species might have been the highlight of my weekend of gardening, but it wasn't the bulk of the work. I've got a fantastic grassy weed that I like to pull up for exercise. Great thing, that weed. Good thing it's invincible and everywhere.

One of my oldest plants is having a rough go of it. This rosemary is from The Home Depot about 8 years ago.



I bought it as one of those "living Christmas trees" in a red pot while living up the street in my last apartment. I think it was Christmas 2002. After moving to this house in 2003, I planted it near the stairs. Ever since it has been wrapped in lights each Christmas season, even though it lost its dainty Christmas tree shape years ago.



Last summer I cut back about 25% of the plant, because there seemed to be major die off. It thrived through the fall and winter, only to have the same sort of diseased death thing happen again this spring. So, back with the loppers, I cut it back very, very harshly. It looks windswept and Bonsai-like now. We'll see if it survives.



There's a lot of open space around it thanks to the pruning. (I scooped up about 4 pounds of fragrant needles.) I brushed off the dozens of bulbs coming up and relocated a hydrangea (also a veteran of at least 4 years) near it. I moved out an oppressed heather (pink, I think) to the back fence for rehabilitation. I think Quincy would like to see it go... but with so much space (and an embedded scarcity complex) I almost never through a living plant out.

The next to move was a little tree from the center of the front yard to the back yard near my (newly cemented) fence post. It might act as a deterrent for Grete's gardening efforts -- or it's just a good place to hide a struggling plant.

Another heather moved a few inches to fill in the gap. I pruned back our exotic, non-hardy creeping fuschia, which likely won't come back. Let's take a moment to remember the fallen from this season of frost:





Two flax plants, a handful of hens-and-chicks, our purple-flowering lavender, the creeping fuschia, three delicate rushes, and the purple-star-flowering Ipheion uniflorum are all mostly like in a better place. Or mulch. Whatever. Unlike all the fish I killed while trying to keep a decent fish tank, I feel no guilt for killing off plants. It's what vegetarians do!

What I find is that after the first thirty minutes in the yard, pulling and trimming and digging, I stop clenching my jaw and start getting way more in tune with my body and my surroundings. I can walk carefully or quickly, think about something or nothing at all. Gardening is one of the few times that my brain really does go quiet. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to meditation. This weekend's exercise ran from 9am until nearly 3:00pm on Saturday. In all, I moved a dozen plants, did major clean up, and planted four new plants. Plus, I poured some concrete. More on that later.

Four New Front Yard Plants

This last weekend I put in a few plants that we purchased at Swanson's during the second day of their late winter sale. The bare root deals (up to 40% off) are killer and the trees and shrubs are 25% off as well. Plus, it's much safer to transplant a dormant (or nearly dormant) plant than a root-bound potted flowering plant.

We have four new arrivals. We purchased both Blizzard Mockorange (philadelphus lewisii 'blizzard') and Blue Bird Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus 'blue bird') bare root, so I don't have any photos of those. I soaked them for 30 minutes in a bucket of water. Then they were put in decent sized holes with a mound of packed dirt supporting the root ball in the middle, back-filled with the same dark, rich soil. While I was soaking them I dug the holes and (finally) buried the low voltage line for the lights. I also installed a 20 watt spot for our new tree.

We've been looking for a tree for the southwest corner of the yard. Something tall and evergreen, flowering, and eye-catching. Those criteria create a short list. High on that was a Magnolia. We almost bought a dwarf last year, but the price seemed high. We scored a $70 8' Alta Southern Magnolia (magnolia grandiflora 'TMGH'). This is a beautiful tree that will gracefully drop a few leaves at a time, staying green and textured through the dark months of winter. Also, the huge white flower are both fragrant and beautiful. Quincy's first home in the UD had a huge mature magnolia tree.




Last but not least, we replaced a fallen favorite. Over the winter, during either the snow storm or the ice storm or the deep freeze, our Pittosporum engenioides lost all its leaves. I think it's dead, but I'm not positive -- there were signs of life in the roots. I moved the poor thing to the front of the fence (pictured) and hope for the best. Its replacement is a Pittosporum tennifolium; I thought it was exactly the same, but apparently they're slightly different. Still, the end result is a plant that looks like our old plant, just one year's less growth. I'll cover it this winter during any freezing or icy or snowy times.

The Seedling Process

Everything I know about starting seeds I learned from Quincy, Cisco Morris, or Willi Galloway of Diggin' Food. Cisco is my gardening hero. Because of him I remembered to soak our bare-root shrubs before planting. Someday, I hope he will be the officiant to marry Quincy and me.

There are a number of keys to getting great starts from your seeds. Unsurprisingly, the top two are, generally speaking, water and light.

You can find good seed starting protocols all over the web. I won't bore you with details on starting mix or the Ordering of Things. Starting guides I find in line with Willi's talk can be found at Organic Gardening and Avant-Gardening (and I'm sure there are others!).

Using a starting mix instead of soil provides more appropriate absorption of water. There's no need for fancy fertilizer or nutrients, as the seed provides breakfast for our little plant. Pre-mixing the seed-starting mix in a bucket with water until lumpy and batter like prevents flooding. Last year, I carefully dolled out two seeds per cell in my trays, only to have the flooding from my first watering float them haphazardly. A trick we are using this year to avoid such a disaster is watering with only a spray bottle (brand new, cleaned). Covering the tray with a plastic lid (this year) or plastic wrap supported by chopsticks (last year) will keep the humidity high. So long as the medium doesn't dry out or start molding, you've got a good chance at successful seedlings.

We like to chart and graph, so we labeled our plants pretty well. We're keeping track of first planting, first sprouts, first cotyledons (baby leaves), first real leaves, when we harden and when we plant. From there we'll probably track first buds and edibles as well. All of this can be used next year to adjust our seed starting to accommodate our own micro-climate (micro-climates are real -- we get lots more snow than the other side of Phinney Ridge just six blocks away!). Since all those plant names don't fit on the little plant labels, we made a hash table that identifies them and gives us plenty of room for notes.

I built two grow lights (more on that later) for helping our seeds along. I don't really like the idea of using electricity to grow our plants, but in the dark Seattle spring, there's really no alternative. Also, we don't have sunny southern windows with a place for plants. The grow lights are placed only a few inches above the seeds (or tops of sprouts) to encourage stout plants. Last year all my plants were very leggy and leaned badly (no grow light and set out on the porch). We're giving these guys 16 hours of 26 watts. And here they come!



We decided not to use a starting mat (heat pad for dirt) because they're so pricey. If we don't get good results, we may change our mind for next year... but so far things are right on schedule.

So, that's what we're doing up to date. I'll write more as we do more.

I had mentioned that we knew when to start the seeds. Charts for figuring when to seed and set out plants based on last frost date can be found at Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening.

Seedlings

This month marks the beginning of the beginning of spring planting. When one works backwards from our common last frost date (Mother's Day weekend) and accounts for germination periods and the such, the first of the seeds need to be started in mid February.



This is my second seed starting year. Last year I tossed some seeds in dirt (mind you, not soil or medium), threw plastic wrap over them, and waited for sprouts. I did this mid-spring, well after the last frost date. Everything I planted grew, but with limited success.



With the addition of Chief Researcher to my garden's staff, we took a completely different approach this year. Quincy found a free seed starting class offered at Molbak's in Woodinville by Willi Galloway of Diggin' Food. She's no Cisco, but I think they might be related. Just a bit.

The talk was a fantastic trove of information. We left with exactly everything we needed to have a chance at successful starts and a bumper crop.



When I posted about our 2009 seed collection, I really had no idea where we were going to put all these. Now, with all the starts starting, I wonder even more!

Last weekend we started 24 Shallots, 24 Dill, 24 Yellow Pear Tomato, some salad greens and 72 Super Sugar Peas. We did so per the instructions of Willi (next blog post). Already this weekend we're seeing many sprouts poking their heads above the soil. Quincy marked down the various sprouts on our handy grid. We turned the grow light on last night for the first time. So exciting!

Seeds!

Quincy and I spent two hours the other night pouring over the Territorial Seed catalog. Megan's mother suggested them as a great resource for local (well, Oregon is fairly local) seeds, starts and plants. We tried to stick with the seeds for now, but we will take Megan's mom's other suggestion, the Basil Perpetuo plant:



So, for our reference and your reading pleasure, here's what we're going to try to stick in the ground this summer:

Basil


Dill


Cucumber


Helitrope


Fennel


Brussel Sprouts


Shallots


Giant Sunflowers


Infrared Sunflowers


Teddy Bear Sunflowers


Yellow Pear Tomato


Super Sugar Peas

Some assembly required

Ever try to assemble something from IKEA? Or worse, Sears? Frustratingly sparse instructions, tabs that don't fit into slots and cheap plastic or fake wood parts drive me batty. Well, actually, I take it mostly in stride. Still, this year Santa (read: Quincy and Megan & Talina) gave me a couple of gifts so easy to assemble that I felt the urge to blog. Really.



The first piece to assemble was the Misco Home Garden 2-shelf Greenhouse. These shelving units are meant for sprouting seeds in spring. Last year we searched everywhere, but they were sold out long before March. This year, Quincy got a jump on the competition. The shelving unit is made up of metal tubes, plastic connectors, metal wire shelf racks, and a vinyl cover. The instructions were simple, the tubes fit snugly, the racks were just set on the shelf, the vinyl fit perfectly, and the whole thing went together in less than 10 minutes, including unwrapping it. There wasn't too much wasteful packaging (just some thin plastic around the tubes and a few cardboard spacers). In the end, the shelf looks sturdy enough to hold our plants after the sprouting season. Was to go, Q!



Megan and Talina outdid themselves this year with a wonderful, thoughtful gift. I've been jealous of Megan's balcony gardens since I first gazed upon the jungle she created. Her tomato plants are so big they act as privacy shrubs. In small part her success was due to the automatically watering (there's a reservoir in the bottom) Terrazza planters, which are legendary in their ability to turn a small tomato start into a forest of lush branches and leaves. The entire product is made from a hard plastic that looked like it was never going to fit together. But, following the easy instructions the dang thing snapped together in just a few minutes. Everything was so perfectly fitting that I'm confident it'll last for years. After all, Megan did move hers from one apartment balcony to another, with dirt, without them falling apart.

Both gifts were absolutely wonderful. Well thought out and in the end completely satisfying. Wait until you see all the seeds we sprout and all the tomatoes we harvest! Best of all, I didn't spend an afternoon putting them together! Woot!

2008 in thumbnails

This year started off auspiciously with a backwards repel down a waterfall in Costa Rica. I came back sore and wondering what the heck I was thinking. That was January 1st. The 365 days that followed stayed in the same theme: exhilarating and sometimes painful. Overall, it was one of the busiest and most eventful years of my life.




My dad visited in January, followed by a nontraditional wedding between two of Quincy's best friends, Maggi and Jeff. I spent January through March unemployed by choice, preparing the house for Quincy, Grete and Gesso to move in, and relaxing for the first time in years. Rick moved out in February after four years of living in my basement -- it was both sad and happy, as he is now in Portland with more room, more light, and more music in his life.




Rishi, Omar and I went to Vegas for the Super Bowl ('nuf said) and Grete spent her first weekend at my house. Quincy and friends spent long hours ripping up the floor in her kitchen, preparing it for an eventual sale which would be both stressful and ultimately rewarding.




Quincy, Grete and I met my mother and Eileen on the Oregon coast for a long weekend of hiking and beach walks. I was getting weaker and sicker at this point, and visited the doctor for more blood work. Still no idea what it could be, we traveled to Pennsylvania to meet my family and to South Dakota to visit Quincy's. I swung up to Vermont to see Brian wed Becca, certainly one of the most beautiful weddings I will ever witness.




Quincy and Grete ran their first 5k. Quincy moved in and we started gardening in earnest in the middle of the summer. By July, I was finally diagnosed with celiac disease. Just one month later, with a fresh supply of oxygen in my blood, I asked Quincy to merry me (the day before Vena married Simon, another beautiful gathering of friends and family).




We dog sat DJ & Emily's Lola and hosted a super-fun game night in the fall. Megan and Talina got engaged this summer as well, so we spent a few nights sharing our wedding planning. I continued working at Attenex, taking the bus every day, and re-learning how to manage stress (now that my energy returned, so did much angst).




Parties (with DJ & Emily's new baby!), outdoor lights, and snow capped off an amazing year. Quincy and I have absolutely no idea what next year will hold for us. After all that we've done so far, I know we're both hoping for a little breather. So, who wants to take bets? hehe... I didn't think so. Let's go sailing!