Flickr Garden Show

I was playing around with flickr apis and found this nifty little slideshow!

Home Grown Lunch

OK it's nearly a home grown lunch. The soup is curried Squash soup made from frozen garden squash but of course the spices are not home grown. The Salad has home grown greens with dried cherry tomatoes. Also present is home dried bananas, I dry them when they start to get too ripe and the are perfect and free of all the additives you get with store bought dried fruit!

Growing Soil

I've actually grown my soil! I started my garden just 2 years ago with some small mostly sandy, lifeless soil. I've added many layers of compost, mulch and a bit of organic components. And just the other day as I was planting cauliflower seedlings I found an earth work in my garden bed!

I'm pretty darn excited! I've managed in only two years to turn what would pass as beach sand into loamy, brown living soil. Did I say I'm excited? I just thought it would take more then two years. Can't wait to see how the cauliflower do!

Taking The Train

This summer we have decided to spend a little more time and a lot less money on our summer vacation by taking the train. It is partially the money, with the price of gas and hotels etc. we saved about 60% compared to taking a car or even a plane! Yup thats right, it really was that much cheeper!

In addition to the simple savings and perhaps just as important, we made our summer vacation low carbon! I'm really quite pleased with that as well, it's a bonus knowing that I didn't burn up 6 tanks of gas going to NC and back.

So my thoughts on train riding, in short it was fun and relaxing though a bit long. When I say long though don't get me wrong it was only a couple hours longer then driving and significantly less exhausting. I was able to read, write and relax with no need to worry about falling asleep at the whee! That made it worth it to me. One observation though, Amtrak hasn't been use to heavy traffic on their trains, but I would say that this is the summer of the train and Amtrak is very busy. They don't quite seem to be prepared for this heavy passenger load as the employees seemed a bit stressed from the really heavy load. Nearly every seat on every coach I walked through was full! I wouldn't be surprised if the last time Amtrak was that busy was the 70's! Despite this it was good trip and I expect Amtrak will get use to the good business as I seriously doubt gas will go down, ever again. Welcome to the second age of the train!

Reducing Food Miles

A few weeks ago we picked up an organic spaghetti squash to try out a new recipe and since my choices at the store were organic imported from Mexico and non-organic imported from Honduras, I opted for the organic. Well the food miles on something like that is pretty high but not much worse then coming from California I suppose. Well as I scooped out the seeds I decided that one way to cut some food miles on this squash was to save to seeds! Why not? They are organic and obviously able to grow in warm climates! I have saved probably 30 or more seeds, cleaned, dryed and stored nice and safe. Just to make sure that they were viable I planted four and now I have three healthy growing sprouts ready to go into the ground. So the next few spaghetti squash I eat will have zero food miles. That should cut down the mileage a bit!

Got Squash!

The squash is really growing! I've pulled about 4lbs of squash from the garden already and there is more out there then we'll ever be able to eat! I'll probably share some our to friends.

Check out this huge monster! This squash is well over a pound, not bad and totally grown organically! My soil has really improved from last year which makes me quite proud. I've added some organic improvements but, also lots of mulch and dark compost from the compost pile!

Fruit Cup

This morning I went out to toss some stuff into the compost bin and collect up the ripe blueberry! It's pretty cool to wander out the back door and gather up food while there is still a blanket of fog hanging over the yard. It was peaceful and cool with the light energy of the waking world as the birds provided a jovial, musical backdrop.

Yea, my fruit cup isn't really much, I only have to very young blueberry bushes and a hand full of strawberry plants, but they tend to produce a couple of bowls full of fruit each season. I'm often amazed at how many mature plants it can take to produce one bowl of berries. I think it takes a great deal more land to produce berries then other foods though I haven't checked the yield per sqft. What always amazes me more is when I'm at the fruit stand and there is a huge container of blueberries sitting right next to dozens of other containers and my mind instantly starts computing the number of bushes it takes to fill the containers, wow!

On the garden front, It shouldn't be more then another day or two before I start harvesting squash! I have a nearly ripe squash already out there and at least 6 more that are a week out! Fun time for some curried squash soup, or just curried squash, or maybe even little bruchetta squash? Humm so many options

Things Are On The Grow

So my vegi garden is growing great! Over 2/3 of my seedlings have been in the ground for over a month now and things are really starting to fill in. I love it when the plants start to really fit into their place, filling out and starting to show signs of flowers. It's reassuring to know that you did things right and all that optimism about a good harvest is looking possible.


I took some pictures of my hillside beds which measure in at about 192 sq. ft. of growing space. I also grow herbs and eatable flowers around the backyard amungst annual, non-eatables. This years vegi crop will consist of black beans, okra, cantaloupe, carrot, 2 types of onions, 2 types of tomatoes , cucumber, yellow squash and sunflowers! Yum!

My Nasturtiums are blooming! The lower bed is brand new, just built last week. I also have a shot of my black bean forest, fun huh?

Welcome

I've been wanting to put together a blog devoted to my interests and different projects for some time but, just hadn't been in the mood to blog. Looks like I have gotten past that now though. My goal is to document my various projects that I'm always working on so that friends and family can see what I've been up too. I also doing this for me so I can go back and look at things I've done for new ideas or just to get that feeling of accomplishment when I start wondering what I do with my time!

For the foreseeable future I'm going to focus on four topics and anyone who knows me will likely agree that four is a pretty small number for me as I am always curious and wanting to try new things out. Anyway those four things in no specific order will be Drawing or Sketching, Gardening, Electronics and Environmental projects.

Coming up shortly I'll be posting an electronics project, a couple of sketches and my spring garden post.