Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Some other pics I never posted...

Our family photo shoot...


 And a sunset on the beach.

One minute he is there..
 and the next, he is off again...

Birthday Wheels

I forgot to post about Orin's fourth birthday!
I should have plenty of pictures of him opening presents,
and blowing out the candles on his birthday cake,
but in my typical fashion, the more important the event, 
the less likely I am to photograph it.
Although I did take a picture of Orin on his maiden voyage
with his new pedal bike. 
And, no, of course I didn't forget to pack his helmet
(we were at my mother's house)
knowing that he was getting a bike...
who would do a thing like that...
opps.
Happy Four Ori!

My new job

I mentioned in an earlier post that I just started a new job.
I didn't mention that my job is one of the coolest jobs of all time.
I am working for the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod
surveying rare plant communities around the Cape.
What this means is that I get to hike around beautiful areas
looking for interesting plant communities
and when I find them, I photograph them and map them. 

Here are just a few pictures from my first two weeks:
wild grape
bindweed
the beach at Wing Island
beech forest
skunk cabbage
salt marsh
salt spray rose
interdune pool
spartina
more spartina
 
I loved some of the places I went so much
that over the weekend, I retraced my steps with Orin and Casey.
Here they are looking at the baby osprey in its nest.

we walked out to the water at low tide
it took a while... but we made it
which sure made Orin happy.

Hope you had a good one too!


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Growing Up

The other day, we decided to build a vertical pallet garden. 
Vertical gardens are great because you can grow a lot 
of plants using very little ground space,
which is especially good if you are sun or space limited.
We don't happen to have either problem
but instead just wanted to plant one because they are pretty
and we had an extra pallet.

Step one was to reinforce the back.
To do this, we used some old trim that has been waiting 
to go to the dump.
(Dump run, no longer needed!)
 Next, we stapled on some landscape fabric
(several layers to make it nice and strong)
 Then we hired a cute kid to fill the pallet with dirt...
 and plant it with some pretty plants.
 After it was planted, we left it laying on the ground for 2 weeks
so the roots could take hold of the soil.
The last step was to pick it up
(they are really heavy!)
and prop it against the house.
Waahhllahh!

Catching the Rain

Opps! I guess last month marked a new low point in my blogging history.
I just started a new job (more on that to come) and have been really
busy in the off hours working with Casey 
on a couple fun projects around the "farm".
One of the first was hooking up our rain barrels, now that we are solidly
in both the growing season and hurricane season, it is good to catch it
while it is coming so you can use it when it isn't.

First, we aquired some old olive and pepper storage containers off Craigslist.  
 Then we drilled some holes in the lid to let the water through...
and added a screen so the mosquitoes couldn't get in...
 and a spigot on the bottom to attach a hose for watering
 All that was left was to hack off the gutter
 and hook it up to our new rain catcher.
Isn't it beautiful?