Dolavim.us » Photoblog

Cold frame

tpepper — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 04:39:15 +0000

I’ve had a bunch of old windows intended for a green house for a long time. For Christmas I got a local gardening book and it got me thinking more about the green house as well as cold frames. Last week I went to the Rebuilding Center for some wood. During the week I built a cold frame. Today it went out in the yard, got dirt in it, and even got a bit of noon time sun.

Now to decide when to start germinating the first greens.

Chickens at 9 months

tpepper — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:23:55 +0000

Here’s an autumn chicken picture. The birds are just shy of 9 months old now. They’re molting a little and egg production is about half what it was at its peak.

The main pen is getting muddy at times, but as the leaves are falling and we’re giving them occasional access to the auxiliary pens (having given up on trying to preserve the grass there through the winter).

Oregon coast weekend

tpepper — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:43:16 +0000

The kids had a five day weekend so we took off from work also. [Thank you Veterans!] We’re staying at this fantastic little get away south of Newport.

Of course it’s rained every day we’ve been here. But it’s also been sunny everyday we’ve been here. Yeah Oregon!

Two beach pano’s…one from the deck, one from just below on the beach:

New mug

tpepper — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 22:24:40 +0000

It’s Art in the Burbs time and I can’t resist James Derosso’s monsters. We got a flower vase last year. This year it’s a mug. Me in the morning before my coffee.

5000kWh produced on our roof

tpepper — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:04:13 +0000

I stepped out to grab some lunch and noticed the meter had just hit 5000kWh’s. It’s a gorgeous day out. By the time I was back it had already rolled over to 5001kWh.

Our first apple harvest

tpepper — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 04:45:42 +0000

Last fall we got a single asian pear from our then new baby espalier pear tree. This fall we got one more pear. They were delicious and we’re definitely looking forward to more.

We added two baby espalier apple trees with seven varieties grafted onto the two. I wasn’t expecting anything and one didn’t even blossom this spring. The other blossomed and had almost a hundred baby fruits which were heavily trimmed. Today I took about a dozen apples off the tree. The Gala were tasty and the Liberty weren’t so much (too small). The picture is all Gravensteins and we haven’t tasted any of them. But they look and smell great.

Interestingly one of the Gravenstein grafts blossomed a second time in July, as if the tree decided the cool, wet Oregon June was a winter.

Our Hawaii Trip

tpepper — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:27:29 +0000

We spent the last five days of 2009 in Hawaii, primarily on the Kona side. It was an amazing time. We had warm, sunny weather, did plenty of snorkeling, went to a luau, saw turtles (including while snorkeling), visited Blue Sky Coffee, the Kona Brewing Company(fresh Wailua Wheat and Pipeline Porter were out of this world), saw steam rising from Kilauea caldera and lava flowing into the ocean, visited the southern most point in the USA, spotted one nene, and we had the amazing luck to spend barely a half hour at the Black Sand Beach but we were in the right place at the right time to be the first humans to see a baby Hawksbill turtle as it crawled up through the sand of its nest and ventured off into the ocean (click here for video)!

Pictures are over at flickr, but here are a few highlights…

Lies

Turtle

Snorkel

Luau

Sunset

Lava

Gecko

Palm trees

A cold night

tpepper — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 02:00:20 +0000

It’s a cold, clear Christmas Eve which made a good opportunity to play with my new toys (lens and tripod).

The Moon - December 24, 2009

Thankful

tpepper — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:09:47 +0000

Still didn’t manage to finish the dining room for yet another Thanksgiving. But it’s the love in the room that matters. We had a lot of love gathered around the table this year.

Our potatoes are out of the ground

tpepper — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:06:06 +0000

We ate quite a few this year during the summer, but today the girls did our main dig. They took 18lbs of potatoes out of the raised bed! I’m guessing we ate around 5lbs during the summer. Last year I think we had a total of 15lbs. I’m thinking of building a little riser that can go on the box we put the potatoes in for a given year and allow us to bury the potatoes more during the year. I also need to make sure I get the type of potatoes that actually produce more when repeatedly buried during the season. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case this year.

2009 potato harvest