Building a garden: the fence year

So in 2011 we were ready to get a permanent fence in place. In May we staked out our potential 24x36' garden plot and I took lots of photos trying to establish whether we had chosen the most sunlit area. As it turned out I decided to shift the plot 11 feet southeast and my very patient husband helped me move our stakes and twine.

On June 1st, despite snow falling that day, we rented an auger and dug our post holes. This was the first time we'd done any substantial digging in our soil, and we learned that it's extremely rocky. Some of those holes required us to pry-bar out dozens of softball- to basketball-sized stones. We were already worn out before any fence appeared.

 
tomatoes waiting to be planted

Actually getting the fence up took another month, between our comings and goings and work commitments. (In the meantime I planted in pots again, in a ring of deer mesh.) We were helped immeasurably by the extended Suess clan, who on their vacation week at our house decided to take a whole day and work on the fence with us. By the end of that day all the posts and crossbeams were up and the gate was hung.
 

while Suess men work, Grandma and cousin R. entertain Carson:


Bub and I finished stretching the wire July 3...


fencing tools

 
unstretched

 
preparing the comealong 

 
Carson brings the ratchet 

 
nailing on the wire 

 
the completed fence!

...and finally were able to release our pots from their temporary enclosure.





The next project was to prepare blueberry beds. The corner of the garden that I chose for this was the rockiest, of course, and as I was working in 30-60 minute chunks of "toddler time", it took me another six weeks of prying out boulders and sifting "soil" (really gravel) to remove the largest rocks before I finally planted my eight blueberry plants in mid-August.








And here's how the garden looked then!



Sad to say, after all this work, our yield was very disappointing. Nothing grew well. We ate a few servings of green beans, cherry tomatoes and lemon cucumbers, but nothing thrived. I'm chalking it up to a combination of poor soil, inadequate fertilization, and a very cool summer, with maybe some excessive watering thrown in. In any case, our quest for garden success continued and we hung our hopes on next year once again, when we'd have raised beds and imported quality soil...

First look...

Well, not mine, because I've been ultrasounding myself regularly since 6 weeks. But yours! Here he/she is, The Bean, at 19 weeks:

Building a garden: the first years

When we bought our house 3 summers ago, with its 3.75 acres of theoretically usable land, we were excited to have space to learn to grow our own food. This has not been easy. We face three major challenges:
1) a short growing season, with the average last frost date around June 1 and average first frost around October 1--that's just 120 days to grow in;
2) a lot of trees on our property, so that except in midsummer there are few plots of ground that receive more than 6 or 7 hours of sun; and
3) many resident deer, who happily eat pretty much everything we do. Well, hey, we also have lots of rabbits and gophers, but we haven't had a chance to notice their effects since the deer don't leave them much.

We will be learning how to work around #1 and #2 as long as we're here, but the answer to #3 is pretty straightforward--we have to fence our garden.

In 2009 we got permission to place some tomatoes in containers on the property as soon as we entered escrow, around June 1. Since we didn't live there yet, we put the tomatoes on a corner of the lawn where they'd be watered by the automatic sprinklers. The fence was a simple ring of wire:



After moving in, we moved the containers and fence off the lawn so we could water the tomatoes more optimally:



After a few weeks, we realized that it was easy for the deer to reach through or over the little fence and nibble on the plants, so we widened it:



This was our first time growing tomatoes and we made the mistake of choosing four yummy-sounding heirlooms that all matured slowly. Finally, in mid-September, we excitedly harvested our first two tomatoes--multicolored and very tasty Ananas Noir:



A few days later, we enjoyed two lovely Black Krims:



AAAAAND the day after that, the deer jumped into our little enclosure we had naively thought too small for them to attempt, and stripped the plants. Thus ended our garden experiment, year one.

I have no pictures of our garden in 2010, but we were much more successful. We used a double ring of 4-foot deer mesh this year, which effectively kept the poachers at bay, and harvested quite a number of Early Girls and Sun Golds, as well as a few heirlooms and some lemon cucumbers... we were eager to see our results next year, when we'd build a real fence and grow more crops!

To be continued...

Easter treats

Our Easter festivities this year were woefully minimal, in part because it looked likely until the last minute that Bubba and Carson would be out of town that weekend. As it turned out, we were all together. But the most I can say for Easter 2012 is that we all made it to church (this nearly didn't happen because I had an emergency call Sunday morning), we enjoyed having a friend for dinner, and I made Rainbow Jello. Next year I hope there will be more substance to our observation of this most joyful holiday... but at least the jello was bright.



My mother has made layered jello in the past, but what got me inspired to try it this year was a photo I saw on Pinterest from this blog: Rainbow Easter Eggs. A "craft" and fun food that I can actually manage!, I thought. And I went and ordered some egg molds.



There was no purple jello at my local grocery store, and I could only get blue in the large box. So I got 5 large boxes and decided to make a ring mold also. The process took about 4 hours in all, and required a surprising amount of math... but I thought the results were worth it! Maybe Rainbow Eggs will become an Easter tradition at our house.

Along the Sacramento

Redding is the closest actual city to Mount Shasta, at 60 miles away and around 90,000 residents. It has most of the necessary amenities, but isn't exactly a cultural center. It's known for pretty much two things: 1) staying really hot for most of the year, and 2) the Sundial Bridge. I appreciate Redding most in February and March, when it's likely to have beautiful spring weather (not too hot yet) while we up in the mountains are still slogging through winter. On such spring escape trips, the Sundial Bridge over the Sacramento River and in fact the entire 16-mile Sacramento River Trail make a great stroller-friendly destination.

Our latest escape to Redding was in early March. We had a couple of errands to do in town, and afterward we walked from the mall to the Sundial Bridge and back. I don't necessarily recommend this stretch of the trail, as it's too close to major roads too much of the time, but we still enjoyed ourselves along the way. Carson devoured his first Push-Up frozen treat, and I bared my arms for the first time in months. We moved pretty slowly because there was so much for a two-year-old to investigate...

Rubble to climb:


Flowers to marvel at (in Mount Shasta these were still a couple of months away):


Rocks to throw in the river:




And of course the bridge itself. Carson LOVES bridges. This one is really big AND has cables to climb, which makes it extra fun.

Carson, in his own words

Selected quotes, lately:

"My hair is gross. I need a bath." [This one is recurrent. He loves baths and does not--gasp!--get one every day.]

"The goat had to die." [Explaining himself to the Mount Shasta Animal Hospital staff upon entering the building with a heart in a Ziploc. Which goat? "The sick goat."]

"Dada, STOP!!! Stop sitting on the couch! You should get up and play with me!" [He thinks he should be in charge of all activities.]

"I'm a hedgehog! Animals don't wear clothes!" [His response to my query of his preference for jeans or sweatpants that morning. This is an appeal to his book The Hat in which Hedgie the hedgehog finally escapes a sock he had got his head stuck in.]

"Right now I'm looking for the power, because Mom and Dad lost it, Hannah, so we can't have any lights on.... The power is out, so we need to get a new one." [Hunting, flashlight in hand, during his first experience of a power outage in the dark.]

"Please can I ask?" [Usually follows a conversation something like this... Bubba: "Carson, did you ask before you took that off Dad's desk?" Carson, hastily: "I'm gonna ask, Dad. Can I aaassk?"]

And one of our very favorites, that makes us melt rather than laugh: "I need a kiss and a hug!" before he will let either of us leave him... we love this boy.

with Mt McLoughlin, southern Oregon, on a trip this week with Dad

The fantastic twos

This week Carson is 28 months old. I thought he was a lot of fun at 18 months, but it keeps getting better! We’ve seen a lot of growth just in the last 6 weeks. Things we’re loving right now:

1) He suddenly learned how to entertain himself. In a matter of a week or two he went from needing mom or dad’s undivided attention at all times (at least when indoors) to playing for long stretches with legos, puzzles, or just in his own imagination… speaking of which…
2) Wow is that imagination soaring. He pretends he is one of the cats (“I’m soft and cuddly Hannah”) and curls up on my lap. When he puts on his fireman boots he imagines “flames leaping out of the windows” and has to find his hose to spray water on them. “Soon the fire was out, Mama.” He drives his car around “going shopping” and always says he’s buying donuts or chips (for the record, this does not reflect our typical purchases). But mostly he takes great and detailed care of his “bees”, which are bowling pins that resemble insects. He changes their diapers and takes them to the potty, feeds them, puts them to bed. The following videos are from a month ago, on the day the bee fascination began… still going strong.






Some additional little things that have surprised and entertained us of late: He correctly points out “the way to the clinic” and “the way to church” when driving. He contracts “I am not” to “I amn’t”. He greets me when I come home from work with “Hi gorgeous! Hi precious!” (The first is Bubba’s fault; the second we think he may have picked up from Grandma?) He knows which is his right hand (and foot, and eye etc) vs. his left. (He still appears to be left-handed). He recognizes 10 or so of his letters and picks them out in random places—for example seeing Bubba looking at Wikipedia from across the room and pointing, “That’s a dubbo-you!” (He also woke Bub up from a nap one day by whispering next to his head, “S like a snake…S like a snake…”)

I’ve taken amazingly few photos in the past month and need to catch up on a lot from the fall, so I’ll stick with just another video for today--another from the first of January: