All in a day's work

I love gardening! How could I have forgotten that?!? We started at 10:20ish this morning with a trip to Groff's Nursery out in Amish country. When we got back I had 3 watermelons, 1 chocolate peppermint, 1 lemon balm, 1 chives, 1 agastache 'Tango', and 1 yarrow to my name.

       

(Achillia filipendulina

. . . also known as yarrow)

(Agastache aurantiaca 'Tango'

. . . also known as anise hyssop)

(and everything else)


Then it was digging, and shoveling, and raking dirt. Lots of dirt. It was quite lovely though, because it had been a big weed field, but it was plowed under on Thursday, so it was pretty workable.


 


So Friday we made a trip to the woody compost pile to pick up supplies. Much to my delight we came home with two huge cedar stumps :D One is at the corner of four of the five new plots, and the other is my new welcome mat!


Here's how it started:

 

Then I stared forming the beds. I probably should have done some pre-dig planning, but it worked well enough. . .

I turned some compost into the soil of most of the beds                                 

                                                                                                    Here's the fun part - I found these old railroad ties back behind the tool shed, so perfect for the corner they were practically screaming "take me! take me!"

 (view from the back . . . looking towards the house)

(view from the front)

I put burlap down on the dirt paths to prevent muddy puddles. I'm planning on putting bark on the remaining paths - I want to create this shift from man made walls and paths in the back to a very informal natural setting at the cedar trunk in the front. Brick and sand will give way to burlap, which will dissolve into bark. We'll see if it actually works on Monday. . .

Yay herbs! This will be a fragrant garden.

                                                                                                                        I'm trying out watermelon for the first time this summer. I'm pretty sure it doesn't get hot enough in Washington, or humid enough in Utah, so this may be my only shot at it! Can watermelons climb? I think so . . . maybe. . . I've got 'Sugar  Baby', 'Crimson Delight', and some yellow variety whose' name escapes me.

  

My plot is right up against Sarah (my roommate) and Tom's - we made our paths connect. Our gardens are friends.

 The other intern plots get a deer fence, but they ran out before getting to us. We're just hoping twine looks like deer fencing . . . at least to deer.

And to top it all off I came in with a lovely Neapolitan ice cream sunburn on my neck. Oh yeah. You know how hot t-shirt tan lines are. After watering everything in, putting all the tools back in the shed and wrestling with the hose, I came in around 8pm. That's almost 10 hours of gardening! I can't wait till Monday. . . :)

Of green things not green

Fagus sylvatica purpurea. That, my friends, is the plant of the week. Or more like "tree until the next time I post" . . . T.U.N.P? Maybe "tree until the next post about a tree". . . T.U.N.P.A.T? Or how about "current awesome tree". . . C.A.T. Ok. That one wins. I took a good two hour walk through Longwood Gardens last week, and was just amazed by the the copper beeches they have. They are huge trees. Up in Washington we have some really tall trees, and even some big-leaved ones. But the coniferous trees are usually skinny:

 and Big Leaf Maples (Acer macrophyllum) are huge in a clumsy way. . .

So the copper beeches are just amazing. It's organized volume. A ton of organized volume. And the color is spectacular. In the late spring/early summer season when everything is that same shade of newly-opened-green, it's so refreshing to get a jolt of deep purple-red.

And when you walk under them, the purple/red turns to copper/green!

*Ooooo. . . Ahhh. . . *

You have to admit, it's a pretty cool tree. Totally worthy of being the very first C.A.T. :)

Of Strings!

So after 9 months of obsessing over lutherie and indulging my need to use power tools, I am officially announcing the arrival of a beautiful new tenor ukulele into the world.
 

Complete with hippie gig bag, it is my only link to the world of stringed instruments this summer. And believe it or not, it actually sounds good! I did the final string up the day before I left for Pennsylvania. And now for your further enjoyment, more pictures:

 

The abalone inlay around the sound hole came pre-shaped, but the fact that Dad was able to figure out how to route a channel that fit it perfectly is, I think, most impressive.  

 The inlay on the headstock is olive wood from Israel. My parents brought it home with them from their two week trip, and I'd never done much with it because it's such a dense wood. But lo and behold, it worked well with the walnut!

Speaking of olive wood, here's the breakdown of materials: 

• neck/headstock - mahogany 
• soundboard - engelman spruce
• back/sides - claro walnut
• bridge/fretboard - bubinga
• tuners - rosewood
• headstock varnish - walnut and olive wood
• nut/saddle - corian 

And there you have it. A homemade ukulele. I was going to figure out how to use my web cam to post a video of me playing it so you could hear it. I was even motivated enough to download software and learn how to use it, but my poor computer seems to chew up the sound a bit before spitting it back out, so the video sounds nothing like listening live. Sorry! you'll just have to live in suspense* till I find a cheap solution (if one even exists. . . )  

* from now on all you'll be thinking is "what could it possibly sound like?!? I have to know. . . "

Kids grow up fast. . . wait. never mind.

Sometimes my siblings mature while I'm gone for a semester. My sister gets her ears pierced, my brother's voice drops an octave, another brother decides he likes economics, they all develop a taste for dubstep. Getting to see the changes every four months is just part of being a college student. And yet other times I come back and they've . . . reverted to certain childhood fancies. Or, more accurately and most recently, latched onto a small bit of Kindergarten-esque entertainment. Over the past four months three of my four siblings (may I point out I only have one sister. . . ) have become avid My Little Pony fans.

 Yes, it's exactly what you're thinking:

Here's the problem. I could, potentially, be blamed/credited with this sudden equestrian infatuation. You see, it was the summer of '11 and we were exploring the strange new world of Netflix via my one-free-month trial, and we stumbled upon Doctor Who. A great new era of British Sci-fi comedy then commenced, and by the time I left for school in the fall we were all hopelessly addicted. The grueling effects of a new semester on my free time kept my addiction somewhat at bay, but back home the academic ease of (or poor attitude towards) high school, and the continuance of Netflix, allowed my sibling's dependence to grow. Having finished all five current seasons, my sister turned to YouTube. Eventually she discovered the brilliant, coincidental existence of the pony Doctor Whooves (pictured right), who's 'cutie mark' is an hourglass, and who so resembles the Doctor it verges on unbelievable. The rest is history. I must admit, I have watched an episode here and there, just to see what I've done to my siblings, and it may have the potential to grow on you. . . Maybe someday I will have little girls who love My Little Pony. Maybe by then my siblings will have outgrown it and moved on to bigger, better things. Or maybe they'll keep up their pony fancies and never quite give up that inner child. We'll just have to wait and see! In the meantime, I think I might watch another episode. . .