Category: Life

Hiking

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I went to Curly Springs on Friday with the fam. And it is way warm for November. We were both sweating. For our hike, we started at the Dry Canyon trail head in Lindon, than hiked clear over to Battle Creek. It was about 5 miles, with 1000 ft elevation change.  The hike wasn’t gorgeous by any means. Great views out to the valley but devoid of much vegetation at first, and than it was more woodsy and nice over by Battle Creek. I just wasn’t much into it though. I think I was working a little too hard, took me forever to feel recovered.

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Battle Creek is nice, because it usually involves a trip to the Grandparents. They even had pizza waiting! I love my grandparents.

Headboard

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I sewed this a while back. It is not a professional quality headboard. But hey, it only cost me $6. Good enough, and better than nothing. It’s fabric on top of cardboard, mounted on Styrofoam. I think Just one background fabric would have worked out better. But I like it well enough.

Diamond Fork

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We decided to go up Diamond Fork canyon to go hiking this week. The trails are a bit confusing and not clearly marked at the beginning, but I think we ended up going up Brimhall canyon road several miles up the canyon on the right. There seems to be a lot of private land intermixed with the national forest which was why I was confused. We didn’t have a whole lot of time anyway and just went about a mile or so up the trail. It was quite a nice autumn hike. It would have been terribly hot in the summer, but was a nice hike now with more range type vegetation and hills not mountains.

So do you always stick to established hiking trails? How about one marked on maps with with little signage or upkeep? Or ones used for purposes other than hiking, like ranching and hunting? I’m still generally don’t bushwhack, except in the winter snowshoeing. There seems to be more possible hiking trails than there are established ones, and I like to hike new places. Sometimes finding the new places is the hard part. Up in Cache Valley, they have a wonderful guidebook you can buy that has all the trails around, with lots of great information. I have not found anything remotely similar down here. I usually get trails off of USGS maps which is not as good as a good trail guide. I’m also writing about all of them, so I can make a guide of sorts for future reference. Any resources I haven’t found yet?

Chocolate Chip Cookies

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  • Cream:
  • 1 lbs butter softened
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups brown sugar
  • Mix in:
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tablespoon vanilla
  • 2 cups oatmeal
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon soda
  • 6-8 cups flour (stop when it gets stiff and crumbly. I use 100% whole wheat flour too, and don’t even notice the difference)
  • 1 package chocolate chips

 

Bake 375F for no longer than 10 minutes. (if you do it longer shame on you and enjoy your not so great cookies)

Best cookie recipe ever, that I grew up with. I took dinner to a neighbor’s house and she asked for the recipe. (Which, by the way, never experiment when you have to take dinner to someone. Didn’t turn out great, but I took it anyway. I really just don’t have the patience to do everything right, so I approximate measurements and take shortcuts. Doesn’t always turn out good.) I thought that everyone should have it. So here it is.

Hike

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We meant to go here a few weeks ago. But we made it Tuesday night. It was a great little afternoon/evening hike, and the fall color was gorgeous. Better, I think, than a few weeks ago. The colors are more vibrant: the reds are deeper reds, there was more yellow, and it all sticks out more. The oaks are turning brown. Not that pretty, but marking the further growth of fall. This fall has been long and warm: it looks like this week it’s time to bring in the tomatoes. But not having to do that until the end of October? Awesome.

Back to the hike. It seemed to be mostly a cattle ranch trail: we even met a group of cowboys herding down the cows for winter on our way up. That had us trying to get Peter to say “moo,” unsuccesfully. (But he does say “up” and its adorable.) The trailhead was a few miles up the right fork in Hobble Creek canyon, right next to a large corral. Besides the cowboys down the road, we didn’t meet a soul. I love Hobble Creek because of that. The hike was pleasent, minus the missing jackets. (I forgot it was fall, and fall means jackets. It’s just been so warm.) We took the right side of every fork, and our trail dead-ended at a spring about a mile and a half up.

I love hiking in the fall. Best hiking season ever. Minus the deer hunt, but that was easily avoided this year. The color of the leaves, the cool air. It’s wonderful. This time of year is also when I had baby Pete last year. I enjoyed that time, and took lots of walks out in the leaves with my tiny infant. I’m even looking forward to the snow this week. (If you include snow in fall and spring it greatly extends those seasons. Isn’t part of fall waking up to snow on the ground, only to have it melt away in hours?)

Disneyland

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I went to Disneyland on vacation. I ended up admiring plants. Plants aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Disneyland, but they are there and thriving. I’m impressed at the amount they have, even with millions of people going through every year. I didn’t see a single gardener either. (Does this mean they are out there with flashlights?)

The gardens are definitely formal gardens. There are tons of hedges, topiaries, annual plantings in the shape of Mickey Mouse, even a knot garden. Not always my style. But that trip, combined with this post has me thinking that maybe I should give hedge pruners more of a chance. (Sidenote: hedging is a good horticultural practice, but it can’t replace regular good old pruning and should be attempted after someone knows how to prune with a pair of loppers. I’ve seen a lot of butterball figures that are ugly and not healthy for plants.)

My favorite was the Storybook Canal. I went for the enjoyment of my one-year-old son. The rest in my group had very little desire to go on the “boring” ride. So, not expecting much, I found myself in the midst of wonderful miniature gardens. The ride ended up being one of my favorite just because of the cool plants. The guide mentioned that some of the trees (at least one bonsai) were actually planted by Walt Disney himself.

Utah Botanical Center

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I love the UBC. I caught on to their vision after working there one summer, and I love to go back and see all the progress they’ve made. I keep blogging about them too. (I just checked and I really haven’t: one post and mentions elsewhere is not constantly blogging about them. So this post is muchly needed.) I love it there. Not saying it’s perfect. There’s around 100 acres, and a lot of it is mowed weeds. Another good portion is under construction, and there are also experiments that didn’t quite work out as planned. (Including a naturalized planting that had me weed whacking for weeks. I’m not kidding. Weeks. Good old internships.)

But here is one thing I love about them, that has not yet received a lot of attention by me. I love there perennial gardens. Anne Spranger is the one behind them, and she does beautiful work. She can also be found in work boots bailing out irrigation leaks, and doing all the dirty jobs as well. Anne was my boss when I was an intern, and she was also my design teacher in school. Here is some of her work:

The UBC has influenced me to focus on regional-specific landscaping. Use the climate, soil, and surroundings to create unique gardens for the area. The UBC creates unique gardens that mirror the needs of the Utah area–lots of water-wise plantings, use of native plants, not a lot of lawn, tons of plant material etc. But it’s a good idea for anywhere: don’t fight your surroundings, embrace them.

Disneyland

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My dad had a conference in Anaheim, so Peter and I tagged along with some of my family and went to the beach and Disneyland. Peter would wake up in the morning and just rock in his stroller, excited to go to back to Disneyland. We were there three days of magical fun, and rode nearly all the rides. Peter did wonderfully the entire trip, and it was fun to have him along. The more cheesy rides made him excited: so they were better for us all. The only thing bad about the trip was Joe had to stay home and go to school and work. Thanks Mom, for letting me come!

Peter’s Birthday

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Peter is now a year old. Wow. We had a rip-roaring birthday party with a whole bunch of family last Sunday. Peter loved all the food and people, but didn’t really get opening presents. Thanks to everyone that came and for all the presents.

Every one year old should have a cake all to themselves. He just dug right in. Horrible manners, unlike his cute little cousins who would very carefully pinch off a piece while Peter was digging in. He’s quite messy, but is eating almost everything we eat. Makes meals a little more simple.

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He is walking a little, but not as a primary mode of transportation. Besides mama and dada he has one little word he uses all the time–up. He’s constantly saying up and pointing. It’s very cute.

Weekend without Peter

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Joe and I had a weekend free from Peter thanks to my Mom. First we went hiking up Dry Canyon in Alpine to Horsetail falls. It was raining soon after we started, and we weren’t wearing rain gear but perservered to the falls, about a mile and a half up. When we reached the outlook to see the falls, it stopped raining and the sun came out. Just perfect timing, and it made for a wonderful hike.

After that, we stopped to do some birthday shopping for Peter, and I started to get chills/feverish. So we went home and I got a nice nap and some ibuprofen and felt much better. Apparently hiking in the rain, although quite romantic and beautiful, was also quite hard on me. Marry Poppins just might know something. I think I had a very mild case of mastitis, but luckily the fever didn’t last. Sleeping while sick is not the best way to spend baby-free time, but we still had fun after I was feeling better. We rented a movie, slept through the night, and I didn’t have to sweep the floor after breakfast and dinner.

A break from Peter was much appreciated–no matter how much I love him, he’s still hard. Sweeping/cleaning/playing/changing diapers isn’t too bad, but it gets a little old. He did great at Grandma’s too.

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