We went up to Salt Lake to entertain Peter, Grandma and Uncle Will. There’s lots of fun free stuff. We mostly went to Temple Square, including the Church History Museum where they had a new children’s exhibit. (I even danced in a flowing Mexican skirt. No picture luckily.) We took a short train ride (just to give Peter a train ride) to the Planetarium, where the pictures were taken. Peter and I have enjoyed having Uncle Will around and he’s leaving in just a few days to go on his mission. I’m very excited for him, but at the same time we will miss him a lot. I asked Peter one day who his favorite person was and he said Uncle Will. It’s been fun to be able to spend a lot of time with him before he leaves for two years. Good luck William!
Logan Canyon in Autumn
My sister, the kids and I took a drive up Logan Canyon while our husbands were at Priesthood session. It was lovely. I visited second dam where I had my first date with Joe, and saw the start of autumn. I also managed to get my sister carsick. I love going out and enjoying the changing season. Fall has always been one of my favorites and I’m enjoying the cooler weather. Mowing the lawn this morning was almost magical, with perfect weather, green grass, and the end in sight.
Mulch
This is a tip for everyone who wants to make their landscape look better but don’t have the time or money to do a lot: add mulch. Here is one situation where I used this tactic.
The front of this condo complex could no longer be irrigated due to problems with the irrigation system. The grass was dying, although most of the trees in the strip were doing fine. With little in the budget, the solution was to simply kill off any remaining grass and add mulch. The total cost of the project was $500, far less than re-landscaping the area.
The great thing about mulching is it allows for future changes and the gradual addition of plants. The most common solution I see here for cheap landscaping is lawn. Seeding a lawn can be dirt cheap. In the long run, however, the landscape looks boring, the lawn eats up plenty of maintenance time, chemicals and water, and can end up costing quite a bit if you start calculating in all the cost of materials you stick on it. I think laying out proper planting beds and simply mulching is a much better short term fix and it leads to a better long term solution.
I did a garden design for another client who lacked the several thousand dollars to put it in. The plan turned into redesigning the beds, irrigation system and going ahead with the lawn, but waiting on the other large area of mixed planting. That area will be put in gradually. By mulching the area at the beginning of the project it still looks nice and it will be easy to add the variety of shrubs and perennials over the next few years.
Plants are wonderful, but they can often be fairly expensive. Don’t just turn the landscape over to cheap lawn or leave ugly dirt and weed showing: maintain the areas you want for mixed planting beds, mulch them, and than add plants as budget and times allows.
Maintenance on a mulch-only area is simple: hand pull or spray out the weeds. If the mulch is deep enough, there won’t be very many. Wood/bark chips and rocks/gravel are the most common types of mulch and both work fine. Pick whichever look you like best and fits with long term goal of the landscape. Buying mulch in bags gets expensive quickly. Bulk mulch is far cheaper, and is often worth the cost of delivery if you don’t have a truck. (You often need more mulch than you think. For instance, a rear border of about 5 feet deep in a small yard will need around 5 cubic yards of mulch, or 5 truckloads. There’s plenty of good calculators out there to figure out how much mulch you actually need…but basically it’s just a matter of geometry.) Mulch should be put on to a depth of two inches. It will also need to be replenished occasionally ( every 1-5 years for organic mulch/bark chips).
Mulch has the benefits of keeping down weeds; maintaining even soil moisture; decreasing soil temperature; preventing compaction, soil splashing and soil crusting; and adding organic matter into the soil (if you use an organic mulch). Mulch is a great solution to tons of landscaping problems. Use it.
Nature Walk in Provo Canyon
Fall’s here! The first official day of fall was Friday, but I have been noticing the leaves starting to change on the mountains for the last week. It’s amazing how fast the leaves turn color. Two weeks ago I didn’t notice a thing. We took a drive up Provo Canyon and went on a little nature walk. Peter led the way. He went off the beaten path at one point so we followed him and found this neat little fort someone had built. I don’t think we would have gone there if we didn’t follow him. It was fun not to worry about going somewhere or making a certain mileage, but just enjoying the changing leaf color and all the little things Peter liked. He would blow on old seed heads, point out the bees and other bugs, and loved to run down the hills.
Happiness
I’ve been working a bit. Business is good. I’m busy, but only when I want to be. I’m actually getting return client and referrals which means I’m somewhat good at this. (Actually I know I’m a good garden designer: I’m at least better than an average homeowner. I think anyone planting a garden/landscape should use me.) I’ve also been entertaining/taking care of a small toddler who has been a little sick. The sick hasn’t been bad, someone (which means both of us) is just a little grumpy.
Other things I’ve been up to include disk golf (the course in American Fork is awesome), a great family dinner with pictures, going to the dentist (no cavities!), seeding the front lawn (hoping it works), and reading a book (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is wonderful).
Oh and I have news. Click around and you can find it.
Cute Singing
I’ve been trying to get this on video. Peter will stop when he sees the camera’s out. I finally got a decent one while we were hiking up to Stewart Falls yesterday for Joe’s birthday.
I had an awesome birthday too, even though it wasn’t mine. Hiking, dining out, lots of time alone together, and family with peach cobbler made from fresh peaches. Yummy.
Spaghetti Sauce
So with the load of tomatoes on my counter I decided to try something new. Growing up, extra tomatoes turned into salsa. Currently, salsa sounds like heartburn to me so I was up for other options. I had froze some for cooking earlier, but now I wanted to try my hand at canning. My experience with canning has been occasionally helping others and doing grape juice earlier in the week. (So super easy and we’ve actually almost drank all 6 quarts we’ve made.) Canning spaghetti sauce would be a new adventure.
The first thing that happened was the water was shut off. I sat there for a second and stared at my tomatoes waiting to be washed and decided to run to the store. I went and bought one plant and a few stones and discover the sale associate at Wholesale Landscape Supply knew who I was. He helped me buy a van full of plants earlier. I’ve never actually gone to a store enough for people to know me. Guess I just needed a store I liked enough.
When I got back, the construction guys (who I believe were supposed to be done in July) had the water back on. So I went at it, blanching, peeling and squeezing tomatoes. I was interuppeted by story time (where my toddler suprisngly sat and paid attention the whole time) and lunch (which my visiting sister prepared). Eventually I had all the tomatoes cooked down, and seasoned. I tasted it and discovered that the difference between store and home-done tomato sauce is the same as store and home-grown tomatoes. They don’t really compare. I will being doing this again.
I followed the directions here. That site seems to have all the preserving instructions I’ll ever want. I’ve been there a lot during harvest season. The only thing that didn’t match was I had less than 15 lbs of tomatoes (mostly romas), and still made over 7 pints of sauce. Which might be because I did have mostly romas that are a whole lot more meatier. I froze the extra quart I had.
Garden Ownership
I’m not that into gardening right now. The produce is coming in, plants sales are all over, and with the cooling temperatures it’s a great time to get garden projects done. But gardening mostly feels like a chore to me. The main problem is that I simply lack any feeling of ownership over the gardens I do have.
I just finished a project last week that I loves. I designed and installed an extended rear planting bed in the garden of an acquaintance. It was a hired job (and yes I do hire out for jobs, but generally just smaller ones more involved with planting design) and I loved being able to create something, not on my budget. I love being able to work through a project from conception through installation and will be happy to see how this one matures. (Better than it looks now, if all goes well.) Here’s a glimpse:
But in my own garden I have a dilemma. I’m moving for Atlanta in January. Anything I do right now will not be mine to enjoyed, and it is with my own non-paid time and my own money. Every garden I work on I will be leaving and I just can’t motivate myself to do too much. I’m not even getting too much joy out of the massive amounts of produce I’m storing, like grape juice, tomatoes, and frozen peaches. It’s not coming with me when I leave.
I want a garden that is mine and will be mine for a while. I’ve been moving around so much that any garden I work in is soon left, so I often can’t enjoy the results. I would love a place that is mine and where I can do fun things in, designs I would never put in someone else’s yard. To really get the joy out of gardening, you have to own the space and see it for years to come.
California Vacation
We left Sunday afternoon for the long drive to California and proceed to drive hours through the middle of nowhere. Highway 6 in Nevada has got to be one of the boringest roads ever. We found a lovely motel in Tonopah called the Clown Motel. The name scared me a lot, but the price was good. The hotel was decorated in clowns, not my choice of décor, but it was clean and functioning and most of all cheap so it worked for a night.
Back to the road, we made it to Yosemite before lunch and entered the east side on the Tioga Road. It’s not the prettiest part of Yosemite, quite a bit like what are mountains are here and I don’t need to drive hours to see that. We did climb the Lembert Dome which was a four mile hike to the top of a granite capped mountain. It’s a good way to wimp out of hiking half-dome. Peter hiked a lot too.
We camped up at Hodgdon’s Meadow. It was a bit far from things but at least in the park (reservations aren’t plentiful a month before going). That evening we made a stop to Bridal Veil Falls and then to the store to buy everything we forgot, including a can opener and flashlights. I’m miffed about the flashlights. I love a good headlamp. A cheap flashlight was not a good replacement.
The next morning we went down to Mariposa grove to see the Sequoias. We took the bus down (Peter quite enjoyed that), and enjoyed a stroll through the forest. I absolutely love old-growth forests with huge trees. We went back up to Yosemite Valley and took a bike ride to Mirror Lake. It wasn’t much of lake, but was a fun ride. Joe set to work building something with sand and Peter and I waded around the creek. There was a good view of half-dome there too. We visited the visitor’s center and finished by hiking to lower falls.
Back at camp we had our only camp fire of the week. (I really don’t like camp fires.) We cooked hot dogs and strawberry marshmallows and Peter didn’t get burned. (Last trip he picked up a hot hot-dog stick and burned his hand pretty good.) That was it for Yosemite—we camped up and drove out the next morning.
We went through agriculture paradise mixed with very dry areas to visit Joe’s brother in Pacific Grove. After a short visit, we went down the coast to camp at Limekiln State Park. It is a beautiful place to camp. We were about 100 yards from the beach. There were also areas up in a redwood grove.
The next morning, we hiked the few trails in the park. That was probably the most serene, fun and pretty part of the whole trip. There was a 100 ft waterfall, lots of redwoods, creeks, and the lime kilns for which the park was named. The kilns were much bigger than expected and pretty cool to see as they gradually eroded into the landscape. On our way back a random guy hailed us. He recognized us from the Yosemite campground. We were neighbors for a couple of nights there, and then ended up in the same campground 5 hours away. Very random.
We drove to a few other State Parks, including a cool waterfall at Julia Pfeiffer state park, and another less-cool one at Big Spur. That one involved a hot, ugly trail up to it. The original trail went thought the cool redwoods, but had been burned out and instead we bypassed the redwoods for a steep, shrubby slope. We went to Pfeiffer Beach in the afternoon and played in the sand. I even got a little nap in.
Friday we spent visiting Joe’s brother and family again. He had a double sea kayak that we took out on the ocean. Even Peter got a ride. We also took a very long walk over to Fisherman’s Warf for chowder and ice cream. It was a lot of fun to visit with them.
Saturday we drove home. It included a delicious lunch at Chili’s, which was wonderful except Peter threw up his huge pizza right after. He threw-up a total of five times before I wised up and gave him Dramamine. After that, he was so much happier. The drive home was long and almost uneventful. We ended up getting a flat tire 40 miles west of Wendover at 10:30 at night. Somehow we still made it home on the spare and pulled up at 2:30 am on Sunday.
Here’s a load of pictures to complete the long post. Enjoy.
Camping Out
Last week we went on a family campout with my maternal grandparents, brothers, little sister and parents. It was a blast. The area was gorgeous–covered in wildflowers. We camped right by a stream underneath a bunch of douglas-fir trees. We spent a lot of time relaxing, walking, talking, eating and not doing much. The best was singing around the campfire. My brothers are pretty good and Peter loved to dance along. The only thing bad was the first night our air mattress leaked (it’s been getting old) so the second day we went and bought a new one. Slept much better than second night.
We also have done Thanksgiving Point $2 Tuesdays. Peter loved all the animals at Farmland last week and the dinosaurs this week. He kept saying “Dino–Roaarrr!” That kid is getting to be quite the talker. He’s talking in sentences now…not that I can always understand him. He’s also learned “torry” (he can’t say “ss”) and now I can’t get mad at him because it’s too cute.
Here are some pictures I’ve liked from the last week or so:
Liz Braithwaite 