I've been living in a cave.

A thesis cave.  Which is not my favorite.  It's dark in here.  Did I pay the electricity bill?  Where's my headlamp?!?!? And my two dollars??!?!

Soon (in August), I will emerge and *gasp!* update this blog.

Until then, find inspiration over at my friend Shannon's blog - http://shanwowandkapow.wordpress.com/.  She's awesome.  She's funny.  She runs.  And she likes squirrels.

Master-peas in the community garden

The peas in our community garden plot had been growing like nutjobs. 

They grew up and past their tall anti-wildlife cage a couple weeks ago, so I took the top off.  And, the deer or moose, or whoever had been munching the peas when they first started growing, were back to eat the tops.  

Also, the hot and dry weather of the past week, coupled with the fact that the stream the garden uses for supplementary water, hit them hard, especially since peas are cool weather plants.  Many stems were dry and snapped off, but the pea pods still had peas in them!  All of the peas in the pods were still good; hooray.  I won't be able to use the whole pods in stir fry as I'd planned, but I shelled what I had, and they'll make a delicious steamed dish with a bit of butter, salt, and pepper.

The carrots and lettuce that we have in the same beds as the peas are looking decently happy too.  The lettuce is ready to be cut, but I didn't have a knife or scissors with me today.  Maybe tomorrow.

In the other bed, the sunflower and lettuce are happy as well.

Community garden progress!

Back in December, I got on the waiting list for Summit Community Gardens and a plot opened up when someone decided they didn't want to return for this year.  Each community garden member gets two raised beds, 3x6 feet each.  So we've been digging in the dirt.  And it's fun!  With views of a couple ski areas and surrounding mountains, it's not a shabby place to garden at all.

The plants have done well so far, and most were started from seed.  In the two beds, garlic, chives, tomatoes, basil, radishes, lettuce, carrots, and peas have already sprouted.  I put some dill and oregano in there last week, but there are no shoots yet in the areas where I planted them.

This is the bed on the north side, in which chives, radishes, lettuce, garlic, and tomatoes are growing:

Grape tomato seedlings that I transplanted to the outdoor beds today. I started these indoors in early May. They've been doing well indoors, and I hope they get fruit on them before the end of the season.

From L-R: radishes, lettuce, with crazy amounts of garlic sprouting everywhere!

Chives, garlic, radishes, lettuce:

Close-up of the garlic and lettuce... the lettuce is Black-seeded Simpson green leaf lettuce, and they seem happy in the beds so far. 

The bed below is what we're calling the west bed (complete with a cage to protect the plants from hungry animals).  In this bed, we have radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, peas, and oregano.

The peas in there have been growing like a bunch of nutjobs, and some sort of wildlife has been munching the tops of them:

Since we're growing a salad bar for us and not for the local wildlife, I built a second cage this morning to go over the bed: 

So hopefully now we'll have some peas left for us!  Some more shots of the sprouts in the west bed:

L-R: lettuce and tomatoes, carrots, peas.  Oregano has not yet sprouted.  Radishes are just out of view to the left.

A closer shot, looking across the bed... carrots are easily visible!

Close up of some of the tomato seedlings in this bed, planted around the lettuce:

Obviously nothing is ready to harvest yet other than the chives in the north bed.  Hopefully there will be something for humans to munch on in 2-4 weeks!

Here a moose, there a moose...

... moose of all sizes have been visiting us!  Yesterday, this mom and her calf came by the backyard with a case of the munchies:

and then they went over to the neighbors to eat their plants too.  I think they knew the neighbors are out of town and that they'd have free reign of the salad bar.

Garden salad for breakfast

Another wildlife visitor this morning!  This moose was snacking out of our flowerbeds by the kitchen window, and stopped long enough to peep in the window. 

Unlike the April 30 moose, this one looks well fed.  Apparently flowers are nutritious, and the moose has been eating them.  Lots of them.

Birdseed is for all kinds of animals...

Birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and...

BEARS!!!!

We were hanging out in the kitchen, measuring for some new countertops, looked out the window, and saw what I first thought was a really large, hairy dog, barely visible off the right side of our patio.  Then I realized that it wasn't a dog, and said "Oh shit, that's a BEAR!!!".  We ran around like a couple nutjobs, frantically looking for a camera that was charged and snapped a few pictures.  I think this is an older black bear cub, raiding our birdfeeder.  Mom was nowhere around, so we're wondering if something happened to her and the cub has resorted to snarfing down the birdseed as its Sunday evening meal.  Guess we'll be changing our bird feeder arrangements and learning if bird feeders are even a possibility while bears are not hibernating.

Stuffing face with birdseed...

When the neighbor's dog started barking...

Back to snarfing birdseed...

It's a regular Animal House!

On Monday, we had a couple of visitors.

First, a moose!  A scrawny young one, who pooped in our yard and then ate almost all the new aspen trees our neighbor just planted.  Guess we won't be planting trees anytime soon.

 

And later that night, this little raccoon raided the bird feeder.  El gato wanted to take him on!  Lucky for the glass in the door... that raccoon would have kicked our cat's ass.