Space Cat

Space Cat

An homage to a favorite childhood book, and because sometimes my cat jumps up in the middle of the night and runs around at top speed.  Where is he going?  What is he doing?  I don't know!

Backyard Progress Report #1

It's February and thanks to our gorgeous California climate gardening season is getting underway. I had plans to get my backyard ready for bare root trees back in December; but between the holidays and not having any time or the money to drop on tons of materials this didn't get going until January through now.  I wasn't too sure about how to go about what I wanted to do either; essentially, to build up a retaining wall big enough for dwarf fruit trees along my back wall.  After some thought I decided - I REALLY don't want to haul that much dirt to make this idea feasible!  It would probably take me a whole year, at the rate I was going.  Planters seemed like a much better idea.  Just build up enough dirt around the tree to get the necessary depth...and I could make it all modular! 

no fancy construction here!

Modular also seemed like a good idea because I really had no idea what I was doing.  If I messed up, it wouldn't ruin everything.  :)  I decided to make the planters open at the bottom and line them with landscaping fabric so they would drain freely and to construct these as simply as possible because I'm not so sure about my carpentry skills.

structure and order starting to appear

I went with 4 planks on each side, held together by brackets and nails.  Wood was bought and cut at Home Depot, common redwood.  Cost for each planter is coming to about $60, $40 for the wood and $20 for the brackets.

Progress!  Three planters made and housing a peach, orange (or maybe lemon which is in the foreground), and avocado tree, and loose planks to mark where the rest of the planter boxes will go. Trees will stay in the pots for this year to see how they'll do in the part-sun location. Next year or the year after when they're big enough I'll put them into the planters directly.

The longer planks are only laying out the probably position so far, and are not set in place yet.

Don't quite know what I'll do with the corners of the yard after that!  On the right side there's my compost heap (and a big pot of blueberry plants) - and not sure how to make a graceful end to the row I have going on here.  Maybe just low beds to complete the retaining wall?  I do need a good spot for herbs!

in the the land of pickles, the clear topped jar is king.

 Monkey see, monkey do.  I went over the a food event at the SF Ferry building last weekend and tasted some delicious pickled goods from Happy Girl Kitchen, and in addition to serious pantry envy (even though theirs is a store display), I was inspired to get pickling on my own.  And, also at the ferry building I found the the jam jars I didn't even know I needed to have, but now my life feels a little more complete: Weck jars.  These seriously beautiful glass jars feature glass tops with a rubber gasket and clips to keep it all together.  A little research reveals that these are actually the types of jars used previous to the more common pop top lid jars we have today.  Probably for good reason; they're trickier to use and to get a good seal which is so important for food safety.  But, you can deny that these are just more pretty.

While googling around on how to even use these things I came across some wonderful looking pickle (both processed and refrigerator) recipes that looked so temping I had to use my jars the very next day.  It's really cool seeing your item through the tops of the lids! 

 I've got some dill and garlic pickles, and red onion pickles.  The red onion looks a bit crazy due to there being red wine vinegar in with the red onions and I think that purple red is sort of leaching out.  I can't wait to try the onions on burgers this week.  Not sure how long I can wait before popping open the dill pickles - I think I need to let them age to get to the proper level of pickledness but it will be hard!

I had to process the pickles twice.  The second time the gasket tab did the proper "stick your tongue out down" look that indicates a good seal.

flump

Sometimes, I just join him on the floor.

I'm getting back into watercolor - I used to paint quite often but it's been about a decade and I need to remind myself on how to do it.  Turns out that digitizing a watercolor isn't that easy either.  The colors didn't turn out as clear as the actual, physical original; it could be the type of pigment of the paint (there's fun violet and light blue washes in some of these frames that are lost).  I like the way the middle frame came out the best. :)