Four Part Harmony

Well, it seems we’ve been busy his past week or so. Since our big heat wave last week it’s been pretty rainy. It’s been kind of cool and drizzly for the most part, though these last few days we’ve had some more humidity and even a thunderstorm or two (rare around these parts). Despite the weather, we’ve managed to keep busy, done quite a bit of work around the house in preparation for Acorn’s arrival, quite a bit of work in the garden, and some other fun stuff too.

Last Tuesday, Doyle and Kadin invited us to a morning baseball game. The Portland Beavers were playing an early 11:00 game, and neither Anna nor Kadin had been to a baseball game before. It was fun while it lasted. Anna wasn’t very interested in staying and sitting on a bleacher bench for very long, what with all the big stadium to explore, and Kadin felt much the same way. So Doyle and I spent most of our time chasing the kids around the stadium, which was just fine. We made it through about 4 innings, which was about what we expected. It still made for a fun adventure.

Here is a picture from Sunday. We got together with a few friends at Rox and Matt’s place for their annual Memorial Day get-together. It was quite a bit of fun, and after a few days of rain the weather was cooperative. Anna had fun playing with some friends of hers that she doesn’t get to see as often. At one point Anna and Zennon were just lounging around on the trampoline and I got a few cute pictures.

Here’s Jubilee, Zennon, Bodie, and Anna all playing some elaborate game that involved tipping the slide over sideways and then bouncing onto the trampoline. Anna really had fun running around the backyard, playing soccer, teeball, hula hoop, tag…she slept pretty well that night.

Among the other things we managed to get accomplished this past weekend, we got almost all of our summer veggies planted. This was quite an accomplishment. Saturday was a nice sunny day, so we went down to the farmers market and got some veggies and a few starts of stuff we hadn’t done from seed. We spent most of the rest of the day working in the garden; got some beds prepped, planted some seeds and a few tomatoes and got everything mostly laid out. Sunday morning after breakfast I did the rest of the planting in a pretty steady rain. It wasn’t too bad though, it was a nice cool rain, and at least it wasn’t blazing hot for the fragile transplants. Most of the seedlings we grew from seed were pretty leggy and neglected. They didn’t get a lot of TLC, but they still seem like they should all be viable. We put in 14 tomatoes, 8 eggplant, 10 basil, 5 hungarian paprika peppers, 3 okra(!), 3 tomatillo, a couple hills of zucchini, and 5 cucumber. We also planted a long row of pole beans. Not a bad couple of days work.

Here’s a view of the spring garden, and to the left of it the newly planted cucumbers. The greens in the spring garden have really taken off with the burst of sun and warmth followed by all this rain.

Here’s a wider view showing both gardens. The summer seedlings look pretty scrawny right now, so I can’t wait for them to take hold and start putting on some growth. We’ll have to hope for some heat and some sun.

Here’s the collard greens (left) and kale (right). Fava beans in the background have some pretty long pods on them now, though it may still be a few weeks before we can harvest any. The peas are starting to work their way up the trellises, and so far the chickens still haven’t managed to eat any of them.

And speaking of chickens, here they are. Still loving their new run and all the clover, weeds, and bugs we’ve been throwing them as we dig up the soil.

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It was feeling like late August here in Portland this weekend. I haven’t heard yet if we broke any records, but I think I can safely say it was the hottest May weekend I’ve ever experienced out here. It hit 92 Friday, and 95 on Saturday. Today was a merciful 85. Being Portlanders, we haven’t seen much sun or high temperature in the past six or seven months, so this caught us a bit off guard.

We did our best to beat the heat. Friday morning Anna and I dove right into a construction project. We had a couple big boxes laying around, that Anna had been making forts with. I told Anna I could try to make her a car, and she was into the idea, so we started in with the scissors and duct tape. I think the whole thing took less than an hour. I had to work fast, as Anna wasn’t much interested in finishing up the fine details. Still, this thing came out pretty cool. It’s got two full size doors and a working steering wheel. We dubbed it the “Annamobile”.

Later on, the neighbors came by and Kadin and Anna got in some more time playing in the car.

That evening, we headed up to the top of Mt. Tabor for a little picnic celebration for our friend Tricia’s birthday. There was a bit of a breeze up there, and lots of friends, which made for a pretty nice evening.

Considering how hot it was on Saturday, we actually got quite a bit accomplished. I got our chicken fence moved, in preparation for the planting of the summer garden. The area on the right side of the picture is where the chickens have had their run for the past year, so the ground is pretty well scratched in and fertilized. We’ll plant our tomatoes and eggplants and summer veggies there this year and hopefully they’ll benefit from all that scratching and fertilizing.

The chickens new run goes back behind where we have our spring garden. We had grown a bunch of clover back there, so the chickens have been in heaven mowing it down. They’ve pretty well munched up most of it over the course of the last two days. I also did a little weeding and thinning in the garden, and put up some little trellises for our peas. I’m a little late getting the trellises out there, but better late than never. Also, I’m somewhat worried that the peas could be within pecking range for the chickens, but so far they haven’t realized it.

Here’s one of our clover patches in full bloom. I went back there to turn on the hose this afternoon and there were about a million bees buzzing from flower to flower. Hopefully they’ll stick around and pollinate some of our tomatoes.

Saturday evening we went over to Dawn and Doyle’s place for a birthday dinner for Dawn. Doyle had the kiddie pool all filled up with cold water, and Anna and Kadin spent the good part of 3 or 4 hours playing and splashing in it.

They had a lot of fun, and we got to sit around in the shade and relax. Win/win.

Today, we made it out to Edgefield for an early round of golf. We were trying to beat the heat, which we probably did to some degree, but it was still pretty hot. Anna and Kadin took turns riding in the stroller, and sitting in the shade wherever possible. Eventually they ended up figuring out how they could both ride in the stroller.

Anna taking a seat in the tall grass.

Sitting in the shade.

Back home from golf, Anna had a long nap, and I did a little clean up outside on the back patio. We got a new couch off craigslist last week, and our old one got temporarily relegated to the back porch, for lack of a better place to put it. I was planning on taking it to Goodwill or similar right away, but then I discovered Nicki napping back there one afternoon. Turns out it makes a pretty nice hanging out spot back there, so maybe we’ll keep it around for a week or two.

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This past Sunday was Mother’s Day, so I hope you all remembered to call your mom (Hi Mom!). We went out to Skamania Lodge, just outside Stevenson, WA in the Columbia Gorge, for a nice brunch with a bunch of friends. On Saturday, Nicki and a group of the moms had gone out to Bonneville Hot Springs to spend the day and stayed out there Saturday night. Sunday morning, us dads brought the kids out and we all had brunch. Here’s a nice photo of the Moms and (some of) the kids. Saturday, while the girls were out at the hot spring, we got Anna, Kadin, and Niko together at Jason’s place and had a little backyard bbq in the drizzly weather. A fun time was had by all, and among other things there was bubbles. Anna, I think for the first time, finally caught on to the technique of bubble blowing. Previously she was most likely to just put the thing right up to her lips or in her mouth, but I think she was watching Jason and I and she figured it out. Anna demonstrating her fine new bubble blowing technique. Here’s a nice photo of Nicki and Keri, both at 34/35 weeks, just 3 or 4 days apart. And of course, after a big fancy brunch with friends, what better thing to do than to go out onto the big grassy hillside overlooking the Columbia River as the clouds start to break up, and take a bunch of pictures of your daughter. Anna wanted to run off some steam, so I kind of chased her around, trying to snap some pictures. Eventually, the whole group of us ended up outside on the lawn, and the kids got to run around and play some more. I took a bunch of pictures of Anna and Kayla as they were playing together on some rocks. Amongst all the picture taking, we also ended up with a nice little family picture, with the big river and the Oregon side of the gorge in the background.

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It was another fun-filled, action-packed weekend once again. We’re back from our annual Westwind music/camping/cooking event out on the Oregon Coast. Here’s the post from last year. (Hey, what do you know, the blog is over a year old! 73 posts and counting. wow.)

It was all the usual fun we always have, with the added bonus that we’re starting to get to know many of the people who have been going to this event for years. There are also some kids that are around Anna’s age and each year it seems to get more fun for her.

This big smile came on a morning, low-tide walk on the beach to check out the tide pools.

We also got to do plenty of digging and playing in the sand.

Here’s a nice picture of Nicki and Anna on the front porch Saturday morning.

Here’s Nicki on our Sunday morning walk on the beach. To the right of the photo, at the north end of the beach is the mouth of the Salmon River, and in the background is Cascade Head. Westwind is located just south of the Salmon River estuary, which is just breathtakingly beautiful. There’s no public road access, so people have to take a ferry across the estuary and hike up the beach to get there. In the past we’ve taken the ferry or hiked the mile and a half or so up the muddy road to get there, but since we come in with the kitchen crew we actually drove all the way in this year. They didn’t want us to leave our car at the camp though, so Saturday morning I drove the car back down the road to the nearest parking area and ran back the mile and a half in the drizzling rain. There are some giant old-growth sitka spruce in that forest. The skunk cabbage and salmonberry are always in full bloom this time of year. It was a nice run.

Sunday was the nicest day by far. The sky was crystal clear and the sun was shining. Here I am breaking the guitar in in a jam that formed on the front porch. I actually got to play quite a fair bit over the weekend. Met and played with a couple other people who are making instruments too, which was great.

We didn’t get much rest Sunday. By the time we got home and got all the critters and plants taken care of, unpacked, mowed the lawn, got everyone bathed and whatnot, it took us well into the evening to get settled back in.

Monday, Nicki’s 36th birthday, was just as beautiful a day, and it was a shame I had to get up early and go to work. I worked through the morning, but Nicki called just after lunchtime and we both agreed that maybe I should leave early and we should go for a hike. So that’s what we did.

We headed out to Angel’s Rest in the gorge. It’s a really pretty hike, and one that’s always been a favorite of ours. It’s a steep climb, like most any of the gorge hikes, but we were in no hurry.

The wildflowers were blooming like crazy. These are delphinium.

A little higher up, the red-flowering currant were in full bloom also. We also saw chocolate lily, bleeding heart, wild strawberries, tons of others.

We made it most of the way to the top, and stopped to share an apple. Anna was getting a bit tired, and we were running up against dinnertime and our plan to get back in time to get the last tee-time at Edgefield, so we decided to head back rather than pressing on to the top. Here’s a view near the top, looking west, as we started to head down.

Anna fell asleep pretty quickly as we headed down, which caused me to have to sort of walk hunchback style the whole way down. We still made relatively good time coming down though, and made it to Edgefield in time to get everyone a quick bite to eat, and to get out on the last tee time.

It was late enough that no one was coming behind us, and we could take our time. Anna got in a lot of putting practice, though she usually found it much easier to just pick the ball up, walk over to the hole and just drop it in. Nicki and I both had our mix of good and bad shots, but all in all it was pretty good for the first outing of the year. The weather stayed nice all evening, not too warm, not too windy, just perfect.

We took a few pictures in the garden as we were finishing up our game. Most of them came out blurry, but we got a couple cute ones of Nicki and Anna.

This one got a little blurry but I like it anyway.

I can’t speak for Nicki, but it was a pretty nice weekend all in all. So long for now!

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