Four Part Harmony

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.