Plant Update!

and this isn't even all of them!  the stuff on the floor is what goes outside in the mornings to harden off & back into the warm safety of indoors in the evenings. 

the pear & plum, plus a grapevine

these guys are just taking off!  just about time to up-pot.

Street Hockey Day

Today we celebrated my nephew TJ's belated 11th birthday party & mema's birthday with a family dinner after the party at her house.  TJ had his hockey team over to Nana & Papa's house for hamburgers, hot dogs, and (street) HOCKEY!  This year, for the first time ever, he didn't invite his childhood friends to his birthday party.  Sniff, sniff, little dude is, like, trying to grow up.  They seemed to really have a good time - there was a lot of laughing & ridiculous boy horseplay  :)   

TJ's the goalie

all excited about watching the big kids play & clapping my back - it was like baby shiatsu  :)

she picks up & puts her hat on when we're getting her jacket on.  she knows what's up now.

this is like the best picture I've ever taken with her teeth showing - #8 just showed up yesterday.

Nana & the baby & the Parmesan make three  :)

she had just eaten an enormous sweet potato (like 8" long & about 3 3/4" diameter) by herself.  mema says it's her Mimi belly (my biggest little sister - we sometimes refer to the Moose as my Baby Mimi or Mimi II).

and how this child loves plastic eggs.  especially ones with stuff inside them so they make noise when shaken.  oi vei.

time to get your frost protection on!

I don't know if it's the storm that threatened us last week or not, but it's supposed to frost over tonight, so Yobo & I (mostly Yobo) busted out with some frost protection.  I do believe tonight was the best night we've ever worked together!  w00t! w00t!  super bonus!

We covered 4 plants - these (a. arguta issai) kiwis & a ben alder currant - with "walls of water."  That white one in the back is a "Wall O Water" brand one & the others are Ferry Morse "Frost Jackets".  This is our first year trying these guys out... we'll see how they hold up!

6 apple seedlings were covered with pots to keep those little buds safe.

Monster ate a whole lot of frozen blueberries today  :)  This is just the beginning - later came painting the kitchen floor & her face in blueberry juice!  hehehehe  we sometimes encourage "fun with food".

a couple of sections of the yard have already become home to many worms again...

crazy worms!  if I can keep myself up late enough, I may try catching some to sell! ha!

hehehehe (in 3, 2, 1...) oh no! my head touched the floor! (end of the world wailing commences)

 

time to get your seed on!

this raised bed was remodeled this year - we pulled it away from the house by about a foot, retilled all the dirt in the bed, put on a layer of compost, and covered it up.  this past sunday, we planted fava beans, spinach, and peas (on the left, against a section of metal from Yobo refurbished from our old box-spring.

more spinach & beans to come... and then corn!  yes, we're being crazy & trying corn this year  :)

Yobo's beautiful tomato starts - mostly honeydrop with some indigo rose

look at those sugar pear buds!

yum yum! bubblegum plum!

also new to us this year - true potato seeds!  these are about 6 weeks old - some are definitely larger than others.  all are rather delicate.  it's kind of cool to see the difference in seeds!

larger potato seed seedlings :)

smaller potato seed seedlings 

Heart Run 2012

The Moose participated in her 1st race today!  We walked / jogged the Heart Run 5K this morning.  This kid, as usual, was a little unsure at first, but then had a darned good time waving to over 5,000 people today!  hahaha she wasn't waving this morning.  At about mile 1, she just started going between waving at everyone, looking up at me all super smiley - yah!, then staring at / studying / smiling at the other babies & young ones  :)   Duh... it just dawned on me as I write it out... ALSO about the 1 mile mark, there was a big brass band playing music on the lawn for everyone & this awesome little bugger just sits up in the stroller and starts rocking out.  She loves to dance.  It's almost like she can't help it - she hears a good beat & she just moves to it.  Her grin was so giant & cheesy!  She's pointing out at everything, "Look mom!"  As we went through the finish line, there were people handing out medals to all the kids hehehe so I guess the Moose just received her first medal, too!  

First race = SUCCESS!!!  

pre-race

post race

yay!

hehehe

The Moose Walk...

The Moose walked!  We went to visit mema last night & brought that little activity center / walking helper with us to show her that the Moose is pretty quick to cross a room with it, which of course meant that the Moose didn't even want to acknowledge the activity center when we got there.  So we started eating instead... mema had something the Moose wanted & she just took her first TWO untethered steps over to get it.  About 5 minutes later, she did it again!  This time it was FOUR steps!  After that, she was done soloing it & grabbed the activity center to show nana (mema) what was what.  I can't believe she did it!  And I got to be there for the first steps!  Though now I feel a little bad that Yobo wasn't there to witness, but he was busy at home making things green  :) 

UPDATE:  we decided to see if the Moose would walk for Yobo tonight AND SHE TOTALLY DID!  She didn't even need bait  :D  we were both saying "can you walk to daddy?" and took 1 1/2 truly awesome steps before fumbling right into dad.  It was priceless - SO freaking cool!

We planted my apples last night in pots.  I have pictures, will post them sometime tonight.  SO stoked!

We got a sugar pear & bubble gum plum tree from Fedco a few weeks ago - these beautiful babies are budding out like champs!  Pictures coming for these bad boys, too!

pear bud busting out

plum buds burst!

the toblerone'd trees being trained slowly to go vertical

Threading bobbins & grafting

I absolutely LOATHE threading bobbins!  Are there any fancy tricks to making this easier?  I can never get it quite tight enough  :(

kitty!

 
Yobo & I attended our first Alaska Pioneer Fruit Growers Association meeting this morning.  Who knew that fruit growers were such a feisty bunch?!  Well, maybe you kind of have to be, given that one of your hobbies IS performing plastic surgery on plants and helping them get their heal on by taping (or otherwise sealing) their open wounds together thus uniting them as one  ;-)


After the meeting, we attended our first grafting workshop (it sounds like they do these at least annually).  You buy the root stock ($3 each), pick out your scion wood (free), listen & watch the instructor (free), and graft some trees together!  A really nice dude (an APFGA member) helped me out & introduced us to a v-grafting tool.  I quite liked it because I'm not yet comfortable with playing with knives in quick, cutting motions.  With the grafting tool, you set the stick in the tool & press firmly; done.  When we got home, Yobo did some research on them and it looks like they v-grafting tool is great for apples & pears, but you have to replace the blades often... unless you get something super awesome like these, but it's gonna cost you, for sure.  There's another version that's good for grapes, but I've forgotten the name :(  

Anyhoo, I did 2 apple grafts - one was Ginger Gold, the other a Rescue crabapple.  We'll see how they do, we're going to put them in pots.  My new gardening end goal is to make an apple or pear tree with multiple varieties on it.  Maybe one day, if we have a super awesome greenhouse & the money to run it, I'll bump it up to a stone fruit or citrus fruit cocktail tree!

beanie baby (that's smashed red beans on her face)