updates on the garden, dogs and fun times

Ben and I spent one of the first warm days of the year going to Cafe Flora for brunch....yum! We had local egg and veggie scrambles. After that we went to PCC in Redmond (one of my favorite activities) and then the Marymor Dog Park. Then of course we couldn't resist spending the rest of the weekend working in the garden.

The Finished Backyard Garden Bed!

Ashley and Amy and I made a delicious Caribbean themed dinner last Thursday night. We had red bean cakes with almond coconut sauce. On the side we had fried plantains. We also made Jennifer Adler's massaged kale salad (http://seattle.consciouschoice.com/2007/05/cooking0507.html). It took a long time but it was definitely worth it.




I found out on April 20th that I got into the internship in Massachusetts. I will be moving to Northampton, MA this August for 11 months and am taking Indigo. Ben and I will have to fly back and forth a lot to visit each other.

Downtown Northampton

Dogs update: Indigo participated in her first flyball tournament last weekend. She did amazing! She won her 1st three titles so she is now Indigo, FDch. Her best time was 4.37. We got lots of compliments on her and questions about where she came from. I will post videos of the tournament when we get them. Ari also did really well. He had a personal best time of 5.37, which isn't great compared to Indy but is a 3 second improvement for him. Indy is still herding regularly and taking "Beyond Basics Obedience". She just finished her first agility class, which went well so we will probably continue with Agility while we are in Mass.
Here is a link to a video of us at Agility class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zB1AZbSWSY&feature=related

Since we've been having so much fun with Indigo and have fallen in love with Border Collies, Ben is thinking of getting another Ignited border collie. One of their females, Dare will be having a litter this winter. She is being bred to Corrie from Ireland with really good herding lines. Check out a photo of Corrie, he is beautiful! http://www.orionbordercollies.com/orionsite_015.htm
We are having trouble deciding if we are crazy enough to have 3 dogs with 2 of them being border collies. We will be very busy and it definitely won't happen until we build an outdoor kennel.

spring in the front yard garden: April 7

Today I harvested some Kale for tonights dinner. I weeded and planted japanese wineberry, a new bulb fennel and rhubarb. I checked on my peas, which are doing fairly well. I can't wait to see what the fruit looks like on the Goumi, it seems to be very happy and is full of buds and leaves. Everything is beautiful during April as the perennials emerge from the ground and color returns to the garden. Tomorrow I will plant lettuce and finish weeding the lower garden beds. Ben fixed the raspberry trellis and is hopefully going to get our wooden raised beds finished soon. I have already pretty much run out of space for gardening. I obviously can't control myself at the nursery.

Shade gardening

Unfortunately I cannot grow many of my favorite plants in our backyard because it is extremely shady. Since we are not willing to cut down the 3 massive Douglas firs we have to deal with our dry, shady conditions. Today I went shopping at Swansons nursery in Ballard and bought some native plants (elderberry, thimbleberry, sword fern). I also bought columbine, forget-me-not & bleeding heart. I also included some photos of our yard the way it looks now. Hopefully in a few months it will be looking a lot better!

spring break 2008

We drove around Oregon and Northern Ca with Mike and Ashley and our 4 dogs. It was crazy but fun. We ate a lot of good food and saw amazing scenery. We pretty much toured dog parks and restaurants. I loved Ashland and Eureka, but I am in love with Portland. The only photos I took were of the dogs at the Oregon dunes.

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