Best of Spring

Some of the best photos from Spring 2015:

These pictures of the kids from their spring camp at Stough Canyon capture them both perfectly.

Beatrice reading under the tree at our local library

That's not how painting works, William.



 

Beatrice at Descanso Gardens in her favorite area, the Japanese gardens



 

 

Waking up the kids at midnight to go see the grunions:

Dev shines a light on grunion.

 

Hugging at Chuck E. Cheese

 

Cracking up while reading Wayside School is Falling Down

We raised and released butterflies again this year, as well as moths. As you can see, B was sad to see them go.

 

 

Arthur at the library for story time

Teaching B about the earth's motion around the sun



Arthur as Hector (Beatrice was Achilles, of course)

 

William at Underwood Family Farm

Arthur killing it at karaoke, singing Katy Perry's "Roar"

Beatrice dressed like Sappho for a school dress-up day

We got a new chicken, Lilli III, seen here being in the bath:

 

Tea party

At LACMA, Arthur decides he wants to be an artist's model.

 

Hipcooks class with Summer, Amy, and Amy

 

Visiting Lilli in San Jose

We were an IKEA test house.

Photos from my birthday party at Edendale

On to summer ...

 

 



Egg Gift Labels

I just wanted to share these cute labels I made for giving away our chicken eggs.

The chicken drawings are copied from Jessi Bloom's excellent book Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard.

So Many Eggs

Eggs from Luanne, Lilli, and Lenore

For the first time since we got them, all three chickens are now laying an egg every day.  After months with one egg a day - or none at all -  it's pretty exciting! 

Luanne always lays her egg in the morning, Lenore and Lilli in the afternoon.

Now the only question left is what to do with 21 eggs per week? Luckily they make good hostess gifts.

Chicken fence! and vegetable garden

This weekend we built a fence around the raised vegetable planting beds to keep the chickens out.

You may remember that initially we got the chickens to kill grasshoppers and other garden pests.  They did a wonderful job of this - but eventually they figured out that they could eat the vegetables themselves.  Last winter they devoured all of my lettuce in one afternoon.

So Dev and I built a chicken-proof fence around the vegetables: the CEZ (Chicken Exclusion Zone).  To be fair, Dev did all of the building, but I designed the fence and also dug the 24-inch-deep post holes, which was no easy task.

With the fence up, I rushed to fill the beds with new vegetables (after first refreshing the soil with manure, compost, and fertilizer).  Since we're getting a late start this year, I grew some plants from seedlings and others from seeds I'd already ordered.

My garden notebook, where I take notes with a level of detail too excruciating even for this blog

This summer we have:

Tomatoes (Better Boy, Early Girl, Beefmaster, Celebrity, Roma, Cherry, Sungold, and Kellogg's Breakfast)
Carrots (Imperator and Nantes)
Beans (Beurre de Rocquencourt and Missouri Wonder)
Beets (Bull's Blood)
Zucchini (Golden, Black Beauty)
Crookneck squash
Butternut squash
Pumpkins (Connecticut Field and Jack of All Trades)
Bell Peppers
Shishito Peppers
Eggplant (Black Beauty, Ping Tung, and Japanese Long)

Crookneck squash

 

Hopefully I can make up for the late start and get some good produce this summer. I admit, my heart is set on finally growing pumpkins this year (this will be my third try).

Bonus picture of my herbs on the front porch - I love that rosemary tree: