COME TO THE FAIR

This is our Community Garden Association booth at the "Spring Garden Fair" in Canby.  Every year on the first weekend in May, the Master Gardener's of Clackamas County organize this event. There now are over 200 vendors of things associated with gardens whether plants or garden art or landscaping.  At our booth we sold stepping stones and garden art made by students at the middle school where our community garden is located.  We also gave out information about the garden and about gardening classes we now teach or bring in others to teach.

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SHOPPING FOR A PART

Thursday was "boys day" this week.  On the way to our house we stopped at our favorite antique toy store and bought a couple of old remote control cars and some controllers.  A grand total of $2 invested.  It turns out the cars and controllers had different frequencies installed and therefore wouldn't function as we thought they would.  Hence, a trip to our local Fry's to see if they had some replaceable chips.  No luck!  In the meantime we stopped to check out the latest XBox stuff on display.  Casey wasn't too interested, but then it had been a long day. 

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FENCE REPAIR

While we were enjoying ourselves in the deserts of Arizona and California, the rain and winds in Oregon took a toll on our garden fence.  One post broke off at ground level and two sections of fence boards blew down.  This week I dug out the old post and replaced it with a new one and while I was at it, I replaced the back sides of the raised beds.

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A BIRTHDAY TREE

This morning when Diana arrived to pick up Ryder, there was a surprise on board the van.  Casey and Phelan along with a beautiful new Black Cherry tree for our garden.  The cherry tree is a birthday gift for Marlene.  The boys had overheard her talking about wanting one to replace an old apple tree that does not produce fruit that we use.  Thanks for the thoughtful gift.

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TRAIN TABLE PROGRESS

Ryder is getting very good at measuring, gluing, and nailing the various support pieces which make up the frame of the train table.  We are finding out this is not a simple process.  It has been good having him here for an extended period by himself.  We've been able to focus on this project and actually see the progress.  Besides that, he's fun to have around.

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THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIN TABLE

Today we started the train table.  This is project that Ryder has been planning for several years.  We tried one method of building it a couple of years ago and it never quite worked, so we abandoned that and started from scratch following the plans from an "Atlas Plan" book.  This one is called "Plywood Summit Lines".  Today we cut the pieces for the table base.  I did the measuring and Ryder did the cutting.  We put in 6 hours together and all fingers were accounted for at the end of the day.

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END OF A BUSY DAY

This is the end of a busy "boys day".  I'm the one who should be sleeping.  These guys wear me out.  Today it rained all day and we did some inside things like finding the prize from clues that Ryder wrote up.  The prize was hidden at the end of a trail of clues leading from the refrigerator to the motor home and back to the hanger.   

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TEAING ON THE GRASS

The tea brewed 36 hours.  This afternoon, in between showers, I made an application to the lawn.  I mixed 1 gallon of tea to 14 gallons of water in my sprayer and sprayed all the grassy area.  Our property is one acre total.  The grass covers about 3/4th's of that and I used 3 gallons of tea to spray the lawn which means I used about 4 gallons per acre.  The book recommends 5 gallons per acre, so I'm close.  This whole process is intended to keep our lawn and garden healthy and green without using chemical fertilizer.

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THE TEA IS BREWING

This is 10 gallons of our well water with 2 quarts of compost, one in each leg of an old pair of panty hose.  That's an aquarium air pump off to the left which keeps a good supply of oxygen coming to keep the mixture aerobic.  We also added 4 tablespoons of maple surrip to feed the microbes and help them grow faster.  

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COMPOST TEA, COMING UP

One of the exciting books we have been reading is "Teaming With Microbes", A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web.  We went shopping today for an air pump to aerate our compost tea.  We found this neat store in Tigard that specializes in hydroponic gardening supplies.  Never knew such  a store existed until we started searching the web.

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GET READY,GET SET, GO

This started out as a train table, but with some good work by Ryder, the tracks have been removed and it now makes a really good race track for hot wheel cars.  Just another way to enjoy "Boys Day".

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THE WACO FLYS TODAY

The rumble of a radial and the leisurely lift off was sweet to watch.  This is a beautiful airplane. 

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TAXI FOR TAKE OFF

Today was coffee and donut day at Lenhardt's airport.  Every Friday the coffee pot is on and donuts are provided in the pilot's lounge at around 10 in the morning.  When the sky is clear and the sun is shinning, thats where I head.  Today was bright and calm and it was a good day for one of the guys to test fly his newly restored WACO.

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AN EARLY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

The dinner turned out to be a surprise early birthday celebration for Marlene, complete with cake and ice cream and to top it all off, a gift.  Good friends are hard to beat.

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DINNER WITH FRIENDS

Our friends, Richard and Patricia, invited us over for dinner the other night.  Marlene pitched in to help Richard stir fry the veges.  The skillet on the right has fillets of salmon.  What a wonderful meal served with a few glasses of Richards home vinted Pinot Noir.

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