Hello Rain!

Thanks to the rain, the garden is thriving. This is a long overdue update of the progress in the past month:

4/27/11 Strawberries and peas are having a growth contest

5/1/11 Shallots are doing very well

5/8/11: The beautiful head of butter crunch lettuce

5/8/11

5/15/11 the blueberry is hanging on

 

5/15/11 Carrots!

5/15/11 shallots on steroids

5/15/11 more onions

5/15/11 what used to be the beautiful head of butter crunch lettuce :(

I came home one day to find two squirrels prancing around in the fenced off garden >:(. Bad squirrels!

5/15/11 the dill's a goner too

5/15/11 passion fruit flower

5/15/11 zucchini leaves are as big as our hands

5/15/11 roma tomato

5/15/11 getting greener

5/15/11 heirloom tomatoes

Just what the garden needs

5/15/11 dad let me use the staple gun to make a barrier for the garden

I missed the first time

5/22/11 the most beautiful zucchini blossom I've ever seen

5/22/11 More buds!

5/22/11 Zucchini are doing well

5/22/11 the garden

5/22/11 evidence of the destruction by squirrels. :( my heirloom tomatoes!

5/22/11 Strawberries

5/22/11 Snap bean flower!

5/22/11 Yay snap beans :)

5/22/11 The peas (a squirrel favorite) are not doing well at all :(

5/22/11 Giant zucchini leaves

5/22/11 Hopefully these will turn into avocados

Meet Mario and Luigi

I submitted this as a fun addition to our homepage at work. I'm posting it here because the post I'm currently working on is taking forever and I don't want the world to miss me too much :)

As many of you may not know, I have turtles.

Mario and Luigi have been in the Thai household for over 11 years. When they were gifted to me and my sister, they were slightly larger than quarter coins. Now they are larger than the palm of our hands.

For a period of time we thought Luigi (my sister’s turtle) was blind because he wasn’t able to eat the food pellets that were right in front of him. He would aim, snap, and miss two out of three times. Now we know Luigi is not blind (he just has bad aim) because he is quick to dive off the platform when there are visitors near the tank. Luigi also enjoys swimming into the glass wall (he does not get anywhere but he still paddles furiously). When swimming tires him out, he likes to straddle the two floating platforms in the tank (as pictured). Mario (my turtle) is more of an observer. He observes when there is food in the tank and he is good at snapping most of it up before Luigi can get to it. Mario always has a voracious appetite, which is why he is noticeably larger than Luigi. Mario has claimed the larger platform for himself and whenever Luigi is in his territory, he will climb up on Luigi’s back and chill there until Luigi dives off.

When Mario is not eating, he is busy plotting ways to escape. He did succeed one time and made it all the way down a flight of stairs unscathed (we still can’t figure out how he climbed out of his old tank to start with). I found him hiding beneath the curtains near the front door. He hasn’t been seen out of his tank since but I hope it’s because he has no desire to escape the lovely new home and basking platform he shares with Luigi.


The End (for now).

April's Showers

April wasn't particularly rainy so the garden needed a little bit of help from the water hose. Being that I'm not keen on waking at the crack of dawn, I've been trying to make the most of daylight savings and spending some time in the garden after work when there's still light out.

Here's a look from 4/20:

 
These are mystery beans. I may need your help figuring out what they are when they bear fruit.

The peas are having a hard time grabbing onto the makeshift trellis. I have to move them onto the trellis every time I water them because they somehow manage to slip off.

The cilantro were struggling at first but they're getting the hang of the outside world and are looking more and more like cilantro.

Go lettuce go! At the rate these are developing, we'll have enough to make a light half salad for the lucky dieter.

This tomato plant (not sure which kind it is anymore) was purchased as a small plant so I'm not worried about it failing as long as it's watered frequently.

The yard is also getting some work done at the same time:

From 4/25:

Mom added some more herbs to the garden. Mint at the far end and something I've only seen in Vietnamese dishes in the foreground.

These are the zucchini before mom replanted them outside the gated garden. Apparently I planted the seeds too closely and didn't leave any room for the plants to crawl about (Oops!).

Onions (taken from the stash in the fridge) have sprouted bigger leaves. These were planted with lots of care by JB and replanted by mom because mom always gets the final say.

What's this, a blueberry flower?? Hooray! Now sprout another one so we can get at least one blueberry.

 

 Mom has taken over this garden. These are the shallots she planted. They are poking through the layer of dried grass she sprinkled over the bulbs. This layer helps to keep the soil in place under the pressure of the water stream. Genius!

And lastly for this post, 4/27:

We've got peppers! It's always fun to see half eaten peppers. I wonder if squirrels can feel the burn...

Mom's planted two strawberry plants in place of the zucchinis. I guess these don't need that much room to crawl.

The Mishap

Three and a half years ago I was provided a canvas and easel and was asked to make a painting. I still have the canvas and easel but no still no finished painting.  However, that's not to say I've been letting the materials collect dust for the past three years. They collected dust for only the first two years. Last year I finally picked up my brushes and dusted off the canvas to try my hand at painting again. Below is a series of progress pictures of the painting from March 2010, all done in one day:

Start with a blank canvas. I chose to do a horizontal landscape because I had in mind a beach scene.

Lightly pencil in the major lines and put down a base coat. I decided to make the base coat the three major colors of the painting.

Add more detail to the background area (in this case the ocean and sky) by layering with more vibrant shades of blue.

Once satisfied with background, begin work on the foreground. It's best to have an idea of what you want to put in the whole painting before you begin. Don't be like me and just start painting with no purpose because you'll end up with these on your painting:

And then these:

And next thing you know it'll look like this:

I like my palette better:



I was quite unhappy with the final product of this painting session so I decided to let the piece collect some more dust all over again. I put my easel and other painting materials, along with the painting, in the room on the other side of the house until I recovered from this mishap.

Some things I learned from this experience:

-Do not start painting without a final image in mind. At least, don't do it on such a large canvas.

-I don't like painting flowers

-Acrylic paint dries really fast

-Mixing colors is fun! The colors on this canvas were created using basic red, yellow, green, blue, white, and black.