Avery Park Garden

This is our community plot at Avery Park. I was originally really excited to do this post because this garden had become my pride and joy. We kept up on the weeding and went out every day to water and monitor growth.


I hand fertilized all of the squash because they weren't setting fruit on their own. We went out one morning to find that deer had eaten the tops off of all of our tomatoes and some of our pop corn. I found a product called Liquid Fence. It has worked great, I spray it once per week and we haven't had deer problems since. Cantaloupes!


Sugar pumpkin:


Here comes the sad part. Aaron went out to the garden to water, on his birthday no less and called me from the garden. "Did you pick two of the watermelons?" Of course I hadn't, he would have known for sure if I had. Someone had stolen 2 of our 3 watermelons. It made me feel sick to my stomach. We obviously have no control over who goes in our space or what they do there. It goes with the territory, but it really sucks to have spent so much time (and money) on this garden to not get what we have grown out of it. I have been out once since to water, and just felt completely deflated. I can't be attached to anything growing there anymore. I think many of our peppers have been taken as well, but I haven't been keeping as close of tabs on them, so I don't know for sure.


Cayenne pepper


Cinderella pumpkin


Tomatillos


Bush delicata


Hungarian wax pepper


Poblano pepper


Acorn squash


Not sure


All of our pepper plants


Pop corn

Ugh. I hope the stealing ceases, but I feel like the pumpkins are next. It makes me want to camp out in the bushes and hunt them down. I kind of suspect homeless people, but it could have been anyone, it is a public park. If it was homeless people, I'm hoping things like squash and hot peppers won't appeal to them. I went out the next day and sprinkled everything with flour to make it look like I had applied pesticides, but it rained today, so that will have washed away. I'm not sure what else I can do but try to release it a bit. I feel like signs may make the problem worse. We talked about possibly covering things with netting or chicken wire to make it more difficult, but you can't really keep people out. Any thoughts or ideas? A sign that says Please do not steal?

Ending on a happier note...I have my first job interview in Albany tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Our Honey Harvest

We decided that we had enough honey to harvest, yet still leaving the bees with enough honey to overwinter. I'll start by talking about our weaker hive, they don't have enough honey yet, so we have been feeding them sugar water like crazy. They take the water and make it into honey. Here is a frame that is partially capped. They cap the honey when it is done, meaning the right amount of water has evaporated from the original nectar.


Remember how we combined two hives? Well we haven't seen the queen since, so we don't know who the new queen is - but she is laying like crazy. Here is some brood, this would be called a solid brood pattern, meaning she is laying in each cell. This is a very good thing, as opposed to spotty brood.



Moving on to our stronger hive, we took one full Western box from them. Each frame weighs 5 pounds! Here is some of their beautiful capped honey:




We used pretty much the same process as when we extracted honey at Dan's house. Hot knife to uncap. Video at the bottom to show this better.


One the caps were removed we put them in this two frame extractor we borrowed from friends.


The frame after all the honey has been spun out.



After 4 frames we would have to drain the tank because it would hit the bottom of the frames. We opened the spout (just like on a car where you change the oil) and double sieved it to remove wax pieces.

The first video shows uncapping and the second show the extractor in motion. Near the end, if you watch the sides you can see the honey hitting the sides of the extractor as it is pulled from the comb (hopefully you can see this, a lot of quality was lost in the upload). Having an 88 degree kitchen last night was actually a very good thing, it kept the honey flowing! We got about 2.5 gallons from our one box, a nice amount I think. We should get about 9-10 gallons next year, too much for a normal household! Our honey is DARK and so good! It's much darker than our neighbor's honey...one block away! Isn't that a strange thing.

Winter Garden

Aaron took his motorcycle down to Eugene yesterday to pick up some bee supplies and while he was there he went to Territorial Seeds in Cottage Grove. I sent him with a list, but he took the liberty of throwing in a few extras he thought I would like. He knows what gets me!


Last year I planted the same varieties that I had planted in the summer. This year I got smart and am starting with things that want to be planted this late. Tomorrow we are tilling up a spot to plant all these wonderful things.

We had our first chicken drama. Our buff became sick. I noticed last night she was walking around with one eye closed and falling asleep standing up. I quickly made some phone calls and ran over to a friend's house to grab some medicine. The good feed store was closed and the other place didn't seem to know anything. We isolated her and carefully put some medicated water in her mouth with a syringe. The heat wasn't helping. But she got herself to bed alright. I watched her this morning, she was definitely not worse, so I took that as a good sign. She's still moving slow, but she is eating and drinking. Both their food and water is medicated right now. so I hope I have all my bases covered. She will walk around for a bit and then just collapse and take a short nap, all puffed up. I'm hoping by tomorrow she will be feeling much better, it is supposed to be cooler. When I walked out tonight she ran over to the fence to greet me, we can tell that she is on the mend.


I'm pretty sure she has coccidiosis, which is common in chickens (and dogs and raccoons and wild birds). She seems to be responding well to the medicine. I considered taking her poop in to get tested, but glad I saved the $25 (OSU Vet school) on this $6 chicken. Good thoughts for her until she is 100%!

Ashland and Crater Lake

I know now why I usually do a Facebook album for trips. I want to post more pictures, but I like to look back and my blog and see what I did and remember all the little stories. My sister and her boyfriend came to visit from Munich. They started in California - wine country - for a wedding and worked their way up. We met up with them and my parents at Crater Lake. But first we headed out a day early and spent a morning exploring Ashland. We had breakfast at Brothers' Restaurant. It was pretty spendy, especially for breakfast, so we opted for less expensive items. Aaron a bagel sandwich.


I had the French toast and wished we had just split that, the bread was over an inch thick!


I tried Lithia water for the first time - yuck!


We wandered around Lithia Park. It was beautiful there, lots of space to wander around with a Japanese garden mixed in. We also really liked that all of the different kinds of trees were labeled. We worked on our tree ID'ing skills on this trip.


Then we were off to Crater Lake NP. My parents have this HUGE canvas tent from the 70's. It is ridiculous and I can't believe that they still use it.


Our first views of the lake - my sister's boyfriend Thilo's very first views! It was cloudy and not as blue as it usually is. But still beautiful.



Then it was back to camp to make dinner. My mom really likes to making camping meals that are intricate and somewhat over the top. I like to eat well while camping too, but I try to chop, grate and cook as much as I can in advance to keep it more simple. We were in charge of dinner the first night and had burritos.


Peppers and onions from our garden!


And for dessert, peach blackberry crisp. Aaron made up the topping ahead of time and we just put the fruit with a little sugar and cinnamon onto heavy duty tin foil, covered with topping and threw them into the fire.



Delicious, easy and no clean up!


The next morning we started the day with the loop hike at Annie's Creek. There were still quite a few wildflowers blooming.


Then back up to the lake - more blue today.



Phantom Ship


A family of Steller's Jays.


We had boat ride reservations in the afternoon, so we hiked down the Cleetwood Cove Trail to the water's edge. I got in the water with Catherine and Thilo and had time to mostly dry before we got on the boat.


The boat tour goes around the whole lake, with a ranger giving interesting bits of information along the way. It is unbelievable to be on a boat in that blue, blue water.



Our tour, however was over after 30 minutes because of this:


Which was a bummer, because it was an hour and 45 minute ride. They did give us our money back, but we didn't actually get to see anything cool (Phantom Ship, Wizard Island, or the Old Man of the Lake). We made it back to camp just as it was starting to rain. It was dinner time, but we instead huddled under a tree and ate chips and salsa and waited for the storm to pass.


Pretty soon, we started seeing some hail. Some of it was pretty big, and we laughed at its bigness.


Until everything falling from the sky starting being that large. Then we didn't know what to do until my sister yelled "Everyone get in a car!!". So we covered our heads and ran. And I sat in my car, swearing and feeling helpless that my car was being battered! The 1.5 inch hail lasted at least 5 minutes, maybe longer.


The campground was pretty much trashed. Everything was covered in needles and pine cones.


We ran around laughing as we found tree parts in all of the food that had been left uncovered.

My mom after the hail attack. Their tent was about to collapse under the weight of the hail, luckily Thilo saw this and grabbed a climbing helmet from their car and rescued it. Unfortunately their rain fly has been lost in the shuffle over the years, so their tent was soaked inside and out. They ended up having to find a motel, and going home early.


We stuck it out, but even though our rain flies worked, everything was still damp and cold. I didn't sleep well that night because I was freezing until about 6 am. My car has about 60 small dents on it from the hail, but I'm amazed it wasn't worse, the dents are hardly noticeable. The 4 of us went on the Discovery Trail the next morning, around part of the rim. Apparently I didn't take any pictures of this. This trip didn't turn out as planned, but at least these are the more memorable ones!