Garden pics

As promised here are a couple pics of what we planted last weekend.

First up are the blueberries. In the before picture (which I forgot to take) there would be 4, 8 - 10 ft tall shrubby sumac-y type things. Those are now gone and replace by the existing rose bush and the 2 new blueberries. We found out that it will probably take 3 years to produce. Since we're ideally never moving, I think we have the time.

Next is a shot of the planted beds from above. On the left (in the paritally cleared bed) are the herbs. The fully planted bed are the three rows of corn we planted a while ago and behind them to the right are the 4 tomato plants. 

Finally, a bonus pic of the new and improved climber. On the left side (sort of behind in the pic) is the stair-ramp i built a month ago and the front side is showing off a brand spanking new slide we found online for < $100. I was super easy to install and the kids love it. Mainly the love watching things go down it and Matty is constantly trying to climb up.

It rained pretty hard last night but everything seemed to make it through alright. The forecast is for nice weather starting tomorrow so maybe we'll see some serious growth soon.

Spring planting season

Back when we moved into the new house before new year's one of the things we were really excited about was the raised garden beds in the back yard. The neighbors mentioned that the previous owners once had tons of fruits and veggies coming out of the gardens so we couldn't wait to get going. There were originally 5 beds but we whacked one in order to enlarge the yard a little for the kids. That left 4 well-overgrown beds that we had to work with. Maybe a month ago we stipped the weeds off the top of one and planted 3 rows of corn plus some random wildflowers on the end. This weekend we saw the Home Depot had a buy one get one special on 3" - 5" seedlings and couldn't resist. We wanted to get some tomatoes and hot peppers but somehow ended up leaving with the following:

- 2 hybrid tomato plants

- 2 heirloom tomato plants

- 2 thyme plants
- 2 rosemary plants
- 2 parsley plants
- 2 basil plants
- 2 blueberry plants
- 1 gallon of paint

Notice the lack of peppers. Apparently tracking down nearly two year old while picking out plants has as adverse affect on remembering the list. They were really great in the store, though. They have been awesome at listening and behaving in public places and have really never let us down. Especially now that they can talk so well and have definite opinions on how things should be and what they want to do.

We actually followed through and got everything in the ground today. Having recently picked up a copy of Golden Gate Gardening, we were relieved when they say to start with a small piece of garden and don't bite off too much. That made us feel so much better about seeing our haul from the deeps only taking up the ends of a couple of beds. We'll see how it goes but hope to just keep reclaiming garden square footage and adding more veggies every month. We still have 3 beds (about 100 sq ft or so) left to transform from weed haven to functional garden, pending successful completion of Phase I. I'll let you know how it goes. Once I take a couple pics of the current setup they'll show up here as well.

As always, here's your picture of the month:

Olympics follow-up

I know everyone is wondering how the ad performed but I have sad news. It sat for so long in the Facebook approval queue that it never went live. I'm sure that had it been shown on the site together we would have reached the 1 million member mark but alas we only got to 15 brave souls. Thanks, team!


All is not lost, however, as spring is in the air and the kids are getting psyched up for baseball season! They are finally big enough to get the sweet baseball gloves that Ell & Marisa gave them last Christmas when we went back east and all got sick.

This is Sarah getting the feel for things. We started out easy so nobody took one to the face. I'm sure it won't be long before Matty plunks her with a giro-ball the way he loves to throw. We're thinking he make the Giants this year, based on the current quality of their farm system.

Here's Matty working on taking fly balls. Two hands, kid! He loves the concept but is still working on execution. For now we pretty much just exchange the ball glove to glove but, hey, they're not even 2. The one thing he is good at, though, is calling out which sport we're watching on TV as well as knowing which types of balls he's looking at. So far we know: football, baseball, soccer, hockey and tennis (Nana!, Nana!).

Non sequitur

Realizing that is has been a while since I posted I've been thinking about what, if anything, I have to say these days. Life has been super-hectic and every day pretty much conforms to the following schedule:

6:30 - woken up by 'mommie, dada?... mommie, dada?... mommie, dada?...'

7:20 (or 8:20) - on the bus to work

5:40 - on the bus home

7:00 - bedtime for kiddies

8:00 - 11:00 - house projects

11:00 - 12:00+ (optional) more work stuff or indy research and indulgent dev projects

To say the least it is fairly tiring for both the wife & I and many potentially interesting details of each day are lost in the fatigue. It is certainly rewarding and almost always lots of fun, but hopefully will shift to us getting more rest at some point in the near future. But I digress. The impetus for posting today was that I performed some social experimenting on Facebook the other day and created a group entitled 'I bet I can find 1,000,000,000 people who think that the NBC Olympic coverage sucks' not so much on the actual merit of such a claim but more so based on all of the bad press they have been getting and the fact that I see half a dozen of these types of groups a day and felt the need to spoof. I urge you to join here and show your support for the struggling masses who want real-time coverage of sports that matter. That isn't even the real reason for the post. It is as follows:

I decided that in order to further my own knowledge of the industry in which I work, I'd place an ad for my group on Facebook itself and see what happens. I started typing in a couple keywords and this was what i got as 'bonus' suggestions. I'm not sure but it seems like the algorithm is way, way off. I'll post again when I either have some data on the ad's effectiveness or have reached 1m members. Either way, don't hold your breath for another post this month.

Toddler time!

Well, it finally happened. After weeks of being forced to practice walking between Erin and I the kids gave it a shot on their own. The amazing thing is that the both made their first solo attempts at exactly the same time. They were playing on the kid couch that the love so much when they apparently just decided to give it a try. Erin, Nana and I were talking about how amazing they are when they both stood up and walked over to Erin to give her a big hug and a kiss. It was pretty awesome but now we are realizing how much more work it will be to keep track of them since they are so fast. Now they are starting to try and walk on their own more and still fall down a lot but it doesn't seem like it will take them much longer to nail it.