I recently joined the spring golf league at work. I had been wanting to play more golf, but golf is a tricky game to just go play more of. It is easy for me to get on my bike and ride out of my driveway and go get in several hours on the bike. It’s a lot more effort to go play golf, and then you usually get paired up with completely random people. I’m generally one for getting paired up with completely random people. So, the golf league at worked seemed like a great opportunity. The people would be slightly less random and I would get to play 9 holes every week for 8 weeks.
The first two weeks have been a lot of fun. The course we play is really nice, and I have even started to feel a little better about my putting. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still terrible. But I’m hoping a little consistency may do my game some good.
Now, I know that golf is considered a four-letter word to cyclists. It’s what people do when they decided they can’t race anymore. But that’s one of the reasons I liked this work league. I’m playing on Wednesday evenings, and I can still go get a long ride in on the weekend. I can also still spend time in the garden, which is nice.
Most of all, I really just love golf. I like the tradition. I like all of the esoteric rules. I like that it seems like a straight forward concept (hit little ball with clubs into hole) but requires an amazing amount of finesse. I like how often the more relaxed you can be, the better you play. I like that I get to wear saddle oxfords and nobody thinks anything of it.
While we’re on the subject, the Masters is this weekend. I am looking forward to spending at least a little bit of time watching it in HD.
I wanted a vegetable garden for years. My family had vegetable gardens at different times when I was growing up, and with my love of cooking, the idea of producing my own food just seemed awesome. When we built the house, Carrie and I decided to leave a significant part of the back yard without grass so that we could install several raised beds in which to put vegetables.
We moved in basically at Labor Day. I figured that I’d have the gardens set up by November at the latest. Ha. See, there was actually a dependency chain of things that had to happen before I could start on the garden.
One, we had to buy plants for the front beds. As part of the landscaping that we acquired when we built the house, we purchased a full irrigation setup that included drip irrigation for the front beds and basically a drip-irrigation hook-up in the back. Well, the landscape person didn’t want to install the irrigation until we had plants in as he wanted to put the drip hoses at each plant–and rightfully so.
Anyway, fast forward several months and we finally got plants down in the front beds. We have two different types of cenizo, some black-bottom daisies, verbena around our cedar elm tree, rosemary, germander, and coreposis. We were pretty excited. With the fresh layer of native texas hardwood mulch, the plants make the house look so much nicer. Also, since there were now plants, that means we now have drip irrigation. As well, our cedar elm is looking good and has sprouted new leaves for the spring.
So a few weeks ago knowing that the irrigation was coming soon, I bought some untreated cedar lumber at the Home Depot to make my garden boxes. The plan was to create 2 4’x8’ boxes. I wanted to put some type of setup to allow me to make row cover supports to help protect my veggies. I had looked into buying a kit, but the kit didn’t quite meet my specifications, so I figured I’d try my hands at some very crude carpentry.
The 4x4x8 posts would each get cut into 4 segments, one for each corner of each box. Next, I’d cut two of the boards in half to create the short sides. I’d then screw two-hole tie downs (found in the electrical department at a home improvement store) on to the inside of the long boards. One set in the center of each side, and other sets 16” from each side. Into these would go 12” segments of PVC pipe. I actually bought 2’ segments so I had to actually cut them down.
After that it was just a matter of screwing all the sides onto the posts. I drilled pilot holes and then put the 1.5” #8 wood screws right in.
So fast forward to this past weekend, and it was time to get the vegetable transplants in the ground. Two weeks ago, we had attended the Sunshine plant sale where we acquired 13 tomatoes and 5 eggplant. They have been growing inside, but they really needed to get into some real dirt. So, Carrie and I decided that this weekend was it. The average last freeze for Austin is March 15th, so probability was on our side, and we had time this weekend to make it happen. So, we needed dirt. 1.5 cubic yards for both beds according to my calculations. We decided we go get 1 cubic yard, as that seemed to be the reasonable limit of what one should put in our pickup. We were right.
When the bulldozer dropped the dirt into the truck, I felt the shocks compress. When we pulled out of the Natural Gardener, we heard the scraping of things being compressed. I felt like I was leaning back, well, because I was. The truck was at an angle. I was really concerned about going up the hills on Southwest Parkway, as well as losing all of the dirt as we drove down MoPac, but the truck performed admirably and we made it home no problem. When I got out of the truck I realized just how absurd we must have looked. This shot doesn’t show the angle, but it does show you what a Ford Ranger with 1 cubic yard of dirt looks like.
Once we got home with the dirt I started digging holes to put in the posts. At this point I asked myself why I thought a full 12” of post was necessary. I might edit the design for future boxes.
We got the box in the ground, and put brown contractor paper all along the inside. This paper will act as a weed blocker, but eventually it will break down allowing our good dirt to slowly enrich the crazy thick clay in our yard. It actually took much less time than we expected to get the dirt from the back of the truck into the box.
Finally, it was time to plant the vegetables. 18 holes, evenly spaced. All the tomatoes on one side, all the eggplant on the other. I’ll get some mulch down soon, as well as spray them all with a good combination of foliar spray with citrus oil to start being proactive about the bugs. Stakes are cages will go down for the tomatoes, obviously, and I’ll use some more PVC pipe to make hoops to put row cover to keep the squirrels out, at least for a little bit.
The black stuff on the ground around the garden is actually weed block fabric. We plan on putting some type of material around the garden more as a path-like area. We’ll probably put some bins or big pots in there with some annual and perennial herbs closer to the house so that they’ll get some shade. But since they’ll be in the back they can get hooked into the drip system. We still have the second bed to get in the ground, and in that bed will go all of the seeds. I have two varieties of carrot, two varieties of bush beans, and one heirloom summer squash (very zucchini like). I am very excited. I really enjoy working with the plants, I think even more than I thought I would. Even though it takes effort, seeing the plants grow is really rewarding. I am looking forward to them producing fruits and vegetables that we can actually eat!
This post will be quick.
I think collegiate cycling is one of the greatest things you can do in college (or in my case, grad school). It’s the most team-focused cycling I think somebody can participate in without being a professional.
I wish I would have been cognizant of the sport when I was in college. I mean, I knew of cycling as a sport. My cousin had raced bikes for years, but there was nothing at Tulane like a cycling team.
Being part of the UT cycling team was fantastic. The one bad thing about graduating from graduate school was that I could no longer participate.
Now, both Tulane and LSU have cycling teams. In fact, Tulane is hosting a race in New Orleans and LSU is hosting the conference championships this year. That is fantastic.
So hook’em to my UT Cycling friends, geaux tigers, and roll green wave!
There exist several food items that I associate with my grandmother’s cooking. Ground beef with carrots (when I asked her why, she said, “You gotta add some flavor.”), always smooth and thick brown gravy with roast, shredded green beans with onions and bacon smothered beyond belief. I could actually go on for a while.
However, there is one item that sticks out above all the rest: BeBe casserole. This casserole takes many forms, eggplant and ground beef, patty pan and ground beef, but the formula is the same. Cook the fleshy vegetable down with onions, bell pepper, green onion, celery, and then add in the ground beef (and salt and seasoning, of course). Put in a casserole dish, cover with buttered bread crumbs and bake it so that it comes together. Voila.
It’s mushy… but it’s delicious. Just a forkful of pure awesome flavor without things like crunch getting in the way. I loved this so much as a kid, I wasn’t really a fan of crunchy things.
Tonight I am making another variety, mirliton and shrimp. Same formula as above. The mirliton take a little more cooking than the eggplant, but it comes out well. It is very easy to get mirliton here as they are sold with a different name: chayote squash. My big group at work is having our Thanksgiving potluck tomorrow, so I decided to bring this. I think this is probably one of those things that everybody’s Cajun grandmother makes in some variety. But to me it is always BeBe Casserole.
So I started NaNoWriMo this year. I truly do think that this is a great thing to do, and I encourage everybody to complete it at least once. Unfortunately, I will not finish.
I just never got truly excited about it this year. However, I still like the idea of using your downtime to do something productive. Not in the sense of checking things off of your todo list, but in the sense of producing something.
One of the nice things about NaNoWriMo is the notion of the deadline. The big 50,000 goal and the 30 days force you to put aside your inner editor and just write. “30 days and nights of literary abandon.” I think that is a great slogan, and it is at the heart of the endeavor. You just have to go for it, to dive head first, and at the end there is a novel. It may be terrible, but you finished it, and that is awesome.
So why I am stopping?
The conceptual core of NaNoWriMo is what really excites me, but I was not able to get excited about the particular vehicle this year. So I decided to get a new vehicle.
I am just not sure what I will be driving.
Some may read this post as a cop out, and that is fair. But I am hoping that I can look back at the end of the month and see that I have produced something. Whether it be taking some pictures, writing posts on here about things I find interesting, or building something, who knows? (Okay, probably not that last one…)
Post-Cleaning House Pictures, a set on Flickr.
They did the industrial clean on Saturday morning. We stopped by and got our first look at the house now that it doesn’t look like a construction zone. There are still a bunch of little things to be done, but for the first time it felt like a house and not a work area.
Shot 28 on Flickr.
Appliances (pseudo) installed! Wohoo!
The house continues to move along. We unfortunately had to push the closing back by 5 days, but in the grand scheme of things that’s not really anything to worry about. I have updated the set of pictures on Flickr as well.
The extended stay hotel where we are staying is interesting, to put it mildly. A bizarre collection of people are the extended stay, some of them I believe make their home there. For example, several boats take up spots in the parking lot, and it truly seems that these boats have not moved in many a moon.
So on August 24th we will be moving into the new place. Carrie will be monitoring the movers while I have to come in to work. We are also getting our cable/internet hooked up that following Saturday. It will be nice to have real internet at home again; the internet at the hotel is terrible.
All-in-all, the building process has been pretty straight-forward and not too stressful. We enjoyed picking all of the finishes as now we know it’s the house we want.
What is going to be fun is really making the house ours over the next few years. From our gardening plans to furniture to whatever else, it won’t happen overnight, but little by little we will settle in to our new home. And I am very much looking forward to that.
Last Upload, a set on Flickr.
This was my last upload or the last few days of JiBW3. I definitely ended this one on a much higher note than the ones before. Now, unfortunately I started my new job right towards the end, so the last few days were a little slim. However, I really enjoyed the experience and hope to do it again.
Shot 13 on Flickr.
Cabinets are going up. Getting closer…
