Back from our Spring Break mini-vacation in Moab, Utah and the wonderful Junior Ranger Program!

I made this page using inspiration from a sign I saw in the town of Moab.  They had a really cool billboard but with little kids in tow, we didn't do the extreme activities shown in their photos.  But we did come home with some AMAZING memories and GREAT photographs.  

I'm going to keep this scrapbook really simple and clean.  I want the photos to be the stars of the pages and not the elements.  I did make this huge element in Adobe Illustrator and it will be something versatile that I can change the titles on for each area we visited.  

We visited Arches National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, and Canyonlands National Park. My children excitedly added Junior Ranger Badges for each park and earned an additional Red Rock Ranger badge which requires badges from 2 South Eastern Utah National Parks and at least one State Park.  The badge is pretty cool if you children are interested in earning them as well.

Here's the link to the Junior Ranger Workbooks so that you can print them before you go.  Our children worked on them quietly in the car.  It was wonderful!

Dead Horse State Park

Arches National Park

Canyonlands National Park

This is the Red Rock Ranger patch and I can't find it online anywhere. You can pick up the workbook at any of those parks although Arches was out of the patches so we had to drive back to Dead Horse State Park to pick them up at the end of our trip.

Creating Custom birthday cupcake toppers in the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition

This year we combined the birthday party.  It was at a trampoline park.  It was wonderful and enough room for everyone to be in their own space.  The boys spent a lot of time playing dodge ball and basketball while the girls were busy doing all sorts of gymnastics.

The one theme they could agree on was a Parrot theme.  I know it's a stretch but just imagine the bird jumping. Our parrots hop sometimes.  Anyway... I told you it was a stretch.

I drew the parrots in Adobe Illustrator with some inspiration from the web. They are supposed to be a cartoon version of Kiwi and Mambo.  Close enough, right?

I then opened them in the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition software - which I use because I wanted to create my own .svg images and use the print and cut feature.  I then printed them on the sticker paper using my HP printer.

 Next they needed to be cut. After running them through my Silhouette Cameo,  I pealed the birds off the paper.

And I stuck them to some lillipop sticks by Wilton that I picked up at Michael's craft store the other day.

And I added them to the cupcakes that I baked and decorated myself.  Simple and much less expensive than the local bakery and I'm blessed to have the time at home to do all this.

When to start spring planting outdoors...

How do you know when to plant outside?  We used to have a great indicator with the bird on the mountain but the past few years have shown that it's not accurate anymore.  

Due to pollution and inversion this year the valley was colder and the snow held on longer than in the mountains. Last week when I turned over the soil in my south square foot garden I found big chunks of frozen soil. 

So how do I know when to plant my peas outdoors?  I plant them as soon as the soil is workable but there is also another great indicator - and this one means I don't even have to get out a shovel.  I can plant when I see that the garlic has sprouted and has grown about 2-3 inches tall.  

How to plant peas in your square foot garden...

First of all, It's good to have a nice reference book.  

You can see the back of the book is arranged by vegetable type. 

I flipped open to the peas.

Then I soaked all of the peas.  ALL OF THEM. Duh.  Spring and fall's peas.  I ended up giving the rest to my sister-in-law.  

And then I went out to my square foot garden and placed the seeds in the soil.

And covered them up.

And it's looking pretty good! The rock on the lower right side is covering a vole hole. We added mole/vole bait that will break down into a garden friendly substance and sorry but the name escapes me right now. Those little critters are like mice/moles and they think my garden is their playground, and my lawn, and my window wells -gravel inches deep doesn't even bother them.

The peas are planted and good thing too because I just used the last of them in my parrot's food.

Hope your Easter was happy

Sometimes get together with my husband's family for an Easter party the Saturday before Easter. We are in charge of the dessert this time.  So we decide to make sandwich cookies.  We made sugar cookies and then added some food coloring.  Then my daughter wanted something fun with the last bit of dough so she and my husband made the bears.  So now they've changed their minds and want to decorate them.  

I'll post a photo when they are all done.

Learn about Romaine and Summertime lettuce from Anderson's Seed & Garden

This is the Romaine Lettuce Plato II.  I purchased the seeds at Anderson's Seed and Garden last year.  As you can see, the seeds are still doing well and had no problem sprouting.  I think after I harvest the spring crop I am going to try the Outback Romaine - it grows taller and is exceptionally heat tolerant.  Nothing like fresh lettuce with grilled hamburgers, especially when you're allergic to wheat and can't enjoy a hamburger bun. 

More about Romaine Lettuce Plato II from Anderson's Seed & Garden:

This popular Romaine has upright growth reaching 10 inches tall with large, thick, medium green, slightly rumpled leaves with creamy white centers. Tender, crisp, and sweet flavored. It is tolerant to many lettuce diseases and is slow bolting. Approximately 65 days to maturity.

This is the Summertime Lettuce.  I purchased the seeds from Andersons.

More about Summertime Lettuce from Andersons:

Summertime head lettuce is an excellent choice for cultivation in warm to hot climates. Here in Cache Valley it can be treated like loose leaf lettuce. This sure heading iceberg variety produces medium-sized, firm heads in about 75 days from direct seeding. Heads are medium green, with a short core. Summertime has demonstrated very slow bolting under high temperatures, and shows good resistance to rib discoloration and tip burn. 

Here is one of my many jalapenos transplants.  I have learned that peppers take a long time to sprout and need a heat mat.  I use an old heating pad.  To get the Serranos to sprout I actually had to turn it up on high.  Serranos take the longest. If you are going to start your own - plant January 1st.  I started the bell peppers and jalapenos the same time.  They really don't need to start until February 1st.  They can't go outside until all danger of frost has past unless you plan on covering them. 

Here's more about Jalapenos from Andersons: 

An improved, medium maturity Jalapeno type with blunt-ended, dark green fruit, ripening to red. The upright medium sized plants produce excellent yields of very hot peppers and provide very good foliage cover for them. A popular type for certain markets.  80 – 110 days to harvest.

More about Dutch Cabbage and Blue Kale from Anderson's Seed & Garden

The cabbage is looking really good.  I found that while Dutch round ball cabbage tends to split, it also grows quickly and around here we want it done and out of the ground before the July heat hits.  I just have to keep my eye on it. 

Here's more about it from Andersons: An Anderson’s favorite.  Danish Ballhead is a heavy producing blue-green variety with large 6-7 inch round heads that often weigh 5 – 6lbs. Late fall and storage variety that is good cooked or raw in salads and coleslaw. Plant cabbage in sunny location where no cabbage or broccoli was grown the year before. Rich soil and regular waterings are to its liking. 110 days to harvest.

I am trying to grow Kale this year for Kiwi and Mambo but also to try some kale chips. I found a recipe in a Martha Stewart magazine the other day while at instacare that I can't wait to try.

Here is more about Kale from Andersons: Low, compact plants with finely curled, bluish-green leaves. Good cooked or fresh in salads. Grows best in cool weather. Can be grown as a spring or fall crop. 55 days to harvest.

I purchased the seeds at Anderson's Seed & Garden and the peat pots at Lowes.

Utah Celery transplants - what a difference the right pot makes

So maybe you remember this post from a few weeks ago. That was March 3rd and if that wasn't enough to convince you then I hope that this will.

The stalks of the celery in the peat disc are so much smaller that those in the 3" pots.

And even the color is different. I stuck the small one in next to the larger dark green leaves so you could see the difference up close.  The leaves are much larger and darker green in the 3" pot.

It's almost unbelievable.  And of course, just a reminder - I purchased the seeds at Anderson's Seed and Garden.

And as you can see, my transplants are starting to really fill in.  This is the time to make sure you are using a fan to prevent mold and damping off.  Pretty soon the snow will be gone here and I can start to harden the cabbage, kale, broccoli, and onions that need to be transplanted to the garden.  This is when the super duper tough tubs come in handy.  They are sturdy enough to handle the trip upstairs every day and sit out in the sun for a few hours until they can handle being outside all day.

Take advantage of the few warm days in March to get the garden going again

The snow is almost gone from the grape vine area.  We will need to tighten the wire soon.  The grapes were fertilized in the fall so hopefully they will grow this year.  We have really terrible soil here in this spot.  It's free of rocks which is wonderful but the soil about a foot down is terrible.  It took 4 years for these grape vines to get this big.  The middle one doesn't even reach the wire yet. Not cool! 

The two grape vines on the outer edge are disease resistant.  The one in the middle is not.  All three are red grapes perfect for the table.  I suppose you could juice them as well.  Maybe someday we'll have enough grapes to do a taste test.  My neighbor across the street is Catholic and they were teasing us about our vineyard, wondering what kind of wine we were going to produce.  They know we are Mormon and don't drink alcohol.  They are the nicest neighbors and we all got a good laugh.

I tilled around the Hydrangeas and added the Bluing Formula.  I don't mind the pink blooms. It's just that I really love the blue blooms.  They also got a dose of fertilizer.

You can see the extra propane hose that will need to be buried soon.  We got that for the generator since we prefer having water from our well when the power is out. One step closer.

Here are some before shots of the flowerbeds.  They really look sad.  The plants here will have pretty white blooms.  I can't wait to see them actually bloom over here on the west side of the house. I transplanted these here last spring.  The original plant came from a neighbor.

Between the two Dwarf Burning Bush plants here are a bunch of purple Alliums.

Again the area with the peach tree and then looking down the west side of the house.  

And another side of the flower bed that needs to be cleaned. This area has great looking Black Eyed Susans and a Honeysuckle Bush.  The Honeysuckle Bush also needs to be fertilized. 

My goals this year are to get rid of the black drain pipes AND add river rock.  That will be a huge improvement in our yard. 

Parrot Flight Training and Parrots playing fetch caught on video!

Kiwi's wings are starting to do better.  After a trip to the vet and some blood work we learned that he was picking because he was in pain.  His kidney's weren't functioning properly and so he couldn't get rid of the uric acid which builds up in their joints and breaking feathers helped to keep his mind off the pain.  

I have a couple of cute videos with my green cheeks showing off their skills.  Mambo is getting quite good at flying to me and my daughter on cue.  Having a bird that can fly verses clipping their wings is quite wonderful as long as they are trained.  Of course when we adopted Mambo her wings were a little clipped which is actually kind of nice because having a bird fly to the top of 9' cabinets in the kitchen can be a little annoying.  

And of course, I have to share some of Kiwi's skills.  He is feeling much better and moving faster.  He loves playing fetch and I am going to order him his own basketball hoop. Mambo will be learning this trick soon.  I need to get her a ball in another color so they don't fight. 

Those terrible voles!

This first photo shows a little bit of the vole damage next to the Improved Canadian Choke Cherry on the West side of the house.  They eat the tender part of the grass leaving the tops as mulch.  There are trails all over the yard.  The best thing to do is uncover all those spots.  I use a tine rake and put all that grass in the garden or flowerbeds.  Then the tiny bits of grass trying to grow again can have air and water.  I'll show more photos of that in another post. 

When I was adding in the arrows I felt like the blue Genie in Aladdin saying, "Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here." Did you have Vole damage this year?

Here is a close up of the base of the tree.  It's not cleaned up yet, but will be as soon as I get the curtain rods put up downstairs.

And the other tree.

 And the last Choke Cherry tree.  It is part of a large flowerbed that I haven't done much with yet.  It looks much better since I tilled it.  I will till it again when it dries out a little more.  Then it will look much better.  I am going to fill in with river rock mulch here.  You can see the voles were busy here.  I'm almost terrified of the upper hill.  It's going to be a lot of work raking.  I'm already thinking having it power raked would be very beneficial.

In this photo you can see that most of west square foot garden is free of snow.  It's still frozen solid but doesn't take long to thaw it out.  I can hardly wait to plant.  It will be filled mostly with Little Finger carrots this year. I only grew a few last year but they are my absolute favorite carrot.

I will be designing a cover for part of my other square foot garden so I can grow broccoli and a few other items so they'll be safe from bugs.

Tilling the South side of the house makes the garden look so pretty!

So this is the south side of the house.  The first part of the garden is a strawberry patch.  I'm tempted to fill in the rest with strawberries except the grass creeps in and the strawberries creep into the grass.

Last Friday I raked out the strawberry patch.  Then I tilled the rest of this flower bed.  There is one little straggly bush that lived. The Salvia is doing well as usual.  I plan on putting Mountain Box Wood back here.  It doesn't turn golden like those I have out front, it will stay a pretty blue green and they can handle the heat coming off the rear of the house. Thank you Fonnsbeck Greenhouse for that tip!

I also tilled up the flowerbed on the West side of the deck but it was still really muddy.

And then I tackled the edge of the hill but it was also really muddy.  I made a huge mess here so I had to grab the rake and fluff up the edge of the grass and try to scrape some of the mud back into the flowerbed.

The snow is melting and I am already tilling the soil!

This is the North side of the house and it has the most snow.  Not the side of the house that is getting tilled right now.

It's kinda pretty when it's not covering the sidewalk. 

The area around the peach tree no longer has snow but it is very wet still.  Good thing I wore my Sloggers today! I really should have taken a photo of my muddy boots.

Today I finally had the guts to chop down the center branch.  When pruning peach trees you want a main North branch, South branch, East branch, and west branch.  Opening up the center of the tree makes for better fruit because the sun can get to it. So the center branch had to go.  I also cut away any branches headed straight to the ground and trimmed the end of a few of the branches so the energy would go into making bigger branches that can support the weight.  I still may need to cut a few more branches but I don't want to stress the tree too much after that big cut.

Here's the pile of peach tree branches.  

You can see that the tree is really leaning north.  We have a lot of wind around here.  I even tilted the tree to the south when I planted it.  I may need to add a little support this year. I can't wait to see it bloom!

And the flowerbed in front of the steps needs some major cleaning up too.  I want to add a couple more Box Woods up here.  And clean up the grass, edge and such.  I may put down river rock instead of mulch. The color of the river rock really looks good next to the house.  

I also learned something interesting about mulch.  If you use wood chips, don't use them within 18" of the house. Wood chips are a combustible material. I hadn't thought of that. We live in the high mountain desert and there are a lot of fires every year.  It's a good precaution to take.