See You Later

Well, it's bear hunting time, and I'm going to go out on the boat and do the cooking for awhile. But never fear......Levi is here!

Stay tuned for some excellent posts!

I Have The Smartest Garlic In The World

Some of my garlic started poking up out of the ground well over a month ago and I thought it seemed kind of early, so I examined the bed closely and noticed a few interesting things.

First, I noticed that the "Chinese Pink" variety given to me last Fall by a friend was up well before all of the others. I asked around and it seems that this particular variety is extra early. This can be a good thing, but it can also be bad.....it's mature in July instead of August, but poking up out of the ground that early makes it more susceptible to late frost damage, so I mulched it with straw to try to protect it a little.

The second thing I noticed was that all of the garlic that I had planted from cloves that I purchased from the nursery in the Fall of 2012 were up, but all of the garlic that I had planted from my own 3 year old "seed" stock were not sprouting at all yet!!!!

For instance, all of the "Music" garlic I bought in the Fall of 2012 was sprouting up tall and vigorous - right beside a bare spot where I had planted my old "Music"......I was a little worried.

But I had been so confident when I had harvested my garlic last year....it looked great.....it cured up great....the cloves separated fine and looked healthy...what went wrong?

So I waited, and sure enough, eventually it sprouted up. And now it's just as big as the new stock!

I've read that if you grow your own garlic and replant your own cloves year after year, your plants will get acclimated to your area and get stronger and grow bigger and better. I totally think this is true....my garlic knew exactly when to come up.....it was waiting until the time was just right. The new garlic had it's "internal clock" set to someplace else....someplace that had an earlier "first average frost free date".

I think I have the smartest garlic in the world!

Tomato Time!

Today I delivered Tomato starts to Penny Brown out at Garden Ventures....

The starts look great!

 I love going out to Garden Ventures. The shelves are just bursting with everything you could possibly want or need for successful gardening in Sitka.....

The grounds are beautiful, with flowers everywhere....

And the plants are so healthy and vigorous. The best thing is that they are varieites that do well here....I'm always confident that whatever I buy from Penny will do well in my garden.

So head on out to Garden Ventures to get your tomato plant.....before they're all gone!

It's A Little Wet Outside

Well, I worked in the garden today, but it wasn't fun. It rained all day!

At least it's in the 40's, that helped (although it did snow this evening for an hour or so). There is so much rain that there are standing puddles everywhere. This is why we build raised beds. Oh well, the starts didn't mind....they hate to be transplanted when it's hot....and the ducks LOVED it!

Kohlrabi and cauliflower....done!

Wish me luck getting the rest in....it's supposed to rain all weekend.

Finally Finished

WARNING: This is a long post that contains a lot of pictures....

A couple of years ago I bought a section from one of the old Sitka bowling alley lanes to make a butcher block top kitchen island. Well, years went by and it didn't get done, and it didn't get done. Then, last year I aquired some old doors and got the idea to frame out the island with the doors set on edge. The pictures were taken over the last several months.

First I had to decide what color I wanted to use. Some of the doors were green on one side and gray on the other. I decided on the green.

Of course, the doors were not all the same width, so some "patching" was necessary....

Nothing a little moulding can't fix....fortunately I had some boards with the same paint on them....

The boards weren't wide enough to cover up the scar left from the door knob plate, but who cares? This project is supposed to look rustic and homemade....a shabby chic antique. The perfect project for me.

Here's a view of the inside....

Next, plywood for the bottom shelf...

Check out the light colored piece of pergo flooring....who in their right mind would do that?

Then the shelf was pulled out to use for a pattern for the upper shelf, both are varnished, and put back in...

Right away I felt like access to the bottom shelf was now greatly restricted by the top shelf. Levi suggested some cutouts, so we hauled the top shelf to the high school wood shop.... 

a.k.a. "heaven"

....and he helped me reshape it....

That's better!

Then it was time to assemble the vertical storage units for cookie sheets and such...

Okay, exact workmanship does come in handy sometimes....I put the strips too close together and the dividers were a @$%&*&%^$#% to get in! Help was required....

That and a little shaving with a hand wood planer...

I was pretty mad in this photo...

Things were not going smoothly and my kitchen looked like this...

But the end result was worth all the blood, sweat, and tears...

Gotta love vertical storage....no more digging around in the stupid shallow drawer under the stove!!!

Then a couple of trim boards and the bottom is done....unless we decide to add drawers and cupboard doors later....for now we are just leaving it open.

At this point in time the project came to a halt. Then, when Mr. Adams and Ron were in town last week, we all took the butcher block top to the high school wood shop to finish it.

The first thing we decided to do was run the top through the thickness sander to brighten it up and make it smooth and flat on top. This required some consultation with Mr. Hughey....

Once the plan was set the guys started running it through....

 Over....

And over....

And over.... It was interesting...even Bill Steinbach stopped on his way by to watch!

By the way, that thing was extremely heavy....

That's why we waited for Mr. Adams!

How far do you go?

Some nail heads are starting to show up and we were worried about messing up the black walnut insets.
Unfortunately we didn't get it all, this was the last pass....

Next, we worked up some trim boards from some Black Walnut that my Dad gave me. He has Black Walnut trees on his farm in Oregon. The lumber is absolutely gorgeous!

Then we fitted and screwed the boards to the edges of the butcher block...

Once we got it home the guys took a router to it and rounded all the edges and corners. We did compromise one of the black walnut insets, but some day will just replace it.

I just love it!!!!!

 And I just know we are going to thoroughly enjoy it for many years to come!