Tulips!

This past weekend I traveled to Woodburn, Oregon with some coworkers to visit the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival.  Kathy and Jill have talked about the event for the last few years and raved about how beautiful the fields are.  Jill bought bulbs there and I've been jealous about how nice they look next t their house.  Knowing this I was excited when my coworker Erin invited me and another coworker (Jana) to make the trip.  Well, let me just say that it was beautiful.  There are 40 acres of tulips of all shapes, sizes, and colors.  The fields were full of people taking photos (some people even brought professional photographers with them to snap official family photos).  I confess as I took a lot of photos too.  It was hard not to.  We pretty much got our photo taken next to every tractor, wooden face cut out, flower, and kids activity possible. 

In addition to the photos we also got to see a man carving wooden shoes, race little rubber duckies down a shoot, browse craft vendors, and eat corn dogs.  My meal consisted of a hot chocolate and a corn dog with sweet and spicy mustard.  I'm classy like that.

On the way out I placed my order for 25 spring variety bulbs.  We will pick up our goodies in the fall.  I'm excited to see what sizes, types, and colors we get.  Yay!

 Oh, and there were steam powered tractors....

On the way out we saw a group of adult males lined up along a field watching some guys plow a row.  The tractors were really humming and steam was coming out like crazy.  One really excited guy even yelled "there it is!" as the dirt was being dug into.  Can't get much better than that.  Thank you Woodburn, OR.

It's Blooming!

The Christmas amaryllis is blooming!  It is absolutely beautiful.  I want it to stay like this forever.

Our Last Month In Photos & Blurbs

Over the last month or so I've had a few days where I've said "I should totally put this on the blog". Then I came to my senses and realized that each of my "awesome!" moments probably wasn't worth an entire blog post.  Which brings me to our last month in photos and short blurbs.

Cliff and I actually celebrated Valentine's Day this year (I know...I was shocked too).  We saw that Falling Sky had a prefixed meal for two.  Oooh...how fancy. We ate warm ceasar salad, cassoulet, beeramisu, and three pints.  It was amazing. Falling Sky has really taken it up a notch since the fall. Their Facebook feed tempts me constantly, so much so that we ate this there on Tuesday.

A new bakery recently opened up in Springfield and its name is Chaos Kolaches.  They sell kolaches (ko-la-chees)  which are traditional Chech pastries filled with either savory or sweet things. Apparently they are really big in Texas and in the midwest. Well, they are new to Springfield and they are new to me.  We checked them out one day for lunch. We split a bbq brisket sandwich on the kolache bread.  For dessert, Cliff has one filled with apricots and I had one with Oregon cherries and cream cheese. Yum. 

Last week I spent three days in Seaside, Oregon for the Oregon Festival and Events Association Conference.  It was fantastic.  The sessions were incredibly informative, I got to reunite with my Albany Parks and Rec. co-workers from my 2007 internship, and I got to spend time on the coast in a pretty nice hotel.  There were also fireworks.  I was introduced to two new bands: Lincoln's Beard and Screaming Orphans.  They were some of the folks who performed at the event hoping to get booked at upcoming festivals.  Lincoln's Beard sounds like a mix of Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, and Mumford and Sons (to me at least).  Screaming Orphans are this amazing mix of ABBA, The Bangles, Indigos Girls, and Celtic Women (as they are Irish).  Intrigued by both?  We you should be.  Check 'em out.

I snuck down to Cannon Beach during a break to finally see the big rock in the water (Haystack Rock).  I gasped when I caught a glimpse of it from Highway 101 and then I actually cried as I walked down the beach towards it.  I know this probably makes me sound like a nut but it is honestly the one of the most beautiful and peaceful places.  I need to go back.  I. Need. To. Go. Back.

On the way home from the conference I stopped at a logging restaurant, museum, and memorial called Camp 18.  It was a fantastic log cabin.  Warm and glowey.  I ate cabbage soup with a grilled ham and cheese.  There were dancing bears carved out of log and a nice fire.

I took home an enormous cinnamon roll from Camp 18 for Cliff and I to gorge ourselves on.  It lasted less than 12 hours. 

Oh and I finally learned how to use Instagram so that is why the last few photos are better than my normal ones.

This past weekend I took the plunge and bought my own climbing gear **shocked face**.  We have been talking about climbing outside for the last few months and in order for this to happen I needed my own stuff (and we need a rope, carabiners, etc. but that will come eventually).  On Sunday, I donned my new goods as we climbed with a friend at the Columns at Skinner Butte. This was only my second time climbing outside and it went so much better than the first.  The first time was back in August and I cried and panicked about 15 feet off the ground.  Embarrassing.  But not on Sunday!  I climbed up to the top twice.  On a more difficult route.  TWICE!  And I went a different way each time.  Look at those amazing shots of my being awesome.

I should also mention that Cliff is a pretty darn good climber.  He climbed all morning long.  Up and down.  All in his Lyddane 2012 Vacation t-shirt.  See the number 4?

Oh and bulbs of many kinds are coming up....

Did I forget to mention that Andrea and Joe are in Oregon in t-minus 18 hours.

2013 Garden Update I

This year Cliff and I are ahead of the game when it comes to getting seed into the ground.  We are going to be more successful this year!  So far here is what we have brewing in pots, on the hillside, and in the garden.


Outdoor Pots:  Right after Christmas, Cliff and I bought a ton of 50% off bulbs at Jerry's Home Improvement. We planted crocus (mix), ranunculus (red and yellow), allium (blue and white), iris, ixia, narcissus, and hyacinth.  We layered the inside the pots so that we should have some blooms spring through late summer.  I'm really excited as once they start to bloom we will be able to scatter the pots around the cottage so that we can see color from all of our windows. It seems too soon for the bulbs to be coming up but Cliff reminds me that we are quickly coming into spring.  We had so much snow last year.  it didn't feel cold enough this winter for it to already be over!  I'm hoping that some flowers are up in time for Andrea and Joe's visit.

Indoor pots:  Two or three weekends ago Cliff planted our pretty orange/red amaryllis bulb that we had bloom last year.  It looks like we didn't kill out red one from last year (despite unnecessarily storing it in the fridge over the summer) which is a relief as we were both pretty sad and worried.  He also planned our new white amaryllis. We are excited to see them both in bloom in a few weeks.  We also planned lots of basil starters this morning and put them in our mini greenhouse.  The more basil the better.  Grow little plants...grow!

The hillside:  As you all might remember we planted a ton of crocuses and daffodils last year.  See...they were really prettyhttp://lyddanesinoregon.blogspot.com/2012/05/day-4-flowers.html! Well...they are starting to come up!  This is a really crummy photo but I promise you there are four little clumps of pretty purple flowers there.  There are other little white ones starting to come up in other pockets as well.  There appear to be little baby daffodils starting to come up as well.  Our white daffodils were amazing last year.  They were so beautiful and managed to stay white and alive looking for weeks.  My fingers are crossed that we have the same luck this year.  Another hops is that my next photo of the flowers is way better...so that you can actually seem them

Lastly, we got seed into the ground today!  Over the last few weeks, Cliff and I have spend a few hours each Saturday or Sunday making a garden bed right outside of our window (as we hope this area will get more sun that our little patch last year).  It is about 12 feet long by 2 1/2 feet wide.  Today we planted: two kinds of parsley, New Zealand spinach, fennel, broccoli rabe, two kinds of chives, oakleaf lettuce, dill, more spinach, chervil, mustard greens, cilantro, tom thumb lettuce, arugula, and radishes.  In a few weeks we are also going to plant flowers (like California poppies).  Eventually (mid-May) we are going to get to tomato starters and hope that they get enough light this year.  it will be fun.  Now we just need to decide on a CSA to help round out our greens and herbs.

Happy planting to everyone and we will keep you posted on our successes and learning moments!

November

What happened to November?  The whole month flew by.  Seriously.  Where did it go?  A lot happened in those 30 little days.  In addition to turning 29 years old (let the count down to 30 begin!) and the 2nd annual Eugene Friendsgiving,  Cliff and I also did a bunch of little things.  For example, we purchased quite a few end-of-season fall bulbs and planted them in end-of-season clearance bamboo pots.  Cliff really loves flowers. 

We retrained our dog where to go to the bathroom in the yard as apparently somehow he forgot after doing it several times a day for over a year. Cliff kicked his climbing into the next gear of awesomeness and I started swimming again.   I passed my six month mark at work and now have full health benefits!  This is a good thing as I'm pretty sure I need glasses.  I helped to organize a 5K and Cliff ran in it.  And I even got my first cold of the year.  We were productive.

We also received quite a few generous and awesome gifts in the mail.  Birthdays are fun.  First came the Virginia Ham.

Then, I received a super-cool Fascinator (one of those little hats that British people wear) from Mom and Pam for my birthday.  Awesome.  Mom, Pam, and I had a good time trying them on when I was in Maryland between wedding weekends.  Mom bought one as well and now for fun we wear them when we video chat.  Again, awesome.

Cliff received his birthday crock.  We can now make homemade sauerkraut and pickle anything we can get our hands on.  It is beautiful.  This week were are going to try our first batch after we buy two cabbages.  Let's be honest, the process will warrant a whole post so get excited.

We want to thank everyone for the birthday messages, cards, gifts, and love that have been sent our way over the last two months.  We are totally spoiled.

Oh, did I mention that Cliff also grew a mustache and soul patch for Movember?  Cause he did.  In case you have been wondering what is up with all of the mustaches running around town, men are coming together to show support and promote awareness for men's health issues such as prostate and testicular cancer.  They are doing it the best way they know how...by growing facial hair.  Many of the male teachers at Cliff's school decided to take the plunge and see what their faces looked like with a 'stash.  Cliff shaved after the official Men of Movember celebration on Thursday but I think we are both curious now to see what he would look like with a full beard.  Hummmm...do I sense a winter break project?

Lots of love to all and happy December!

Garden Update II Plus Peaches

I am happy to report that since the 4th of July we have had continuous beautiful summer sunshine.  It has been in the 70s and 80s everyday and it finally actually feels like summer.  Cliff and I welcome the dry and warmer weather as our poor garden was looking a little sad and stunted.  But that's ok.  We are learning a lot and we still get to eat goodies every now and then.

The last garden update post featured our best radishes of the season.  For some strange reason our radishes have decided not to actually set fruit but instead bolt and shoot greens high into the air.  Honestly, most were shin high and some really crazy ones went up to our knees.  All of this crazy/backwards growth happened over the last week.   We pulled 99% of our radishes yesterday and made greens.  We fried ham bits with beer and added in all of our radish greens.  Note: radish stems (at least the big mamajamas like ours) are really tough no matter how long you pressure cook them.

Out of all of those greens we only got six stunted radishes.  It was pretty sad and pretty hilarious at the same time.  Radishes are normally so easy to grow.  We have our theories as to what went wrong.  The greens (the leaves at least) were pretty tasty and we got to hang out in the yard so they weren't a total bust.  I think we are done with radishes for now and next year we are going to do better... hopefully.

Our mouse melon plant is finally growing!  It is climbing up our little trellis like crazy.   It seems to really like the warmer weather.  It has one little fruit bud.  Cliff and I can't wait until we start to see more fruit.  Did I mention that they are suppose to drop the fruit automatically when they are ripe?  How awesome is that! 

Our two tomato plants are also going nuts.  Cliff is going to top them next weekend as we think they are getting close to shading other plants out.  We have a few fruits on each.  Very exciting.  I hope these are actually successful as I really like fresh mini tomatos.

Our lettuce is doing really awesome.  Lettuce is so gratifying to grow!  We have eaten all of the arugula and we have been using restraint on eating the tom thumb and oakleaf.  The tom thumb is my favorite hands down.  The mini lettuce heads are so pretty and the leaves are really buttery and tender.  We started more seed a few weeks ago so hopefully they will start to get bigger as it makes me sad to think we may only have eight little heads left. 

Otherwise things are going ok.  We are starting to see our flowers and squash shoot up little sprouts.  Many of our herbs are doing really well.  Our peppers still look sad as it really hasn't been sunny and hot enough for them to hit their stride.  Between the slugs and the weather we have hit some roadblocks.  But that is ok because we are really excited.  This is our first in-the-ground garden and we are still feeling really proud. 

Last weekend Cliff, Rudy, and I stopped by Detering Orchard.  I love Detering!  When we lived in Oregon the first time our group regularly frequented Detering.  In the fall you an pick your own apples, pears, and pumpkins.  Plus they have apple fest and give out free apple cobbler and ice cream.  In the summers we would pick peaches, cherries, and pickling cucumbers.  They also have a really wonderful produce stand and one time Cliff and I got bell peppers for $.10 a piece.  Victory.

When we stopped in last week they had their first set of peaches ready.   We all went out into the orachrd and picked.  Rudy was pretty excited with himself.  We didn't get a ton as we knew we weren't prepared to do any canning.  The peaches aren't free stone but they were really good.  We made a big cobbler and ate all of it in one night.  It was probably best that we didn't pick more as we probably would have done that every night until they were gone.  We want to go back in a few weeks when the Suncrests are ready.  Oh I love summer.

Garden Update

This afternoon we harvested our first non-herb goodies from our garden.  Look at our pretty radishes!  They are pink and purple.  I can't wait to see what the next ones look like.  The slugs pretty much ate a lot of our herb seedlings and a lot of our arugula.  Hopefully the rain will finally stop and we will see some serious progress with our plants.  But seriously, aren't they pretty radishes?

Yesterday Cliff and I bought a new planter for the cottage.  We have been looking for some nice big ones all year.  We were at Jerry's Home Improvement and they had their pots on sale (25%-75% off).  With the discount, the nice blue pot was in our price range.  We got a few more herbs (the orange mint smells amazing) and an ornamental grass (Cliff likes those) to go inside.  We also planted chocolate mint, pineapple mint, apple mint, and "the best" mint near our stairs.  

Cliff and I have decided to start a new garden plot next to the cottage.  This garden plot will be the home to okra, collards, butternut squash, and zucchini.  We hope to be done with it tomorrow afternoon.  It is a whole lot of work to double dig a garden plot!  The section was once a laurel and blackberry thicket.  There are so many roots.  My whole body is tired.

We also bought more flower seeds.  We are going to plant them all over the yard.  We have California poppies (my favorite!), oriental poppies, columbines, bachelors buttons, cosmos, and morning glories.

Cliff and I looked at each other tonight and realized we are living the dream.  It was nice outside, we were both digging in the dirt, we were planning dinner to feature our goodies and the dog was behaving.  It was a nice night. 

Our Epic Day

Today has been pretty fantastic.  Cliff and I got up early this morning to be at the farmer's market when they opened so that we could get cool pepper and tomato starters.  We went last week late in the afternoon and the place we liked was pretty cleared out.  Well today we had great success.  For peppers we got Bulgarian carrot, Hungarian hot wax, purple jalapenos, serrano del sol, and alma paprika.  For tomatoes we got a chocolate cherry and a sun sugar.  We also got one cucumber plant and it is a Mexican sour gherkin.  These sound awesome.  They look like little mini watermelons (1"- 2" fruits) that taste like they have already been pickled.  So excited.  We also bought red and white radish seeds as they are super gratifying to grow and pick. 

At the market we split a Red Wagon ice cream for our second breakfast.  Cliff sampled their batch of chevre, mead, pine nuts, and rosemary ice cream.  I sampled their vanilla malted strawberry-rhubarb pie ice cream.  We decided on their mix of vanilla malted, brown ale, and chocolate ice cream.  It was really tasty.

We came home, let the dog out, and planted our new starters along with more basil, fennel, and cilantro seeds.  We are really excited as this will be our first garden where we actually plant things in the ground.  In the past we have only done container gardens.  This year our garden will have parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano (sing it a little in your head,) dill, fennel, garlic chives, cilantro, chervil, basil, arugla, oak leaf lettuce, tom thumb lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and radishes.  We have also planted sunflower seeds and birdhouse gourd seeds in the yard but we think the birds might have gotten to most of the seeds and shoots.  That stinks but we are hopeful.  Rudy really loves hanging out with us outside and he is starting to understand that he can sit near the garden...just not in it.



After our gardening session we played frisbee with Rudy.  He gets it now!  In the past we would throw things outside for him to catch and return.  He would run to them, sniff, and then run back to us without ever touching the frisbee or ball.  Over the winter we played alot of inside frisbee fetch.  Good thing too as it is finally translated outside and Rudy loves it!  We knew he was going to be a frisbee dog when we rescued him.  He loves running fast and jumping.  How couldn't he be good at it?  Now it's his favorite thing ever.  Look at that happy dog's face!

We got dressed and went to Sonic as it was on the way to our afternoon activity.  Grandma gave me a coupon for buy one get one free for the Sonic Brown Bag Meals.  Cliff and I each had a cheeseburger, tater tots, and drink (I got an ocean water).  The ocean water stained by teeth blue for a little while.  Note to self: never get that drink if I have someplace important to be within the next few hours.  Today I didn't much care and in fact I thought it was pretty funny.

Ok, I guess I should mention that in the craziness of the last two weeks I also applied for, interviewed for, and was offered a job.  That's right.  I'm employed!  It's like my dream job; one that I was going to pine for over the next few years.  I'm going to be the Volunteer and Special Events Coordinator for a local park and recreation district.  I start on Monday.  The summer schedule looks like a lot of fun.  Outdoor movies, plays, concerts, festivals, camping events, and lots more.  Check out the events schedule to see more info on the awesomeness.

So today my new employers were offering a free indoor rock climbing and bouldering event.  Cliff found it in the program and was excited for us to try it.  It was sooo good!  We won two raffle prizes!  I got this fancy sports top from prAna.  I love their catalog and really enjoying looking through it whenever we house sit (p.s. all of the folks that we have ever house sat for get this catalog...odd).  We climbed.  Cliff was a natural.  He strapped in and climbed up that wall like Spiderman.  I was very impressed.  He got to the top with no problem at all.  I on the other hand was a different story.  I was gun-hoe until I actually got on the wall and then I froze.  I couldn't move.  My little hands were so sweaty that I didn't really make it that far off the ground before I asked to be lowered.  The photo below shows me be lowered from the overwhelming height of 10 feet. Embarrassing? Oh dear Lord yes.  Small children all around me where whizzing by as I clung terrified to the wall.  I didn't want to be a total failure so I tried the second easiest course.  My second belayer (the guy on the ground that controlled my line) gave me chalk to help easy my sweaty palm issue.  It helped as I proudly got probably 20 feet off the ground before I asked to propel down.  Oh well.  I really wasn't a climber as a kid so I don't think the natural ability is in my genes.  I will totally go back though and try again.  Best part?  That won't be a problem as it's included in my benefits!

         

At the end of the event they gave out ice cream.  Cliff and I got in line and realized that it was Red Wagon...again!  Score.  Cliff got coffee and I got vanilla.  Seriously, they gave out local, handmade ice cream over bars from the grocery store.  I haven't even started work there but I am totally impressed.

Best.  Day.  Ever.