Vogler Visit-A-Palooza

My Mom, Malena, my Dad, and all of his tools arrived just about two weeks ago.  

 Give my dad a week and his tools (and 24 hr access to the house that you're not evening living in yet) and before you know it, 

 Every pipe that runs though your basement will be found lying on the floor of said basement.

 Yup, every one. 

 And you'll find him tinkering with the circuit box. 

 This is our pretty new plumbing stack. This wasn't courtesy of my dad but of the sellers and a great plumber.

 Here are more pipes lying in the (one full) bathroom floor.

 And just when we get on a roll (in this case, tearing down the kitchen soffit and just about to slice his ear open)

 Michael comes home and informs you that his car is "broken",

 As in, makes a grating noise every time he tries to brake. So they spend the next couple hours taking off tires,

 And having the car fall off the jack (but thankfully, hot hurting anyone aside form a few scrapes), and eventually getting it fixed (Michael now knows how to change brakes!).

 Malena made herself at home, as always.

 And right when we were getting into the plumbing groove, I had a freak accident where I dropped a piece of copper pipe that I was in the process of cutting on the spigot of our hot water heater. Water surged out of the heater and it was unusable for the next 3 or so days that it took us to locate a new spigot and a tap to make some new threads. 

 The soffit is almost gone!

 And on to the most dreaded part of the week (as soon as we were able to find another strapping young man to help us), moving my 500lb mixer into the basement. 

 Smooth so far

 There's bits of kitchen debris in the wheelburrow, lumber for our raised-bed garden and a big mixer all occupying our back yard.

 The scariest part, down the stairs.

 Mischief managed

 And there's a mixer in my basement! (and new copper pipe behind!)

 Hello best friend. Too bad I have no oven to bake anything I make in you.

 Later on: stretching and petting 

 And more petting

 Why won't anyone play wiffle ball with me?

 It's didn't take long for Malena to usurp the couch.

 Raised-bed garden going in

 And 8 heirloom tomato plants to go in the garden.

 We had another puppy visitor, I just had to see Fozzie (and Carolyn) before the move to DC.

 Slowly, slowly filling up.

And on our last night together, Malena got to go to a restaurant with and clean all of those yummy plates.

Thank you SO MUCH Mom and Dad! Without you coming out to visit, we'd have no garden planted and terrible water pressure!

Harvest Time

 Cucumbers have gone from this....

...to this seemingly overnight.

And tomatoes have gone from this.....

...to ripe. 

Sorry, if you know me at all you know my obsession with tomatoes. So far, 4 tomatoes have been harvested but I am too impatient to take a picture before inhaling them right there on the balcony.

We're off today for another fun wedding weekend with family in Ohio. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my beloved Saab (just back from the shop two days ago with a new fuel pump) makes it without a hiccup.

Balcony Garden Update

 It's been a few weeks since I've highlighted the amazing growth that's been taking place on our little balcony. I've in no way inherited my parents' green thumbs (can't even count the number of plants I've killed) and we've struggled with some of the bi-polar weather this spring (frosts, cold and soaking rain, tornado warnings and high winds) but the opposite swing (over a week now of over 90° days) has really given the garden the kick start it's needed.

And in case you aren't the gardening type, you might want to skip this post. After reading over it, I'm amazed at how long-winded I can be over a 8x11 foot space.

I realize that I never got around to showing off Michael's Birthday presents. I purchased two blueberry plants because they apparently need to have another one around to facilitate cross pollination. And I purchased two types so that we would have different harvesting seasons, thus extending our fresh blueberry eating time. Now, I must admit that I never would have thought to keep blueberries in pots, but Gayla Trail in Grow Great Grub (my current container and small space gardening bible) makes it clear that container grown blueberries can do quite well. Our master plan is to transplant these babies into the ground when the time comes that we have our own yard. This particular plant is the "Patriot" blueberry, and as you can probably tell from the already blue berries, this is our early harvest plant.

This is our "Jersey" (late harvest) blueberry bush with my massive mint alongside. There are many green berries on this plant and while there are one or two blue berries, I don't expect that we will be harvesting for 2 months or so.

 Don't mind the wilty-ness, I watered just after taking the pictures. But regardless, these are my cucumber plants (top right and bottom left) which already have blossoms and tiny cukes growing. The bottom right plant is our lavender which has been growing like crazy; I've already harvested twice and am due to harvest again tomorrow before we leave. The strands of drying lavender are hanging on the same hook as my France calendar which happens to be on a Marseille theme this month. The pairing is very fitting. The herb on the top left is a new dill plant. Since the sage seemed to be over-taking the cucumbers, I opted to transplant it to its own container and put something a bit less invasive.

 Herbs clockwise from top left:

Cilantro is doing OK. It was taking over for a few weeks but unfortunately it went to seed and I didn't catch it in time. We'll see if it comes back or if I have to replace it. Since Michael has an aversion to Cilantro, having a plant means I no longer have to feel guilty about buying it in the store for only one of us to eat it. You could say I've become cilantro dependent.

Terragon is finally taking off after the addition of some worm castings (aka worm poop) to the soil.

Parsley is also starting to catch up with my demand. I have a problem with using too many herbs as soon as I get the plants, not allowing them to get really established before I start eating them.

Chives are also new to the garden. I struggled with the basil that was in this container. It didn't like the cold, wet weather that we had last month so when I finally decided to replace it I opted to move it into it's own container that could easily be taken into the house when the weather isn't perfect. The chives are still quite new but are establishing themselves nicely.

 As you can see, my upside-down tomato plant experiment has been working out quite well. The plant is huge and as of my count this morning, I have 7 tomatoes so far. Two of the three basil plants in the top have done quite well (Thai and the new Purple basil) but the Greek basil struggled with the cold weather and I haven't been able to get it to grow more than one stalk, so we'll see how that one pans out.

 The lettuce, radishes and onions are doing much better after a move to the other, cooler side of the balcony. We have been eating and thinning out the lettuce and onions for quite awhile now and I'm trying hard to keep the radishes happy and damp.

 All of the herbs seem to be loving our heat wave, including the transplanted sage (huge, right?) and the new basil which (thanks to more worm poop) has probably tripled since we bought it last weekend.

My jalapeno plant is doing well but teaching me patience. It has been flowering for quite some time so I was starting to worry that I wasn't seeing any peppers but my research this morning assured me that these plants can take 4-6 months to produce.

I can get used to early planting times in the Midwest!

I seem motivated to blog lately! So motivated, in fact, that I spent a few hours this morning figuring out how to stitch together photos in Pixelmator (something I have been meaning to figure out for oh, maybe a year now) just to show you all how much my lovely balcony garden has grown. 

I mentioned in the post about my family's visit that while Mom, Grandma and I were at the Botanical Gardens enjoying all of the pretty colors, my dad stayed home to build me a balcony-wide planting box. 

Not only did he befriend the local lumber yard owners while buying the supplies, but he also managed to convince a man working at a Catepelar store to use his torch to bend the brackets you see holding the box up in the photo (originally simple L brackets) so they could wrap around the bottom of the planter box and up over the balcony railing.

Many of the plants on the balcony were herbs planted in pots and other railing boxes that were already here and they are all doing splendidly. 

But we also planted some plants from seeds to fill the planter box and some other spaces in the other railing boxes and despite some lack of sun (which will be aided come summer when the sun is higher in the sky), and a ridiculous amount of rainfall, they are all doing amazingly well!

The "before" pictures were taken just a few days after my family left and the "after" pictures were taken yesterday (just two weeks later).

 Leaf lettuce: I'm going to need to start pulling some micro-greens for salads here soon.

Radishes and Scallions: look at those babies go!

Sage (not really important) and Cucumbers (really, French Cornichon seeds that we kind of snuck through customs on our way back): These took awhile but I'm happy to see some sprouting.

Lavender (not important) and more Cucumbers: same as before, but this pot actually has all three cucumber seeds sprouting as of today!

I have lots more going on out on the balcony that I'll be sure to update you on, but for now, keep your fingers crossed for me that no natural disasters or my black thumb cause any damage.

We didn't sit down for a minute...(cont)

My parents and Grandma set out on the 800+ mile drive on that Friday morning. The original plan was to stay the night along the way and arrive Saturday afternoon. I called it though, I told Michael the night before to expect a phone call saying that they were just going to tough it out and drive straight through on Friday. And the phone call came, happily, meaning one more day with the crew all here.

As you can see, Pep warmed up to the visitors quickly.

I'm not sure what we did on Saturday...I think we were a bit lazy, which was understandable for those who had spent 12.5 hours in the truck on the previous day. We did however manage to get out of the house and to the grocery store to pick up dinner supplies and tulips to adorn the table for our first meal at it.

Everyone is smiling in this picture but really, they are probably cringing from the pain of sitting on seatless chairs since up until this point, we still only had one solid chair that included a seat (Grandma is sitting on that one).

Sunday morning we hopped in the car and headed out MO rt100 towards the wine region. Grandma claims she was falling over from exhaustion in this picture but I think she was just being camera-shy.

Here's the group taking a tour of the wine cellars at Stone Hill Winery in Branson, MO.

And here we are during the post-tour wine-tasting. We cut Grandma off at this point (kidding...kidding).

I don't know what we did up until the afternoon on Monday but when Michael got off of work we met at an unfinished furniture store to fill out our dining room set with some chairs (with seats). We bought four for now and plan to get two more in the near future (although, since our TV just crapped out, I don't know when we'll be able to afford two more chairs).

I'll post more on the finishing process in another post.

Anyway, on Tuesday, we realized that our hometown Pirates were in town playing the Cardinals and get this: the Pirates had won the previous night's game against the Cards!

Sadly, the Cardinals won this game (but lost the next night's), but we did have a great time with a great view. I am anxious to go to another game to cheer for the Cards. I really tried at this game, but I just couldn't bring myself to root against the Pirates.

On Wednesday we loaded up into the truck and drove across the Mississippi river into Illinois to visit the Cahokia Indian Mounds.

Here we are at the top (Grandma didn't bother, there were lots of steps up). Dad and I may look a little tired. This was taken seconds after we raced up the stairs. Unfortunately Michael wasn't able to come along on this trip since he had to work. (boo.)

We may have been miles away but from the (relatively) high viewpoint on top of the mound, we were able to pick out the arch in the distance.

On our way back from the Mounds we stopped off at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

The walls, ceilings, floors, everything is covered with 41.5 million mosaic pieces.

Coincidentially, after posting these photos to facebook I was told by Michael's Aunt Susie that "Many of these were done by the Frei Studio or Ravena (sp) Mosiacs...Joe's (Michael's Uncle Joe, that is) grandfather's/great-grandfather's company."

We have an exciting familial St. Louis claim to fame.

I particularly loved the red on the ceiling in this chapel, made to symbolize the blood of Christ.

And in this chapel we have the Cardinal hats, left to hang until they turn to dust. Literally.

After the day's excitement, Mom and I did more work on the chair we had been caning all week while Pep drank our cane soaking water.

On Thursday, while dad whipped up a balcony planter box for us, Mom, Grandma and I hit up the botanical gardens. There was much more color on this visit.

It looked as if an Easter basket had exploded.

I love tulips.

We visited the local gardening center at the Botanical gardens so I could drool over the raised bed gardens,

And the cold boxes.

And on Friday we hit up the free (with the exception of the 12.50 parking pass, unless you want to walk 1 mile for free parking, which is what we did) Zoo where we had the pleasure of seeing some incredible birds,

A tiger losing his lunch,

This rather large giraffe,

Pairs of penguins,

And an elephant coating himself in mud to stay cool. (I missed this one, I was busy fetching the truck from a mile away.)

And after the swealtering heat (something like 85°) at the Zoo, we were in need of some lunch and cold beer, so we headed off to Schlafly Bottleworks. After an excellent lunch we took the tour and...

(You guessed it!)...tasted!

And on their last night here we ordered take out BBQ from one of the highest rated St Louis BBQ joints and spent the evening finishing up the chair.

And we moved this beautiful family piece to it's final placement and filled it with all of our (mostly wonderful hand-me-down) china. I forgot to mention earlier that this China cabinet, my Grandparents' (first belonging to my Grandpa's parents) China cabinet, came with my family in the truck so that we wouldn't have to keep all of our special dishes in boxes in the corner of the dining room. Thanks again Grandma!

And thanks to all three of you for the visit, we had a wonderful time!