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OK, so I haven’t posted about the garden in a while. Things haven’t been too exciting, but they’re now beginning to get interesting.

Some of the plants were just massive, so I moved them outside. Then I kept going. So the pumpkins, zucchini, spinach, tomatoes, green peppers, and some lettuce are now outside. The spinach actually looks tasty, and I may steal a few leaves soon.

Oh, and Becca’s sunflowers are now 13″ tall - well on their way to their 12′ expected height!

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Two weeks have passed since we started the garden, and I had some concerns this week, but it’s coming along nicely. Aside from the Carnival Peppers, everything has sprouted and I’ve moved some plants outside and many in individual containers (from the egg cartons).

Here’s the photo of the plants enjoying the beautiful weather we had today:

The bell peppers were scaring me, but between last night and this morning, 9 sprouts came up out of nowhere! I moved a few of the squash into the ground today. While we still have a month until the last average frost date, if I know a frost is coming I can cover those that are in the ground. If I loose them, I have plenty more. The directions said to plant more than are needed, in case something doesn’t germinate, but it seems all of my seeds are coming up, so I have to do something with them.

This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Last week we started our garden indoors, planting all sorts of seeds. The little seedlings are starting to come up now, and it’s really exciting seeing them grow every day. The lettuce is going great, and the spinach is starting to come up, too. Becca’s sunflowers are exploding now that they broke through (I bought her the giant, 12-foot-tall variety - they’re only about 2-inches tall now). All of the squash family seedlings are coming up, as are the cucumbers. However, none of the herbs are up yet, and neither are the peppers or tomatoes (although the cherry tomatoes look great). Strawberries aren’t up, either. However, many of these take up to 21 days to sprout - strawberries take up to 30 days!

Lettuce sprouting	Becca’s sunflowers
Seedlings

I built some “greenhouses” for the plants out of some old temporary fencing and saran-wrap, and stole Laura’s heating pad to help regulate the temperature. Of course, to monitor the temperature, I’m using an Oregon Scientific Wireless Waterproof Temperature Sensor. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get it to register up in my weather station yet - I think I have to sync resetting the sensor and scanning for new channels at the same time on the base unit. For now, I turn the heating pad on during the day to get the temperature up to about 70-degrees, and turn it off at night.

Look for an update next week - I hope by then the sprouts will be taller, and hopefully some of the herbs and tomatoes will be showing signs of success!

This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Boy, this weather is nice. While I miss skiing and I’d like to get Scout out skijoring with the kids on a sled (sled-joring?), it’s nice to open the windows and let some fresh air in. It’s just about 60° now (58.8, to be exact) and expected to peak today, before dropping back into the 30’s next weekend.

It’s also nice to actually be able to OPEN the windows! We’ve had windows opened that haven’t been opened since we moved into the house! The new windows are great

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Laura dragged us suggested we go to the Letchworth craft fair yesterday, so I figured I’d try to find a geocache that avoided me last year.

Geocaching is best described as using billion-dollar US Military technology to find Tupperware in the woods.

So far, my finds have either been with Rob, Ray, or Steve. The cache I was going after was What’s the Point by Road Kill, one that I attempted last year without any notes. Well, I needed the notes, as the first line reads: “The coordinates are not the final cache”.

So while Laura & the girls were looking for crafty things, Jason, Scout & I went out looking for this cache. We had a good time finding it… I just have to teach Jason that everyone isn’t out geocaching, and muggles don’t understand.

I’ve found 11 so far… quite a bit behind the near-500 Rob has found. Maybe I should do a few that are near home.

This entry was posted by Eric on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 7:51 am and is filed under Family, Outdoors, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

This past weekend I ran in the Letchworth 5K, known to me as the longest 5K race. Since I run with my Garmin, I’m able to track how far I actually run, compared to how the race officials measure the course. This time, it was 3.25 miles. Either way… still a hard race.

This was a 5K race, not a 5K run. There’s a big difference. I need to get into more races, if I want to do the Turkey Trot in 40 minutes.

You can see the course and details of my run here. My official time was 0:27:30 which is an 8:51 pace. I finished 76th overall, and 7th in the Male 20-29 group. Andy (now engaged!!!) crossed right behind me. Tom was with me for the first mile, then took off, finishing in 25:05, while his girlfriend kept up a 10:18 pace finishing in an even 32:00.

There’s another race at Delaware Park this weekend… I may do that to get more race experiences.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under Fitness, Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.