I stopped off at Tracy Lumber Saturday afternoon to pick up the 2×10s, and had time this afternoon to put together the frame for the raised garden bed. Next step: get topsoil delivered.
I snapped a few pics of my helper and our finished product. Click on a thumbmail to see the full-size image in the composting and gardening gallery.
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I don’t remember ever having month-long festivals in honor of my birthday, but that seems to be the case here. After all the other stuff we did for his birthday, we took him on an overnight vacation.
Instead of going somewhere distant, Kath got us a room at the Ramada in North Syracuse ’cause - let’s face it - kids don’t care if they’re 8 miles or 8 time zones away from home. As long as there is a room with two beds and HUGE pillows, an indoor pool / hot tub, and a breakfast buffet, they’ll be pretty stoked. And they were.
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After checking in Thursday afternoon and swimming for a while, we went to Tully’s restaurant for supper. We had never been there, and it was tons of fun. The food was good, and we dropped a few bucks some video games and air hockey before all was said and done.
On Friday morning we hit the breakfast buffet and headed home.
I hereby declare this the last event in honor of Thomas’ 2009 birthday.
Thomas had a party at school, a party at home, a cake at Nanny and Poppy’s. But wait, there’s more…
To celebrate his actual birthday we went to Johnny Rockets tonight - his grub of choice. When we got home he opened presents. Featured items were Mouse Trap and a Leapster handheld game thing with some games. He was very happy and he’s a lucky kid to get so much cool stuff.
My little guy is 5 years old. Hard to believe.
Happy birthday, buddy.
It’s getting close to my bedtime, so I won’t drone on - I just wanted to post a few photos from the weekend.
Thomas spent the second segment of his “week of birthday celebrations” eating ice cream cake:
On Sunday morning, Kath and I took the kids for a walk around Rockland Lake. It was FREEZING, and the wind was a-whippin’ something fierce - there were whitecaps rolling onto the shore! Here they are in one of the warmer moments:
After an excellent early supper with Nanny and Poppy, we all headed over to Laura’s for an egg hunt. We all got to meet the Easter Bunny - except Ed, who always seems to not be around when the Easter Bunny shows up. Curious.
Last, but not least, my mom with Justin, the latest addition to the extended family:
This is one of my favorite times of year. Is it because spring is nigh, and the birds are chirping? No. Because the days are longer, and the sun shines from early in the morning until late at night? No. The reason is simple: the four-hour extravaganza created in 1956 - Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.
Sure, Charlton Heston was a horrible actor.[1] Sure, Moses may not have had the bottomless supply of metaphors[2] and the silver tongue[3] he wields with unchecked abandon in the film. Sure, Joshua probably didn’t flit around on ropes like Errol Flynn. But there’s something about this epic creation that keeps me glued to the TV for hours.
Now, I enjoy How the Grinch Stole Christmas and other similar holiday-time TV happenings, but none nearly so much as this.
I hereby declare The Ten Commandments to be the greatest historically-themed epic of all time.
So let it be written. So let it be done.
The boys didn’t have school today, so Kathleen put together a small birthday party for Thomas with a few of his buddies. She set it up with a John Deere Tractor theme - lots of green and yellow.
There were tractor printouts for them to color, green t-shirts with iron-on JD decals they decorated with fabric paint, and a farm-themed birthday cake.
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Kathleen worked very hard for a long time to make it fun for the boys, and I think it was a great success. Best mom ever.
We have more festivities planned for next week, closer to his actual birthday. More on that after it happens.
I set up the Eliminator on the edge of the side yard[1] today. We had been using the simple, unbounded “compost pile” method over the winter, but I figured since I have this resource, why not use it?
Here is a shot of the Eliminator in all its black, monolithic awesomeness. And if you look carefully, you can see our Christmas tree just above dead center in the photo.
Check out the gallery for more photos of my first attempt at lasagna layering: putting down a layer of browns, then greens, then browns, then… well, you get the idea.
Compost away, my precious.
For those of you who thought I was exaggerating yesterday when I mentioned snow, get a load of the view out our back window this morning:
Spring, schming
Here’s a birthday message, typed by your buddy Daniel - just for you!!!
Happy Birthday, Erik
I Want To Know How Your Birthday Is Going
I Also Want To Know How You Like Your Present
And I Hope Your Having The Best Birthday Ever!
That’s right. As I sit here typing, there is a light dusting of snow on the ground and the flakes are steadily falling. I’m into snow and all, but this is a bit ridiculous.
Bit I digress. Back to the topic at hand…
I took a trip to Ballantyne Gardens last week and met Tim and Lisa Ballantyne. Tim was busy getting ready for the season - there were boxes everywhere - but he took twenty minutes to learn more about what I’m trying to do. I even got a personal tour of their garden out back. They carry a great range of organic seeds, and Tim has already helped me decide on a basic layout for the garden.
Since we don’t have any space limitations, the maximum size of the garden is dictated by the fact that I don’t want to get too ambitious right out of the starting gate. I’m going to build a fenced-in 10ft x 10ft raised bed (our yard is VERY rocky) and divide it into four quadrants with a 2ft-wide “cross” in the middle as a walkway. That’ll give me 64 square feet of planting area and plenty of fence to grow stuff that needs something to grab onto.
Tim and I talked for a while about companion planting, and he said he’d be willing to help me with that, too.
With that matter settled, I attended a “Master Composting” class at Northern Onondaga Public Library offered by the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency. I learned a lot about OCRRA that I didn’t know and met a lot of folks with a lot of different reasons for wanting to compost. We had newbies who wanted to learn the basics & old hats who wanted to learn the latest trends, unmarried apartment-dwellers & ranch-owning couples, veggie gardeners & flower gardeners - you name the demographic and it was probably represented.
The class was organized by the head of OCRRA’s “industrial-strength” composting program. What he’s doing is amazing. They build rows of compostable material hundreds of feet long and 20 feet high and aerate the pile using a small fan attached to a perforated PVC pipe running down the length. The cost of running the pipe eliminated the need to turn the pile with a front-loader, saving $ and energy. It works so well that he measured temperatures near 170 degrees in the dead of Syracuse winter (after punching through the frozen outer layer).
A few students from SUNY ESF talked about browns and greens, aerobic vs. non-aerobic composting, and a little about the interesting critters we’ll find crawling about in our compost while it’s stewing. A new employee at OCRRA - and their resident vermicomposting expert - also gave a brief presentation on how to get the worms to work for you. My friend Holly is making progress in this wormy area, so I now have two resources should I decide to go this route one day.
At the end of the class we all received a free recycling Blue Bin and a free composting bin. Mine is a model called the Yardwaste Eliminator. It consists of interlocking rectangular plates made of recycled plastic that you can build into any shape you want. I’m going to set it up this weekend.
As soon as it stops snowing.
