cascadian telegrams

toofairie times two

Malcolm got not one but two visits from the tooth fairy on Friday:  One of his front, top teeth and a bottom one.  He’ll make a great pirate.

In the immortal words of Foghorn Leghorn:  “Boy, yuh got more nuhrve than a sawh tooth!”

princess and the pea

our neighbor Judy designs sets for children’s plays (and has been doing so for around 15 years … since her kids where that age).  Her husband Doug is often beavering away at wood projects related to her stage productions in the garage off of our shared alley. 

They invited us and the Rathbuns across the street to a production of Princess and the Pea on Friday, which was great!  The middle-school kids where surprisingly good, the sets were wonderful and our kids were enchanted.  Pics are here.

garden path project weekend

man we are sore from removing 5-10 yards of fill and adding nearly 10,000 lbs of gravel, but our gravel garden path is ‘in’.

   

We have lots of lavender from the Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sale, including Hidcote, English and Spanish varieties of different heights, plus some herbs and other herbaceous border plants for along the path.  By the time we’re done, none of the lousy grass sod we laid down last season will remain.  And not a moment too soon… it is crap.

This is quite literally ‘laying the groundwork’ for our garden but hopefully now the more fun part of adding plants begins in earnest.

more anchor tenants in the garden

after seeing Penguins I spent the rest of the day digging a big hole and planting a Coral Bark Japanese Maple along our fence.  That’s three new ‘anchor tenants’ in our garden including the ‘Everred’ Laceleaf Japanese Maple 

 

and a Hardy Kiwi to grow on the trellis over the gate.

The kiwi produces grape-sized kiwi fruit without the skin, fuzz or seeds, I’m excited to see what it produces!

Our work for the weekend is far from over though:  We have about 9000 lbs of gravel to set in for our garden path, and I’m going to pop by the Edible Plant Sale at Seattle Tilth up the road tomorrow to pick up cherry tomatoes for my friends.   I’m also on the hunt for an olive tree as I’ve read that arbequina spanish olives do OK here, and I’ve got just the spot (a sunny, western, warm concrete wall) for it!

Tree snaps from today are here.

“just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave…”

The new Humboldt Penguin Exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo up the street is pretty cool… more photos here for all of you that just can’t get enough of penguins… marching… ever marching, onwards…