The start of veggie garden season

It's the beginning of the veggie season - one of my fave times of the year! I get to play with dirt and seeds :) This year will hopefully be more successful than last year. Over the winter we have done a lot with the soil in the beds to add nutrients. This year we have also gone with the tomato varieties that are more disease resistant. The heirlooms, although our preferred, suffered with the weather last year and sometimes you just have to work with what you've got!

For the tomatoes we have 'Bush Early Girl - Hybrid', Ferline F1 - Hybrid, Moravi F1 - Hybrid. We're also dabbling a little and trying Tomatillo. It's a cousin of the tomato and used a lot in Mexican cooking. We also have 2 peppers - the trusty Jalapeno that we use in everything and a new one called Aji Dulce. Our Venezuelan neighbours love this pepper but can't find it anywhere in the US so we're going to give it a go. I have not given them any guarantees just in case! The pepper is the size and colour of a habanero (a spicy pepper) but is a lot milder.

Here they are all snug with their heat mats and light.

And here they come! :)

Everything can be cooked on the BGE

I must admit that when MM first showed me the BGE I was sceptical. I thought it was just another grill, just a funny looking expensive one. But who I am to stand in the way of a man and his grill?

Well turns out, the BGE is one the best things we have ever bought. We use it easily 6 days a week come rain or shine. MM is known to frequently be out there in the dark grilling and scaring our neighbours dogs. And when the temperature drops to below zero? No problem, the BGE just keeps him warm :)

At Christmas, MM had a brain wave - why not do the Yorkshire Puddings on it! The puddings require a hot oven (500F) and the egg can easily get to that we decided to put it to the test:

Cast iron skillets are piping hot - in goes the batter! And we wait ...

Wa-la! PERFECTION!

We can now add yorkshires to the long list of what we can cook on the egg! :) And it is a long list - all the usual suspects of burgers, snags, chops etc to pizza, chili, chicken wings and sunday roasts.

My mouth is watering ...

Christmas and the Arctic Blast

Oh Chrimstas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

We went with a patriotic red, white and blue scheme - you can decide if that refers to the English, Australian or American flag! :)

We are in the midst of an "arctic blast" at the moment. It got down to 15.9F overnight last night. The last two days have been tops of 33F and tonight we have a low of 22F forcasted. Brrr!! My bird bath is looking very wintery (it's about 3feet tall so they're some grand icicles)We need the chiminea outside more than ever!

And they tell us Houston is "sub-tropical"!!

Go Aggies!

After moving to Texas we quickly discovered that High School and College (University) football is big here - VERY big! The tv show "Friday Night Lights" is not an exaggeration.

Our friends have a daughter who goes to Texas A&M so they were able to get their hands on some extra tickets. To get 6 seats together we were 10 rows from the top at the end zone. I was a little concerned about the height but in the end it worked out perfectly because we were able to see everything. Kyle Field seats 85,000 rabid fans! There are 3 sections like this:

There's a lot of traditions at A&M and I was happy to be told in advance that they fire a cannon every time they score a touchdown. We had a fantastic day and even got to see some history in the making - a 97 yard run :) It also helped that the home team won - WOOP!

Our neighbourhood turned into a winter wonderland recently. We had snow flurries and then overnight temps of 24F made for a very heavy frost the next morning. This lake is by our place - you can see the frost on the hill on the other side.
Brrrrr ...
My peas were frozen in their pods!

The beans did not like the frost and didn't survive. We had planted them originally just to help with the nitrogen levels in the soil and we ended up getting 3 bags of beans from them as well so they did their job.

Garden update

The garden is starting to come together. We're getting the beds filled and the grass that we layed after the pool construction has taken.

This is from the west corner of the back yard looking east. We moved the bird bath to the bed near the fence.

My lemon tree is still not looking very "tree" like but is laden with delicious lemons!

We have had a lot of Monarch butterflies this year. They stop in our area during their migration to Mexico. Here is the monarch caterpillar and butterfly sharing the same plant, aptly named butterfly weed. The plant is very resilient and needs to be. A couple of caterpillars can eat all of the leaves off and yet they still survive!
Here's the "Condon" bed in the east corner of the yard. It's a large bed that we're slowing filling up.
Out the front the pine trees are going through a growing spurt. They've shot up about 3 feet since we moved in. You can also see my skull halloween lights :)

The yaupon holly is laden with red berries. In the sun they are really radiant.

The veggie beds are looking better. We've done a lot with the soil to try and get some nutrients in there. So far the beans, peas, radishes, carrots and lettuce that we have here are keeping their bright green colour so that's a good sign. We'll be harvesting beans by the end of this week :)
This is the first bed that we did. We've had a couple of plants not make it. It's a difficult one as it's part shade and can get very wet when it rains. The log that is at the front is left over from our tree that we had to cut down. It didn't make it with the combination of Ike and the drought.

And we're back

I have finally figured out how to get photos to the blog with the new computer that doesn't take a 10 step process!

Way back in Sept we went to Colorado to visit the Bonners and get in a little camping. It was exciting to get all the camping stuff out again. The Texas summers aren't really conducive to camping so we were looking forward to the cooler mountain air. Our home and provisions for 4 nights of the trip:

Our time with the Bonners was well spent tubing down the river :) A little cold for me but the boys enjoyed it.
We camped at the Rocky Mountains National Park for 2 nights. We saw quite a few moose around the camp site. They are very big and can run surprisingly fast!
The elk taking in the view ...
We also planned to do some hiking but at 10,000 feet altitude we only managed one hike. I can't remember being so happy to see the car at the end of a hike. The trail followed a canyon, crossed over the river and then went along a ridge line to a mountain lake. It sounded wonderful in the brochure and was 8 miles so was perfect for a day hike. The 2000 feet elevation gain to 12,000 feet and no trail signage was not highlighted in the brochure. At any point we had no clear idea on where he were. The map just showed the ridge line but with no significant landmarks, there was nothing to set our bearings to! Here's me being brave crossing the gorge (the "bridge" was also not mentioned ...):
We made it to the lake and had a well deserved rest and lunch. The lake was a little disappointing. We were expecting something more like Yosemite, but were just grateful to know where we were on the map! The hike will be remembered for us completing it in one piece rather than for the views.
At Vail we were still unable to hike (my legs were so sore!) so we tried some downhill mountain biking instead! We rented bikes, took them up on the ski gondola and road back down the mountain. I was a little nervous at the beginning but was ready to go again after the first run :)

We had a fantastic time and will be back to visit again if the Bonners will take us :)

You know you're in Texas when ...

you have an Armadillo in your back yard! This fella paid us a visit this week, scrounging around for worms and bugs. He's a 9 banded Armadillo (if you look closely you can can't the bands) and is the most common here in Texas. Unfortunately he found our veggie patch but didn't do to much damage. We'll plug the whole under the fence so he doesn't get any more ideas.

We've been having some spectacular sunsets lately. We've had some thunder storms pass through and though we've had very little rain from them, they've still been a welcome sight.

The back yard is starting to come into it's own. The grass is starting to fill in and the plants are finally starting to grow. We seem to have chosen the slowest growing plants ever!

One very happy camper :)