Green Thumb

After two Saturday mornings and a LOT of digging up rocks, we have our own little veggie garden! Our yard is definitely not designed for a garden. Our backyard is north facing, narrow, with a steep rocky hill in the only good sun spot. The sides of our house are too narrow and shady for any kind of garden, and who wants veggies growing in the front yard?

So, after much deliberation and advice from Spencer, I decided to level out a part of the rocky hill in the backyard. Little did I know that it was about 80% rock and 20% pebbles! All the rocks you see bordering the new garden are what we dug up trying to level the ground a little.



We brought in a bunch of good garden soil and mulch from Home Depot, and we now have four varieties of tomato plants, two zucchini plants, one yellow squash, and a butternut squash. After close to five years of marriage, we finally have our first official vegetable garden. Now hopefully I will be able to keep all the plants alive and well through the growing season!

Here is the before and after shot.

BEFORE

AFTER

More on Moab

I think it's time for me (Spencer) to post a blog. We got a great video camera from Michael and Jessica, and I finally figured out how to use it. I really appreciate Celeste taking me to Moab for my birthday - it's like my own (humongous) back yard, and I love it all.

In the last post, Celeste put up some pictures of the 4x4 trail: Fins 'N Things. Here are a couple short videos that give an example of what we did - tons of fun!


It feels even steeper in the car, and the even front bumper almost touched the ground. That was by far the worst scrape of the day.


That one was like walking up a ladder - REALLY STEEP! There were some others, but if you want to go down with us, I'll do it again!

On my birthday (April 25th) we went on that beautiful hike up Negro Bill Canyon (can I say that?). Here is the short video:



Thanks again to Celeste for a great birthday present, to my parents for loaning us the tent trailer, and to Celeste's parents for giving us that sleeping bag. It was a great trip that we'll always remember. I'm ready to go again if there are any takers!

Birthday in Moab

Well, it's been almost a full week since our trip to Moab, I guess it's time to get this blog done! Spencer celebrated his birthday last weekend (I won't say which one, since he is feeling a little "old" lately!). He has been itching to take a trip to Moab and do some mountain biking, so we planned a quick weekend getaway. I took the day off school Friday and we were able to drive down Thursday evening.

I have to say a big thank you to Spencer's parents for letting us take their tent trailer. It sure makes camping a lot more relaxing! And another big thank you to my parents for Spencer's birthday gift, a two person sleeping bag. We LOVE it and found it to be very comfortable and cozy!

Anyway, we got to Moab around 10:00 p.m. and planned to find a camp site among the hundreds available in the area. Little did we know, Moab was having their big car show that weekend, and everything was totally full! We drove around until after midnight, finally ending up about 10 miles outside of Moab, and traveling down a bumpy dirt road for more than 5 miles. At the end of the bumpy road were five primitive camp sites, all taken. One of the sites had a fire going, and by this time we were so tired, we didn't want to keep searching. So we walked up to the camp site with the fire and asked the couple if we could share their spot (which was HUGE, by the way!) for the night. Thankfully, they said yes, and we set up the trailer and tried to get some sleep. Of course, it was super windy that night, and the camp trailer kept flapping around making all kinds of noise. Needless to say, we got very little sleep. We packed up bright and early the next morning, and were out of there by 7:30 a.m.

Not a great start to the weekend, but it did get better! We drove over to the Sand Flats camping area and took a spot that opened up as people were leaving for the day. After setting up camp (again!) I took Spencer up to the beginning of the Porcupine Ridge Trail so he could do some mountain biking.

Spencer's getting ready for his 14 mile ride on Porcupine Ridge.

Then I headed back to camp and tried to get a little sleep to make up for the night before. That afternoon we did a crazy, fun off-road ride in the 4Runner!

If you look close, you can see the tire marks on the trail, over all the rolling rocks.

We stopped every now and then and got out of the car to enjoy the great scenery.

Spencer and I were both so impressed with how the 4Runner did on the Fins 'n Things off-road trail.

The end of the trail!

We worked up quite an appetite out on the trail, and Spencer made a great fajita dinner for us.

Yummy!

We spent the evening in downtown Moab, watching all the car show people cruise Main Street. People were everywhere! No wonder we couldn't find a camp site the night before! There were all kinds of great cars, and all kinds of interesting people. I didn't get any photos of the cars. Oh well.

Next morning was Spencer's birthday. Happy Birthday Hubby! We had a lazy morning, then went on a beautiful hike on the Negro Bill trail. It was a great hike, not too steep, with gorgeous scenery!

Jack and I are ready to go at the trailhead!

The trail took us about 2 miles to the Morning Glory Natural Bridge for a total trip of 4 miles. The arch was really amazing, spanning 243 feet to make it the sixth largest natural bridge in the U.S.!

A crack in the rock at the base of the arch had a small waterfall springing out of it.

We were lucky with the weather on our hike, with temperatures in the low 70's. It did get a little windy on some of the more exposed parts of the trail, but overall it was a great hike!

That afternoon the wind picked up again and we got some rain off and on. We had planned on staying until Sunday, but after two nights of little sleep, we decided to grab a quick bite to eat and head back home Saturday evening.