The Bluebird is not dead- it's only getting stronger..

This is a simple montage of recent pics of goings on around the Garden.  Expect a more organized post soon with details on the improvements we made to our cedar planting boxes as well as our plans for the vegetable garden for the coming season.

Rosie and Jabarra Jr. sharing the nesting box

 Yard birds in the yard

 Cornflake, Green Lantern, Jabarra Jr, (back), Henrietta

The girls from the last pic, plus Rosie (foreground left) and Hidey, (Silver Lace Wyandote)

 Flint and Lilly love visiting the bunnies- as, apparently does Rosie (inside to the right)

 Come in and play with us!

 Flint is preparing to help "exercise" his little pal Jimbo. This consists of what you imagine it does...

 Teaser pics of our planting boxes, now mounted with wheels and filled with soil for the coming season!

 Fresh soil is so full of promise!

These are just a few of the pics of the weekend project of "Pimp my Planters".  I will post more  photos of the project soon, as well as some pics of the planters with their first crops in them as soon as they go in later this week. Our own improvements to an already solid planter box will really help us get the 2012 growing season off to a great start.

Bluebirds at Large

Petunia and I are leaving the homestead in the capable hands of friends for a few days for a motorcycle road trip to Southern Oregon to join our family for a short vacation! We'll be in beautiful Sunriver, not far from Bend.

You'll remember my friend Dan Kelley, who kindly shared his morel mushrooms with us earlier this month. Well, upon hearing of our planned adventure, and where we would be traveling Dan was excited for us and slightly envious, as he confided to me that we would be traveling through and indeed, staying right in the middle of prime Boletus Rex-Veris (aka porcini mushroom!) territory! Together we looked at our planned route, over Snoqualmie Pass, east of the Cascades, then southward on scenic highways skirting the western slopes of the mountains all the way to Sunriver. Dan says we are to look at elevation ~4000ft plus or minus 500. There's a few more details to remember, among them that you need to look in a heavily wooded area, and that they grow only under "True Firs". some details about them:
(excerpt from Wikipedia article on Boletus Rex-Veris below)
Boletus rex-veris, commonly known as the spring king bolete, is a basidiomycete fungus of the genus Boletus found in western North America. The large, edible fruiting bodies known as mushrooms appear under pine trees, generally in May to June. It has a pinkish to brownish cap and its stem is often large and swollen, and the overall colour may have an orange-red tinge. As with other boletes, the size of the fruiting body is variable. Boletus rex-veris is edible, and may be preserved and cooked.


Anyway, our plan is to hunt these prized fungi during most of our trip, and we will try our best to document the mission as we go. If we meet with success, we can look forward to another mushroom dish related blog post soon too! Wish us luck.
With Flint and Lilly safely boarded with friends and family, and our friend Alex coming to care for the flock and bunnies, (not to mention Switchblade and the aquarium denizens), we are finally ready to head out on the open road for a few days, combining two passions. Those being a love for two wheeled adventure, and an opportunity to connect with the beautiful Pacific Northwest forests while seeking out a share of nature's bounty.

For a really cool look at these mushrooms being harvested, watch the YouTube video below.

Best egg barter yet!

My buddy Dan from work is a skilled woodsman and forager. He has serious mushroom finding skillz and managed to fond some (rare this season) locally grown morel mushroom.  We traded about 6oz of mushrooms and a stick of morel butter for a half dozen of our farm fresh eggs and a container full of our home made cold packed dill pickles. Bartering the fruits of our labor is really satisfying, and we look forward to trading more with Dan, as He is also a beer brewer I think we have a bright future together to look forward to!