Heat Wave

We are in the middle of what is likely to be a month long heat wave. Normally June temps are in the high 70's low 80's. Its been high 90's and over 100. Today it was 106. Its causing havoc in my garden. Normally plants have the chance to establish their root systems in June so that they can grow and thrive in July and August. We usually don't get to the high 90s until end of July and we have very few days over 100. My plants haven't grown in the last 2 weeks at all. My lawn is dying because when we bought sod last year they sold us shade grass rather than the drought tolerant grass we wanted. We didn't realize this until it was too late so we put up a shade cloth today in hopes of saving our lawn. The heat has made my grumpy. Since we have an swamp cooler for most of the house, it only cools the house 20 degrees from the outside temp, which means my house has been in the mid 80's. Thank god we do have a small AC unit in the bedroom so we have been spending a lot of time in there. Blech. Miserable. I hate this state.

To Build or Buy?

This question seems to apply to the two big developments I have coming in 2016. We have already decided the likely answer for one of the situations but we are still doing research in the other.

The property: We have almost 100% decided to buy a property with an existing house. It does make the property slightly more expensive but a property with a house usually comes with well and septic already in place and the interest rates for traditional mortgages are far less than the interest rates for lot loans. We probably wont be able to pay cash for our place, property in the area we want is pretty pricey, so we have to think about interest rates etc. We still may end up building in the long run, but in the mean time we will have a place to live and a monthly payment that is more affordable. My dream house is the 2 bedroom Whidbey (557 sq ft) by Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, but we'd turn the second bedroom in the back into a pimped out mudroom complete with a dog washing station and add a back entrance. Most people have a dream kitchen or a dream living room but I have a dream mudroom.

The Beehive: We are also mulling over the question over in relation to the beehive. I bought a book of beehive plans. We decided to go with the most common design, the Langstroth, simply because we live in Utah, a desert, where honey production can be decreased due to that fact so I don't want my bees to have to build new honey comb each year. Apparently it takes 8 pounds of honey to make one pound of wax. Maybe when we get to Oregon we can keep Warre Hives too but while we live in Utah, we will go with the Langstroth. That being said, apparently accessories for the Langstroth hives can add up, so we are pricing hives and lumber to decide if we should build our hive or buy.

Summer Garden Update

The summer garden went in a couple of weeks ago, since I never got around to finding community garden space I am just working with my tiny back yard and my garden at work. At work I planted kale and rainbow chard. The kale is doing well but my chard keeps getting sunburned, so I planted a row of green beans to shade them. Hopefully the chard will come back this fall and my kale will enjoy the extra shade during the hot summer as well. I also planted some tomatoes and eggplant at work. In the back yard I planted some Queenland Blue pumpkins, zucchini, more tomatoes and eggplant, potatoes, and some cucumbers. I made some room when we ripped up the hops (poison to dogs) so I have more space to work with than before. I already lost one tomato to a dog attack, however I am hoping it comes back. Gardening with dogs is a P.I.T.A., my dog eats my organic fertilizer and won't stay out of the garden beds. This wasn't a problem before when my back yard was planted in hops and raspberries since the plants are/were established, sturdy, and thorny in the case of the raspberries. Now she's having a blast running in the newly exposed beds and digging for kitty kandy so we are going to have to do something to protect the poor vegetables.

Speaking of raspberries and thorns, I am trialing a new thorn-less raspberry variety, Canby. I hope it works out because it is nearly impossible to weed the raspberries once they get to a certain point due to the thorns. My arms get shredded. If this bush seems to do as well as my current variety I am going to slowly fill the raspberries in with it. My current plans are aging a bit so they need an infusion of fresh blood anyways. That's about all for the garden for now.

Fishing and ideas...

I've been struggling to write a cheese making post for the last several weeks. Trying to strike a balance between enough and too much detail. Its still a work in progress. To summarize I made an attempt to make feta with local raw goats milk but had some temperature issues so the bacteria didn't fully convert the milk leading to weak curd and meh flavor. The good news is that I know what to fix for the next time.

In the mean time, while I was struggling to write that post, life had moved on. My kale is going wild after 3 weeks straight of rain and I'm freezing it in large quantities. We went fishing last weekend and we had amazing luck. My husband used to have terrible luck fishing but since we took a fishing class last year his luck has improved tremendously. He has out fished me on our last few trips. This last weekend he caught these two beauties (I caught a few more smaller fish) and we ate smoked trout for a week. Delicious....

They were both over 16 inches long

This brings me to the ideas part of the post. I spend a lot of free time scanning the MLS site for the area we are planning on relocating too. We aren't ready to move from here yet so this activity is just sort of daydreaming for me. However I have seen a few perfect properties, perfectly priced and been so upset that we weren't ready to buy and we missed our chance with the property. This got me thinking and I realized that we live in a townhouse that my husband bought when he was single and when you add in the fact that my salary has increased significantly in the last year and a half it turns out that we are very under housed. We spend less than 15% of our take home pay on housing (30 % is recommended and in reality most spend more than that). We also only have one other source of debt, the student loan, which we are paying double payments on to pay down. Looking at our monthly budget there is a plenty of wiggle room and we could afford a second mortgage payment with out additional stress. So after much discussion, the plan is to buy our property sooner rather than later, before interest rates and property values go up significantly.  We will pay two mortgages until we are ready to sell our current place and move out there. We plan on buying in 2016 rather than 2018 or 2019. We need get pre-approved for our loan and find a really good real estate agent so hopefully I will spend part of this year making it happen.

The other big change that is coming in 2016 is bees. I had the bright idea that I could keep them at my in-laws place. My HOA here would never allow it, but my in-laws have a much bigger place and no HOA. Laws here in the Beehive state are very friendly to bee keeping so I wouldn't have any trouble at their place. When I mentioned this to my mom she suggested I keep the bees at her place instead, she has huge bee garden, but I am reluctant because my dad is really afraid of bees. The same way I am afraid of spiders, a true phobia. Strangely enough he said he wouldn't mind them in the back yard but I know it would cause anxiety so I am going to stick with my in-laws for now and keep my parents as a back up. My mom is going to plant some extra bee forage since her house is close to my in laws and is in bee foraging range of my hive.  Stay tuned for more bee posts as we prepare for 2016.

Florida Trip part 4

The next day we spent hanging out at the marina watching the manatees and going on some short hikes. We cut our camping trip short because some rednecks moved in and decided that the whole campground should be forced to listen to blaring country music late into the night and the campground hosts were useless. As we packed up and drove out we did have the enjoyment of seeing the vultures tearing up their campsite. Karma..... (and also leaving food out, idiots)

We headed to the Keys and tried to catch a glimpse of the famous blue-green water and white sand beaches but most beaches had resorts built on them and you couldn't get anywhere near them. We decided to go to a state park and took a glass bottom boat ride as it was too cold to snorkel (60, brrr...). All I can say is meh, the reefs were interesting but we definitely need to go back and snorkel to really appreciate the reefs. I didn't sea sick but I took meds, used sea bands and chewed ginger gum like it was going out of style. That night we went to a restaurant on Key Largo and had fresh seafood. It was pretty good. We sat at the bar and the bartender kept giving me free drinks. I know it wasn't because I was a hot young thing in a bikini (I was fully dressed, you're welcome) plus my giant husband was sitting right next to me. The only thing I can think of is that I was nice and mentioned how hard he was working.

The next day in the Keys was much better. We went to the sea turtle hospital where they rescue and rehabilitate injured sea turtles. It was one of the coolest places on the trip.

Sick Loggerhead Turtle getting an IV 

Beautiful Green Turtle

Baby!!!

We didn't make it to Key West because we spent so much time at the turtle hospital but from what I heard it wasn't a huge loss. The Keys were very commercial and overbuilt. The next day we drove  back to Orlando and caught our flight. Overall it was a great trip, one of the best I've had in awhile. The best part was these 2 guys wearing the astronaut costumes we bought at the Space Center. 

My cute nephews

  

Florida Trip, part 3

The next day we decided it was a good time to explore the area of the park we were camping in. The weather was good for canoeing so we rented ourselves a canoe. While we were at the marina we finally saw manatees! For all our hunting they were under our noses the whole time. Apparently they like to hang out at the marina because the boats bring in fresh water. There was a whole group.

The water looks dirty but its actually full of tannins from the mangrove leaves. They stain the water and even the skin of the dolphins and manatees. 

After spending about an hour ogling the manatees we found nice loop trail that gave us a good view of the different ecosystems in the park. We weren't really experienced at canoeing so it took some time to get the hang of steering it. The trail started in a barrow, a man made deep pit where they dug out the limestone to build the roads. We had a hard time finding the trail and kept drifting where we didn't want to be. There is something unsettling about trying your hardest to paddle away from an alligator yet you keep drifting towards it. I think we expended a lot of energy inefficiently but we finally got on the trail and figured out the steering more or less. The second part of the trail was the red mangrove salt water marsh. In the south part of the park salt water and fresh water mix, and after we got out of the barrow, where the water was artificially deep, the water was only a foot or so deep which is normal for the park.

We could see a bunch of fish darting around in the water, it was crystal clear.

Transition to the saw grass prairie 

The next section was the saw grass prairie, it was by far the hardest paddle because we had to paddle through the grass, the canoe moving over it. It created a lot of drag and it was very draining. I wondered if we had bitten off more than we could chew. We were also serenaded by the growling of male alligators looking for a ready female. It sure was beautiful...

The trip finished full circle in a deep barrow again, Despite the heat (it was the hottest day at 85 degrees) the water was ice cold. We passed (very distantly) a huge 8 foot salt water crocodile (the very south of the park is the only place they live due to the salt water) but I didn't stop to take a picture. Crocodiles and alligators aren't very threatening on land because they can't move very fast but it is quite unnerving to be in their world. I was proud to have finished and in a little over 4 hours. 

After we lunched and rested we decided to finish the day and use our legs a bit and we hiked along the coastal area of the park. The water line was mostly covered in trees

There were a lot of spider webs along the trail as well complete with their resident creepy spiders (shudder) and it was the one time where we had problems with biting insects but it was nice to see another ecosystem in the park.

Florida Trip, part 2

After Biscayne NP we headed south and west to the Everglades. I'm not gonna lie, I went to the Everglades with a misconception that the park was a giant swamp. All the portrayals of the park I had seen had led me to believe this. I didn't do a lot of in depth research before we went just because I like to be surprised, and I was pleasantly surprised. The Everglades isn't a swamp because the water does not stagnate, it is constantly flowing through the park, although after they built a road cutting the park of from its water shed, most of the flowing is man made.

We got there late (Flamingo Campgrounds) and it was pitch black. We had reserved a spot on the beach but couldn't find our way there. Since we needed to use our headlights to set up camp we decided to spend our first night in a car site. The next morning we found the walk-up beach sights to see if it was worth moving our camp. We were just sitting on the beach, trying to decide, when we saw the most incredible sight of the vacation. We saw 2 dolphin fins headed towards us. Looking around I saw that we were alone and no one else was seeing this. The dolphins started doing something that they only do in the shallow waters of coastal Florida (no where else in the world!) It was something called mud ringing where they chase fish into a shallow bay and circle the fish over and over stirring up mud. This causes the fish to panic and jump out of the water to escape and when they do the dolphins leap out of the water and snap at this fish. Our pair of dolphins only caused one or two fish to jump, one dolphin jumped to catch it but missed. The pair then swam away. I was too caught in the moment to take a proper video, I didn't realize that I wasn't even pointing the camera in the right place until it was over but here is a link to a video that shows what I describe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxALc14MA_A . Needless to say, we decided it was worth it to move camp, pulled up our tent whole and transported it via the roof of our Jeep to the new site.

After we went to the visitor center and told the ranger what we had seen he explained the behavior and told us it was a very rare and special sight to see. I felt very honored by the dolphins to have seen it. That day we also learned was not ideal for canoeing in the park due to the high winds so we decided to drive up north to an area called Shark Valley. You can rent bikes or take a tram around an area of the park that is a good example of the "sea of grass" part of the Everglades.

We saw lots of gators and birds

There is also a cool observation tower that gives you a good view of the park.

Looking down on the way up to the viewing deck

Pano of the Glades, the big area of water is a man made barrow.




After spending a few hours in the Shark Valley area, (I want to go back and spend a whole day here) we moved on towards Everglades City. I had heard there were a lot of manatees there and I was obsessed with seeing manatees. We got there around 430 and saw a sign for boat rides to see manatees and dolphins. Since it was run by a park approved contractor I assumed they were low impact and wild life friendly (unlike those horrible air boat rides that were offered just outside of the park, so much noise pollution and damage!) The lady who sold us our ticked said they had been seeing too many manatees and dolphins that day to count so we hurriedly bought tickets. After we boarded the boat, the captin told us it was too windy and they hadn't seen anything all day. I was crushed and nervous about the wind due the fact that I get sea sick. But all was not lost, we didn't see any manatees but we saw a pod of dolphins. It was the only pod of dolphins they had seen all day and I was convinced that I had good dolphin mojo. They were hard to capture on video though. This one was the best.