More fun in the yard

I hit up Hewitt's again to get a Japanese maple and two blueberry plants. I heard you need two different blueberry varieties so that they cross-pollinate and produce big ass berries.

Here is the Japanese maple in the backyard. It's going to be part of my Japanese rock garden.


I put the two blueberry plants in the front yard to eat up some space and because the yard gets a lot of sun.

Here is the Earli blueberry:

Here is the blueray blueberry:

It already has some huge berries on it, but they aren't ripe. Hopefully the rabbits will stay away. I sprayed Repels-all nearby, but not on the plants.

Planting stuff is pretty addicting, but I better hold off for now until I save up some more scratch. I'd like to get two pear trees for the backyard (along the same fence as the apple trees) and a couple of raspberry or blackberry plants for the front. There may be room for another three or four depending on much sun they really need. I guess it depends on how big I want the fruit to get.

As I'm typing this entry, I see a rabbit in the front munchin' on some grass near one of the blueberry plants. Hopefully he'll just eat the grass. I don't want to have to throw down on him.

A deer in the backyard

There are definitely deer in my neighborhood and I caught one on tape eating plants in the woods behind my backyard. Hopefully they'll stay away from the plants I just put in this weekend.

Crockpot lamb dinner

I felt like making something with my crockpot so I did a search and found this recipe. It seemed pretty tasty and smelled great when it was cooking. I go to eat it and... nothing. The lamb is tender, but it doesn't taste like much other than hot due to the curry powder and habanero pepper. It must be the curry powder. I cooked curried chicken for a friend and it smelled great, but didn't taste like much. Does that mean my curry powder is no longer active? Strange.

Here is a picture of the lamb mixed with brown rice:

More landscaping

I drove over to the Delmar Hewitt's this morning to get more plants. This one is about half a mile from my house so it's convenient. I poked around a bit and ended up getting three trees: a red bud forest pansy, a red delicious apple tree and an Arkansas black apple tree.

Here is the red bud forest pansy:

You can see that the tree is gettin' its gangsta lean on. Awwww sheeeee-it. The tree is crooked in the root-ball and I couldn't get it straight. It doesn't matter much to me and the tree will grow wherever the sun is anyhow.

Here is the tree next to the Charlie Brown hemlock and the beefcake spruce:


Here is the red delicious tree with three or four small apples already:


Here is the Arkansas black apple tree:

I've never heard of this variety. The tag says:

Medium to large, purplish-red fruit matures to nearly black. Crisp, juicy yellow flesh has a spicy aroma. Good fresh or cooked.

That sounds pretty cool. Hopefully I'll live here long enough to try one.

Here is a picture of both trees. They're about 13 feet apart which may be a little close, but I can prune them so they don't fight each other.

Fitness update

Ah ha. This past week I've actually made some pretty good progress. You can see that I lost a nearly a percentage of body fat thanks to daily jump roping and jumping on the trampoline. I've also been active unpacking stuff since Wednesday.

I still have a fair amount to go, but I think that I'm making good progress. I don't know if I'll be ripped by the end of the summer, but I'll give it a shot. I'd like to play ultimate again. I may need to drive down to Ithaca just to visit. They play at least weekly there.

A rabbit eating grass

A third of my property is densely wooded and I've seen rabbits hoppin' around. I decided to film one eating some grass near the flagpole. My Flip Mino doesn't have great resolution, but I think you can see him. He was aware of me, but somehow knew that I couldn't jack him.

My first landscaping alteration

I hit up Hewitt's this morning since it is close to UPS and Home Depot. I looked for pear trees, bamboo and an evergreen. Unfortunately, they only had one pear tree and you need more than one for cross-pollination. The dude there said bamboo is incredibly invasive and would take over my yard right quick. That just left the evergreen. I have a blue spruce in the yard so I got a Canadian hemlock to fill in an empty corner. The ground is pretty rocky for some reason, but I was told not to completely bury the root ball so it's all good.

Here is a picture of my new tree:

Yeah, it looks like it belongs in a Charlie Brown Christmas special, but it'll perk up soon enough.

Here is a shot from further back to show where it is in the yard:


I also got some Shot-gun Repelsall. It is an organic solution made up of dried blood, rotten eggs and a touch of garlic. You spray it on plants and it'll keep animals away. It stinks, but hopefully that means it's effective.

At Home Depot, I got a Fiskar lopper. Holy moly, it works well. I can cut through 2" tree branches without any trouble thanks to the gearing. I did some pruning of the blue spruce to maintain a path to the front door.

There is another Hewitt's within a mile of my crib so I'll go there tomorrow or on Sunday to look for pear trees.