June 11th - 20th 2009

Creative title huh? I figured since all of my posts lately have seemed like "Catching Up" posts, that I should try a little something different, at least for the time being, since the posts have been quite spaced out. I know it's kind of beating a dead horse and all but have I mentioned what a busy year this one has turned out to be? Geeez!

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the Master Gardener conference that A~ and I were getting ready to go to last weekend, we had a great time. Friday afternoon we went down to Salt Lake and, after signing in and getting situated, we headed out for a tour of a botanical garden called Red Butte Gardens. What a beautiful place! I was so mad at myself though when I got there and was about to take some pictures when I realized that I had left my memory card at home so, unfortunately, no pics of the tour this time. A~ and I are planning on going back again though.

Our favorite parts were the "themed" gardens that they had. There was an herb garden, aroma garden and a medicinal plants garden all with beautiful plants, trellises and paths. We both agreed that we need to do something like that one day in our next home.

Anyway, after the garden tours we had a very tasty dinner in the park with the other Master Gardeners and met a really cool couple that lives just a few miles from us. They are on five acres with an acre in garden, animals, pasture and are currently building a root cellar. We were all definitely of like minds. Funny to have to go all the way down to town in order to meet folks that are just around the corner.

The next day we had signed up for classes and workshops. The first was a workshop on learning how to build your own garden fountain from pottery.The class was only about an hour so there wasn't a whole lot of time to get into details, but I did get a good idea of how the pots are modified to stand up together and how to integrate the pump which was really what I was hoping for. A~ has been wanting a nice garden fountain for years but we've not been willing to shell out the $$ for the kind that we/she likes.

The next class was on integrated pest management. We learned about the importance of fostering a healthy ecosystem in our yards and gardens in order to not only keep the plants healthy, but to attract beneficial insects. So far I think we've been doing a pretty good job. This year has seemed to be the year that our organic gardening efforts have been rewarded. There's been a lot of good beneficial insects around the yard and bees have abounded! Very good news.

Finally we had another workshop on building Tufa, or more accurately, Hyper-tufa pots. For those not in the know on these, Hypertufa is a composite rock that's made generally from peat, perlite and portland cement. It can be formed into all sorts of cool pots and formations and is very good for growing plants in.This is a small example that the instructor brought to the class to show. The possibilities with this material are nearly endless and I think I can really find some interesting ways to make use of it sometime in the future. Here you can see that the pots can actually be fairly large too.The tools in front of the pot are ones that the instructor used to shape the pot before it had hardened. It was really pretty pliable in it's uncured state. Should be fun to try sculpting this stuff. I''m actually hoping to be able to use this together with my pottery fountain knowlege in order to build a custom fountain for A~.

Since we were down in Salt Lake, which is a good 50 miles from us, we decided to just stay the night down there rather than to make the drive twice a day. Just around the corner from where we stayed was a place called Wheeler Historic Farm. We decided to drop in there one evening before it closed and took a nice sunset walk around the park to check out the place and see what was available for a future trip with the boys. We walked over by the animal enclosures and found this little lady.I looked at her and then at A~ and declared "I waaannnaaaa cooowwwww!" With my best pout. (At my age that's not very good by the way...) A~ has been teasing me about it ever since! She sure was a cutie though. A little further on and we spotted this big guy. He puffed all up at us a couple of times too... what a showoff.Then, you know that feeling you get when you see the house you'd love to have, well I kind of got that feeling.What? You though I meant a real house? Look at that baby will ya. That's a chicken mansion!

As we were walking back to the front we peaked in around the historic farm house that sits in the middle of the property and A~'s eagle eyes picked out this little guy. I've never seen a hummingbird stop for as long as this one did. He just flew in and rested on the clothes line for a couple of minutes right next to us. It was such a treat to see.Then, just as quickly, he disappeared. We caught him a second later nipping a little sip off the flowers in front of us and managed to catch another picture of him. Very cool indeed.
Well, that about wraps up last weekend. We were lucky to have caught a break between the storms just perfectly for the day and a half of the conference. By the time we got out to the boys grandmothers home a horrendous, though I must say beautiful, lightning storm had moved in and it rained for the next 24 hours. That pretty much set the stage for the rest of the week too.

More to come soon, hope this finds you all well!
P~