Out of control!

The garden that is.  The spinach looks like it's on steroids, the arugula is freaking out and I even have some pink strawberries about two days ready from picking.  Go me!

Three little words

What is it about those three little words?  You know the ones I'm talking about.  Those three little words that fill your heart with joy and excitement and anticipation . . . .  

Three. Day. Weekend.

Utter those three little words and it makes people crazy.  Crazy.  Huge, elaborate plans suddenly start taking shape as if adding that extra day allows you to do a myriad of things you can't possibly fit into two days.  And let me tell you, people get out of town as fast as they can.  To mountain, to the coast, to the gorge, it doesn't matter.  It's a three day weekend.  The world is yours.

The weather was fantastic over Memorial Day weekend in Portland for the first time in like a bazillion years.  Warm, sunny, not a cloud to be seen all weekend.  Not even a threat of rain which for Portland is pretty much unheard of.  Between REI and photo shoots, B and I practically had a one day weekend but still managed to fit in plenty of fun in the sun.

Take a look:

Julia and I took Kaya to the river for some play time on Sunday.

Julia and me enjoying gelato after burgers and beer at the Kennedy School.  Gelato Tour '09 here we come!
B stops for a rest in the middle of our 30 mile circumnavigation of Hagg Lake on Monday.

B also had a fantastic ride and BBQ with some buddies on Saturday and we both headed over to Ryan and Dacia's for some grill time Monday night.  

Bike ride?  Check.  BBQ?  Check.  Hike with the dog?  Check.  Burgers and beer?  Check.  Another bike ride?  Check.  Another BBQ?  Check.  Hmmm, felt like a completely normal weekend to us--maybe we finally have this time off thing nailed down. 

The Garden, Episode 5

Today's lesson:  Deer prevention.

Last week, I went out to the garden to put in some more strawberries and to my horror, discovered that my green bean starts had been devastated by none other than our friend, the deer.  Apparently Michelle's bed was an appetizer because we saw three hoof prints right through her peas and then he moved on to my beds for the main course.

Well, I didn't have much time, so I fashioned a very ghetto deer defense mechanism from some string, sticks and bird netting:

Last night, I went back over and constructed something a little better.

Linda's sister uses this method to keep deer away from her newly planted seedling trees in Montana.  It's simple and cheap-- just some wooden stakes and fishing line.  I guess deer are fairly particular and if they run into something, they will stay back.  Let's hope.

Spandex picnic

Sunday with the Hoybooks.  Bike ride to Champoeg State Park, picnic, a little frisbee, topped off with DQ ice cream cones.  Thanks for coming summer, we've missed you.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

A clear cut off Highway 26 on the way back from the coast.  Usually they leave a row of trees thick enough to act as a curtain so you don't see the devastation.

If you do one thing this week, take a reusable shopping bag with you to the grocery store.

Mini-break

Sometimes I feel like B and I live in a constant vacation.  Case in point:  Thursday.  Day off, trip to the coast.

We headed to Astoria to check out Fort Stevens, where Lewis and his buddy Clark finally reached the Pacific.  After a late lunch at another Oregon brewpub, we headed down the 101 to hang out at the local surfing beach, Oswald West.  Great day, great day.

So you thought you were going to Mexico...

Dear Traveler,

Due to the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus in Mexico, we unfortunately will be making some changes to your cruise itinerary.  Instead of the sunny, sandy, relaxing shores of Cabo San Lucas, you will now be headed north, to the cold, rocky, rainy shores of the Pacific Northwest. 

Your first stop on our way to Puget Sound will be in lovely, quaint Astoria, Oregon.  No snorkeling or cocktails by the beach here, but you can take a tour of the town to see places where various movies have been set.  Remember "The Goonies" and "Kindergarten Cop"?  Yes!  They were set here.  Won't that be exciting?  After the tour, you can take in some of the local cuisine, fish 'n' chips is popular here.

Yes, we realize it is May and the weather can be a crap shoot, but it is for your health and safety that we change our plans.  Remember to pack a raincoat, you'll need it.

Sincerely,

Your cruise director    

I *heart* the digital conversion.

B and I don't have cable TV.  That's right, we live in the stone ages and use rabbit ears on our old TV set.  Enter the digital conversion and we had to purchase one of those converter boxes.  Let me tell you, it has been FANTASTIC!

Because you know what channel we get now?  Channel 032-02.  Universal Sports.  All sports, all the time.  Not sports like NBA basketball or football or heaven help us, golf.  But sports like World Cup skiing and snowboarder-cross and swimming and coverage of the Paralympics and marathons and Ironman triathlons and best of all, bike racing.  

The Giro D'Italia started on Saturday and since then, I've been addicted to the US channel.  It is so fascinating to watch about a hundred cyclists all ride within about twelve inches of each other going around 35 miles per hour.  PLUS, they ride about 125 miles and do this everyday for about three weeks.  PLUS, they have to climb mountains AND then sprint for the finish.  It's incredibly dramatic.  Last night, I was actually nervous at the end and was cheering for some European guy to win.  It's awesome.  They better cover the Tour de France....

The Garden, Episode 4

Raised beds, check.  Dirt, check.  Plants and seeds, check.  Time to plant! 

Sunday was planting day at the plot.  I decided to plant some veggies from seeds and because Oregon is just so cold and wet, some from starts I picked up from the plant market.  The first bed has two cucumber mounds from seeds, a spot reserved for jalapeno and tomato starts, then a row of okra from seeds, two rows of bush green beans and a row of peas.
Bed #2 includes spinach from starts, a row of arugula from seeds, then leaf lettuce from seeds, onions from seeds, two clumps of shallot starts and finally four strawberry starts.  (I definitely need to plant more strawberries.)  The lettuce should come up pretty quick and once it gets too hot for the green leafy stuff, I can plant more peppers or just a whole bed of flowers until the weather cools enough again this fall to put more lettuce back in.  
Michelle and Linda discuss slug prevention tactics.  Oh, and deer prevention tactics.  Behold, our first scarecrow!
Now grow little plants!  Grow!

"Skiin' with the bra's"

"So, Geoff called...." B says with a shy little grin.  

Uh oh, there's a plan in the works.  They have been having some adventures lately and this week, B took the camera along to the slopes of Mt. Hood.  Here are some of the pretty rad shots he got of Geoff cruisin' Heather Canyon in the Meadows backcountry. 

Maybe next time, Julia and I will get the invite too. :)

The Garden, Episode 3

The dirt is here!  My two and a half yards of prime composted garden dirt arrived yesterday morning and last night, I spent two hours wheelbarrowing it over to the beds.  Linda calls it "black gold."  I'm just hoping it will yield green gold.

The Garden, Episode 2

Step two to planting a garden in the Northwest is apparently, go buy some dirt.  Seems like a weird thing to do, but I'm just following along here people!  Like I said before, I'm really trying to up my chances for success so I'm doing whatever it takes to get this garden off on the right foot. 

So, I bought some dirt today.  Two and a half yards of mulch compost will be delivered to my garden on Wednesday.  Just need to find a wheelbarrow.....oh, and a shovel.

Tonight, B and I are headed to the hardware store to get some fencing supplies.  There is a pesky deer that likes to nibble the new starts over at the plot and since we vetoed my scarecrow idea, a fence is in the plans.  Then, I can finally get something planted in the ground!

(Buy dirt.  Ha.  Sorry, I just can't get over it.)

Latin Life in Portland

Our good friend Alyson's birthday was last Friday and we celebrated with a fantastic dinner at Clyde Common and then salsa dancing at the Mambo Lounge.

I had my camera along but silly me, didn't take a single photo.  Good thing the folks from PDXLatino.com were around snapping shots.  Check out their site here:  www.pdxlatino.com and scroll down just a little.  Apparently, Alyson's friend Meg and I are now part of Latin Life in Portland.  Alyson is not in the shot because she was shaking her moves on the dance floor.  That birthday girl can dance.

Ski, ski, work, work, work, rinse, repeat.

Normally around this time of year, it won't freaking stop raining.  The days are gray and the sun rarely shines.  Normally around this time of year, I can't wait for summer to finally arrive.  Well, April 2009 has been a little different.  We've already had that gorgeous 80 degree weekend that sneaks in somehow every spring and the sun has been out most of the time.  As you can see from the last post, the Hoybooks have been taking full advantage.

So, here's the thing:  Bryan can't seem to stop thinking about winter.  With all of this sun and warm weather around, he still has a serious case of snowis slidis feveralis, a.k.a. ski fever.  We've been trying to find a cure but apparently more skiing is the only remedy.  

His first dose of medication was last week's shenanigans in Central Oregon, a ski-tour, corn harvest on Broken Top.  So, when that didn't work, we spent today at Timberline.  The weather was questionable the whole day-- what's with the fog?-- but the snow was great.  On the way home, we were already scheming another day on the slopes for next Sunday.

Summer, come on down, but can you wait just one more week?  Bryan needs serious help.

A 3-hour Cruise

Summer invaded Portland for a couple of days.  It's back to clouds today, but the weekend was amazing and lucky me, I had Monday off, the best day.  B and I saddled up some kayaks and headed out to cruise the lakes of Sauvie Island.  The island was created when the Multnomah River empties up with the Columbia River just northwest of Portland and it has lakes.  A bunch of 'em. Who knew?

 The water was calm, the sun was hot and the day was so fun.  It was just plain summer-ish.  We took a 3-hour cruise around Sturgeon Lake and then headed over to the Lodge's for the first bar-be-que of the season.  Nothing rounds out a hot day on the water like a brat and a beer.  Even though it didn't stick around long, it reminded me of why Oregon is just so dang fantastic.  Yeah, yeah, it rains a lot, but when it doesn't, it is beautiful and when we get days like Monday, it makes all the rest totally worth it. 

B paddles up on a bald eagle.  We also spotted two blue herons, six other eagles, lots of sturgeon wrestling around in the shallow water and three other HUGE birds that we couldn't name.  

B paddles with Mt. St. Helens off to the right.  We saw the whole Cascade chain from the middle of the lake-- Mt. Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood and Jefferson.

The Garden, Episode 1

I'm a firm believer that many good ideas can come out of Happy Hour. My good friends from work, Linda and Sarah, and I meet about once a month for Happy Hour. We catch Sarah up on REI Tualatin gossip, she catches us up on her beautiful daughter. And we laugh, boy do we laugh.

Last fall, we started hatching the idea about planting a community garden of sorts. (We even went as far as raising chickens, but the more we thought about it, we decided that idea might have been the result of a two margarita night.) Linda's parents live on about three acres on a hill that gets great sunlight, so she offered up the land for our "farm." Thus, the Garden was born.

Today, we took the first steps. B and I headed over to our plot to put in our raised beds. Now, I should say here that I have an extremely black thumb. I'm don't know how it happened-- I come from a long lineage of green thumbs, but apparently those genes just didn't get transferred. When it comes to house plants, if I'm in charge, they will pretty much die a slow, wet death. I'm guilty of overwatering. Major overwatering. I just love them too much. I'm hoping that growing plants outdoors will help my chances. So in an effort to further boost my chances, we built two 8' x 4' raised beds today.

The next step will be mulch, the compost, then planting. I have a long way to go, but I think we got off on the right foot today.

This year's crop will hopefully include:

lettuce

spinach

okra

strawberries

snow peas

onions

cucumbers

tomatoes

and any other veggies we decide we MUST have.

Back in the saddle

You can't keep us down for long.  Skiing with Geoff at Timberline on Friday.  

Spring skiing is the best.  Have I mentioned that before?  Well, it is.  The snow is slushy and forgiving, the runs are deserted and I only have to wear three shirts. 

Rest area ahead

Ok, it's time for me to admit it.  I'm tired.  B is tired.  WE are tired.  I looked at the calendar today and thought, "What!  It's April?  What happened to March?"  And then I remembered.  We left part of March in Hawaii and the rest in Utah.  

This weekend rolled around and the weather was beeeyoootiful.  So naturally, B and I had big plans for Sunday-- tennis, bike ride, hike. Big plans.  

Want to know what really happened?  We played tennis for about half an hour, grabbed some lunch and blanket, went to the park and proceeded to read the paper in the sun and toss around the frisbee.  Then we went home and I took a nap.  That's right, I admit it.  It was 78 degrees out, in April, in OREGON and I took a nap.  Got a problem with it?  No?  Good.  Because it was delightful.

The Olsons do Utah.

I'm not sure who should take credit for the idea (probably my dad), but the Olsons went on vacation together last week.  Apparently, when we all live in far corners of the country-- New York, Oregon and Florida-- my parents have a hard time getting their kids together.  So, instead of all converging on Wayne, America like usual, we went on vacation together.  Just like the old days.

We rented a house outside of Zion National Park in southern Utah for four days.  Four great days of dune jumping, hiking, sight seeing, cooking, game playing and general merriment.  Here, as usual, is your photographic feast.

Our trip to Utah by the numbers:

Miles driven: 2,346

National parks visited: 2

Miles hiked:  20

Elevation gained:  4722 ft.

Family members present: 8

Cameras present at any given time:  10

Olsons that Mom fooled with her annual April Fool's Day joke: 2

Winners of the Zion cook-off:  Bridget and Craig (Sorry Scott, you ran a tight race, but that gelato thing was to die for.)

Hours the power was out at the Rabbit Junction rental mansion: 1 

Vertical skiied at Snowbird:  21,472 ft.

Times I laughed on this trip: a million

Times I smiled: a billion

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park-- very cool and since we were there early in the morning, the deserted coral pink sand dunes.

Craig, Bryan and Scott doin' some dune jumpin'.
Craig and Bridget make good use of the bleachers at the dunes.  The bleachers are for...?  

"Goooooo dunes! Go dunes!"
B and me at the top of Observation Point, elev. 6,508 ft. with a view up Zion Canyon.
The family hiking down into the hoodoos at Bryce Canyon National Park.  This was my favorite side trip-- everywhere you looked was a photo waiting to happen.
Mom and Pops at Bryce Canyon.
Hoo-die hoo, I love those hoodoos.
The family poses at Bryce Point.
Mom setting out on the very sketchy trail up to Angel's Landing in Zion.   She is super hard core and keepin' it real.
Looking back down the ridge from the top of Angel's Landing.  Yep, that ridge is the trail folks. When I say "sketchy", oh boy, do I mean sketchy.  See the middle section down there?  Well, it's about 1,000 feet straight down on either side of you while you walk across a little rock bridge about five feet wide.  Yeah.  For reals.  
Brothers and sister at the top of Angel's Landing.
B and me on the Emerald Pools trail deep in the Zion Canyon.
Getting ready for another run down the powdery slopes of Snowbird, Utah.  Of-course we had to stop and ski on the way home.  

B kicking up some spray.

This pretty much sums up what I thought of the entire trip.  Wooo!