Pooper Friday!!!

This picture of Lucy is now the 'Most Viewed' picture on Flickr. That fact alone is amazing to me, but the fact that it took less than a week for it to occur is also startling. Know what else? It's also the most commented AND!?!?! MOST FAVORITED!!! Do you know how hard it is to live with her on a regular level? Try living with her now. If I hear "I'm the next Kelly Clarkson" one more time...AGGGGHHHHH!!!!



I have to say though, that nothing puts a smile on my face quicker than when I pull in the driveway at night and look up to see Harlow looking for me, only now, I have two poopers staring down at me. Double my pleasure.

In my last post I mentioned some pet friendly garden products that I use and Metro asked what kind of lawn fertilizer I use. As a dog owners it's important that 1) we have grass and 2) that what we put on the grass to keep it growing doesn't burn pads or cause adverse effects. I know of two products that we sell out here that I would recommend and use. Whitney Farms Lawn Food and Dr. Earth Lawn Food. Both of these products work really well and are completely safe for pets. Tests show as well, that an organically fed lawn is often times much more drought tolerant and much more active in the soil, the key ingredient for any healthy vibrant lawn. Every year customers come in trying to achieve the perfect lawn with chemicals, re-seeding, spraying, feeding and even complete renovation. Lawns become a lot of work. Lawns can be expensive to maintain.

Some things that I've learned about having a thriving lawn in the Northwest.

1. The obvious, full sun. Not something that a lot of us have here, but the more the better.

2. Soil. This is your foundation, the most important part. You really need a good 6 inches or more of well amended soil, and by amended I mean a healthy dose of compost and organic matter incorporated into the soil. If I were putting in a new lawn, I would bring in about 4 inches of compost and till that into my existing soil. If you are aerating your lawn, bring in some organic compost to spread over and fill those holes.

3. Fertilizer. I live in a wet climate where there are lots of streams and wetlands. Salmon (surprisingly) still make spawning runs up several of them. One of the biggest problems in areas like this is run off from subdivisions and yards. Fertilizers high in phosphates contribute to a large host of problems in waterways. Most chemical based fertilizers are high in Nitrogen, phosphorous and Potash ( the three numbers 0-0-0 on the bags of fertilizer). The represent the percentage of active ingredient found in the product. I'm not going to play science guy right now and go further into this. I'm going to break it down like this...

A lot of chemical based fertilizers hit your lawn hard and fast for quick results. Organic fertilizers are slow release and offer your lawn a steady and methodic feeding . Basically, feeding your lawn a chemical based food is like hooking it on crack, once it starts down that slippery slope, it has to have it again and again to continue. Or, like giving your kid sugar and having them go spinning around the room and then fall flat afterwards, crying for more. Much like my caffeine addiction.

4. Water. Starting out with a new lawn means frequent watering until it's established, but a well amended lawn with deep roots can handle being watered deeply less often. Frequent watering with a sprinkler system that runs 10-15 minutes every morning means your lawn has shallow roots to best take advantage of the available mother. A well amended soil has lots of organic matter that holds onto water deep down as well as nutrients and microbiotic activity. Grass will send it's roots down into this deeper layer for that and be able to sustain itself longer.

5. Mowing. Mowing your lawn too short allows for a host of problems. Weed propagation, soil erosion and drying. Cutting your grass taller shades out weed development and holds onto moisture better.

Well, that's about all I have time for now. These are just some general tips. Your individual climates and conditions can dictate different approaches. One thing is for sure, everyone can take advantage of and benefit from Organic Lawn foods.

Progress

Work on the raised beds continues, but thought I would try and post something about them this morning. Since these photo's I have planted onions, garlic, potatoes, lettuce, flat leaf parsley and what I thought was broccoli, but turns out is Romanesco, that funky, spirally, greenish white thing that is like broccoli. I guess we'll give that a whirl.



These are a few of the products that I use in my garden that are organic and pet friendly. I grew up around a lot of pesticides and herbicides, so for me it's really important to find alternatives to these, especially with my girls. I once had a nightmare experience with previous dogs and slug/snail bait. I had taken a lot of precautions to avoid their contact by using traps and restricting their access to certain areas. When I cleaned up the garden and had thrown out the traps, part of the dried and dead slugs and bait fell on the floor of the garage. I didn't realize it at the time, but my dogs came out in the garage with me later on and before I knew what was happening, had found the dried cake and had taken it in the house and started eating it. It was one of the worst experiences ever. I went to the gym and came home to my little dogs who were acting extremely wierd. Hundreds of dollars later, they were okay in the end, but they were pretty sick little puppies. Worry Free slug baits are great and they work.




I'm off to an employee product seminar to learn about a new organic product that's out on the market. Things at the nursery are hopping and the phones are driving me crazy. I'll have to post about customer experiences and some of the whacko people and there questions.

Pooper Friday!!!

Finished reading "Tuesdays with Morrie". Sobbed. Feeling better.

Watched "Brokeback Mountain". Loved it. Still processing it. Heartaching. Feel very fortunate. Heath Ledger was freakin' amazing. Michelle Williams floored me too. A great film.

I need you to go and rent "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio". You MUST see this film. I can't emphasize it more than THIS here, but you NEED to see this film. IT'S WONDERFUL!!! That's all I'll say, because I want you to find out for yourselves, but trust me, it's a GREAT story. TRULY.

Getting a much needed haircut this morning. I love getting my haircut. I expect it will do wonders for my disposition too.

Nothing can replace the support that I get here from YOU. You've never even met me and you can extend yourselves to me like you do. Thank you for the comments and the emails.

I LOVE YOU SKANKY!!!

The Secret

Remember how I said that this weekend I was going to be planting in the new veggie beds? Ya well, this is what became of me on Sunday (see photo above). So maybe not the entire day, but this sums up my Sunday. By most standards this really isn't too bad a deal, and to be honest Sunday is really my Saturday and Monday is my Sunday. So technically, I've just swapped my Sunday behavior for my Saturday, thus leaving me to do yard work on my Sunday instead. Lost yet?

Moving on...

Last summer when we were in San Diego with our friends for a week, one of the friends, Adrian, bought me a book while I was picking up a journal. That book was "Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom. He said it would change my life. I've had this book for sometime now, and it took me a while before I ever picked it up and actually read from it. But one day as I was headed into the bathroom for my daily constitutional I was franticly looking for reading material and it was just sitting there.

***Side Note: Reading material - Is this as common in your home as it was in mine while growing up? Nick always comments on this whenever I head for the toilet with the latest Cooking Light or some other new periodical that has arrived. In this household, it usually has something to do with cooking, decorating or gardening by the way. I do get National Geographic, one of my favorites. I just can't poop without something to read, that's the point here. I mean, I can, but it's so much easier with a mag. or a book. Is that weird?***End Side Note

The motivation that I received for finally reading this is not important, but it started me down a road of thoughtful consideration about life, my life. I'm not going to comment on the passages it contains here, that would take much too long, but it is full of golden nuggets of inspiration and touching commentary about life. I've mentioned this before I know. More to the point though, this book is less than two hundred pages long and I'm still not done. I don't want it to end I guess. I usually read a chapter at a time, they're short, while I'm on the stoop and now I'm re-reading some of them. It's been several months and now I'm at the end, only a couple of unread chapters to go. I know how it ends but I'm not ready.

Lately I've been struggling personally. I've had a hard time finding happiness in anything I do. When your closest friend tells you that you've lost your spark and that she's worried about you and when someone who is just starting to know you asks if you have always been this sad, you know that you've gone to a level that you need to figure out what the hell is going on. I'm not looking to reveal a big breakthrough here for anyone. That's not the direction I'm headed in, but I know that I've been absent from my blog here, and from activity in my real life as well. I would say it's a safe bet that I'm depressed, Duh right? This isn't the first time for me, but this is hard for me to openly admit here because it's not just fellow bloggers who read this, it's family and friends too.

I've been in this place before and I've found a way out, I'll do it again. It's just that right now I've got a pressure valve inside of me that's creaking and groaning, and no matter how I try, I can't seem to find the strength yet to turn the knob. Every now and then, little bits of steam manage to get out of the seams and cracks that are forming, but for now the mechanism is holding. I see myself standing in there, pacing around the dial that shows the needle dangerously hovering in the red area of the dial, a sure indicator that things are precariously close to falling apart. I don't want that to happen, and yet, I know that I need to find a way to release this pressure inside.

I used to be able to cry, and I mean hard core sob sessions. I get teary eyed sometimes when I'm watching something or when I read, but I never get to that point of total release. I really believe that this is what's needed at this stage, I just can't seem to get there.

I'm going to stop here and end with a quote that's really sticking with me today.

"In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when we you get like me (Morrie, who has ALS, Lou Gehrigs Disease), you need others to survive, right?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "But here's the secret: in between, we need others as well."

Pooper Friday!!!

This photo is about a week and a half old. Lucy is so much bigger than this now, but because I'm a lousy father, I have not taken any recent photos. In fact, the D70 has been sitting in the office for days now with little or no use. I assure you that this is not any act of disinterest, it's just sheer evidence of my fatigue after a day at work. This spring, in my opinion, has been brutal. Hopefully it won't last too much longer. I know a lot of the pressure is self induced, but I can't help myself sometimes, I am a bit anal retentive about some things. Not being able to keep up with displays and cleaning drives me crazy sometimes. I hate it when the nursery looks so messy. I just need to learn to let go, but it's so hard.

On to other things....Lucy is growing, did I mention that? She's turning from that chubby, blocky puppy into that skinny, gangley puppy. She's still just about the cutest thing on four legs, and she's still a total sass. That hasn't changed. She's sporting a new red collar, as she has outgrown her cute pink one. We go in on Monday for the last series of shots, officially making her safe to go out into the field with Harlow. I can't wait to see her in action out in the open with Harlow. She's in for a real wake up if she thinks she can keep up with her. Harlow is half Greyhound, I swear.

This weekend I'm going to start planting in the raised beds. First things first, some Gardeners and Bloom Compost and Harvest Supreme. If you love to garden and you want a good soil amendment, I recommend both of these products to you. The compost is all natural and organic, loaded with nutrient rich material that will give any of your new and existing plants a great boost. Harvest Supreme is the same, but packing more nutrient richness and mycorihzae, living micro organisms that actually improve your soil and your plants ability to utilize nutrients. I'm also going to pick up some Dr. Earth Starter Fertilizer for my new plants. The one exception being for the potatoes, they actually won't want any of these ingredients, so one bed will be reserved just for them this year. Last year, I planted my tomatoes in half soil and half Gardeners and Blooom Harvest Supreme and my tomatoes were not only large plants with huge one inch diameter canes, but they were also loaded with fruits. We're talking buckets.

Okay, I can see by the clock that I had better get going. Have a great weekend.

Greenie Update!!!

It's been a while since I did just an all purpose update of the day to day and events around the casa. Not sure how thorough this will be, but here goes.

I was nominated for Sexiest Male Blogger to which I want to thank all those who voted, even if it wasn't for me. It's okay, really, I'll be fine. I mean, who am I kidding right? I'm just a tired old fish anyway. Bitter old turnip.

WHY CAN'T I WIN!?!?!?! (voting ends April 6th. the leader has over 175 votes.)

Cast Your Vote!!! Okay, that's done.

Hey, did I mention that we bought a truck??? WE DID!!!



Isn't it coooooool!?!? We love it, it's changed everything for us around the casa de homo's. Now we can haul off a lot of yard debris from the last year that has been accumilating at the back of the property. I did this yesterday. It also means that I can go and get soil, compost, trees and shrubs and even lumber. All of which I have done in the last week or so.

Did I mention that for my birthday that I got a Homo Depot gift certificate? I DID!!!



Aren't they coooooo!?!? I built them a week ago. This last weekend I hauled 3 yards of soil in and filled the three along the fence. Oh, see that pile at the back? Ya, that's gone now. Woooot!!! I'll be posting more pics of this as it progresses here. I'll be putting down landscape fabric and graveling the paths in between. I think it's going to look good when I get done. More than anything, I'm so excited to plant veggies and herbs this year.

I haven't done anything with the latest thing dealing with my Biological Mother. I'm trying to maserate in the feelings a little, get a better idea of what it is that I'm going to do at this point. I know that a letter or something to my grandmother is definitely in line, but that can be a bit difficult too. I don't want there to be any inbetween actions going on. The fact remains that things on that side of my family are not healthy for me. I distanced myself from all of them for a reason, not just because of my Mom.

I continue to feel the weighty and fatigued by life a lot lately. There are the good days that really are good. I find that physical exertion is a great release and throw myself into my job and projects around the house. I'm trying to get through this period of my life that feels so...weighty.

I'm going to be okay. I know I am, I just have to get through this.

On an EXTREMELY HAPPY NOTE!!!!

My best friend, you all know her as Skanky, had her baby. I got the call last Sunday morning. I've never wept over such happy and wonderful news before, but I did. Mostly out of joy, but also out of saddness at having not been there. I'm over that part now, and just thrilled to have Skanky and Bellabutton safe, healthy and just as beautiful as ever. I'm thrilled for the entire family, this is a moment that has been long in coming and one filled with immense joy and happiness, the likes this family has deserved for oh so long. I know it's the start of many more such moments. My heart, it swells for them. I'm just so lucky to have even one little ounce of that joy for my self.

I gotta skidattle. Time for work.

This has been your Greenie Update and this is all the news that's fit to print. For now. Greenie Out!!!