Saturday, July 20, 2013

next step done...

now that everything is tilled, it was time to put a little temporary fencing into place. So that the pups don't mess up the grass we plan to put down sometimes next week.

temporary fence is build and up. Cheapest wood construction possible and I just hope it lasts 6-8 weeks

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

the dogs are getting older, maybe calmer?

now that the dogs are getting a bit older and start to listen, sometimes even successfully we decided it's time to replace the sad excuse for 'grass' with a new coat of grass.

Little did I know how much work this is going to entail. And so this is the first step in my thirteen step program, at least it feels like it.

tilling the right side of the yard (next year we do the left, yay...)

step 1 - tilling the yard

it was only 102F/38C this day, so not to bad for living around the central valley.

next step would be to till it all over again and again and than flatten it...

Saturday, July 13, 2013

our little house - it's starting to come together

Well over the last weeks we are finally starting to making progress with our backyard improvement project and creating a little suburban live-style vegetable garden.

newly installed fence next to our wild roses and heirloom tomatoes

the worlds smallest orange tree. Hopefully in 3-5 years it's going to bear some fruits.

bell pepper, zucchini and half dead sun gold tomatoes. Still have to build 3 more boxes for artichokes and arugula in the winter time

basil, chives, mint, oregano, stevia. Need another barrel for rosemary, tarragon and sage.

finished restoring a Stanley #6c hand plane from the late 1940s. Need to find some 3x3x3 maple to redo the knob to make it match my carved tote a bit better.

rasberries a week ago, sadly they did not survive the 120F days we had and we might have to replace the canes

don't pay attention for a minute and the puppies are taking over the bed... I guess this is another lost cause.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

talking for a good cause...

recently my friend Kristen joined the organisation, 'Girls who code' and started teaching these kids the basic about programming, robotics and microchip programming.

To my surprise she invited me as a speaker to 'share my wisdom' of developing for close to 20 years to tell these girls what they have to be aware off with software development and where the use usual challenges and problems are.

Needless to say I hate a lot of fun talking to these extremely bright and smart kids, who obviously have a huge potential and wouldn't mind working with some of them some day in the future.

I might even apply to become a teacher for a summer there next years, since I had way to much fun and they even play with arduinos (can't wait till the next 5 I ordered arrived to automate my veggie garden...) !!!