Little Italy

I went to the weekend market in Little Italy and it was amazing. Tons of food, vendors, fresh veggies and fruit. I loved it! I will be back next weekend because I saw some reasonable prices for starts of some spices that I wanted. Here was what I took home.

 Flavored salts. Ok, my dad would call me crazy, but I have used some of the kinds I got in my cooking and it was awesome. I can't wait to use more of them.

 Yes this sauce is absolutely Bitchin'. It is so tasty and there are many flavors. It's also not that bad for you either. Check out Bitchin' Sauce

 There were tons of people that grow their own flowers there, and this was from a family flower farm. They were very helpful in making sure that we understood the care that was necessary to make their flowers last a long time. 

Well this didn't make it home :-) It was a crepe filled with mushroom, egg, spinach, chedder cheese and was topped with a red pepper sauce and avacado. Totally awesome and will stop by their restraunt in the future.

What people use snow shovels for in California

So our landlord was puzzled when we brought our snow shovel here to San Diego. Well, with all the craziness of moving we actually forgot to give it away before we left so we are keeping it till we move to another climate. I actually found a use for it:

What is it you might ask?

Blooms from this GIANT tree in our front yard. I seriously sweep it with a broom about once a week and have half a garbage bag full of these blooms! It's insane... but the tree is pretty. :-)

Garden Update!

Well the garden is taking off of course! Here is what's happening!

New foliage on the Minneola Orange tree

I cut roses a little while back and this is where they are taking off again!

Banana Tree doing well :-)

Meyer Lemons getting larger

Silly Elephant Ears Ry planted randomly are all now coming up

My first tomato!!!

Flowers on the lettuce

So if you look close you can see black stuff... I think they are seeds!!!

First sign of edible broccoli

Status on the side yard... just got re-seeded this week.

Topsy Turvey!

So my dad called me today with a great idea to do vertical gardening for veggies and herbs. It requires the stuff below:

5 pots decreasing in size starting at 14"+ 14" saucer, 2 cu. ft. of potting soil, metal tomato stake, seeds for each level

In the bottom pot place rocks for draining. Make sure you put the pot where you eventually want your garden to grow because it will get heavy!

Add the stake to the center of the pot and fill with dirt around it. Then place the next pot on that pot slightly tilted. Fill with rocks, then soil and repeat.

Make sure your next pot is tilted in the next direction. Continue this until you get to the top pot.

When you reach there you can cut or leave the stake. I cut mine so it would be below the surface of the top pot.

If you choose to do the slight tilt this is what it looks like. I called my dad after sending him a pic and he said it wasn't tilted enough. In order to get it that way you need to have the top 3 pots sitting on the pot below it and not in the dirt of the pot below it.

Finished product! Planted seeds now waiting for it to sprout!

Photo Safari

I took a class around the San Diego area and we shot all over the place. The safari went for me from 9 in the morning until about 7 at night. It was a long day but I got to see great areas of San Diego I haven't seen before.



La Jolla Cove area 

Class assignment get both of the subjects(person with camera and cross) and the shot and make it interesting. I took the paparazzi approach ;-) You can see the real one in the slide show at the bottom.

Impromptu pet photography session

Artsy shot of the Mt. Soladad Memorial with the flag in the background. Patriotic. If ya notice I found Ronald Reagan out of all the memorials on the wall.

San Diego Skyline in the day 

Action photography at Pacific Beach. Get your subject clear and the background blurry. Not bad for the first try.

This was after everyone but the teacher and I went out. I wanted more shots.

Surfs Up

I love this!

And here are all of the shots from the day that I liked... I selected these out of 384 images :-)

Roses

I just thought I'd post the surprise flowers from our garden. When we moved into our house in CA we were re-planting our gardens. The plants that were there were not well taken care of and pretty neglected. We decided to replace all of the plants with ones that were well suited for the space that was available for us. Then Ryan saw a stump of this rose bush. He cut it off at the base and decided to let it start from the beginning again. The owner of the house said that it was an old rose bush and probably wouldn't come back. We planted around it, and watered all of the beautiful plants that were already blooming. Little did we know that this rose bush would spring up out of nothing and boast beautiful flowers and flourish... kinda makes you want to take a note from mother nature... it's funny how things like this coincide with life sometimes...

The yard project

Well this has been a process. The raised garden used to look like this:

The wall was decaying and it was filled with weeds. Our first step was replanting. Then came the wall. It happened in two steps. Ry helped with the side support walls, then my dad came in and helped with the top. It ended up turing out great!

Baby Shower!

So Stacey and Drew had a baby shower... the girls attended the baby shower, and the men were out back with the "MAN" shower. It was a good time, though I spent more time out with the guys playing mexican horseshoes, and cornhole.

 This was her shower cake from CAKE! Hers and his cake below were both chocolate cake, but hers had raspberry and his had orange flavor in the chocolate buttercream icing. Oh! and behind the Coach cake, there were some amazing strawberry cupcakse from a friend of hers :-)

This is Drew showing the guys at the MAN shower the things he's going to need with a new born baby. The tongs for the diaper, the mask and goggles for the projectile things...  It was hillarious :-)

Growth!

Woo hoo! My grass is growing! This was the growth at 1 week!

At a week and a half you can actually see it from a distance... not just from the close up pic!

Food with dad

So my dad was in town and we went to a great wholesale fish store and got some great tuna... then the next night we went out to Nobu in the Gaslamp District. Both meals were amazing, so I posted a sample from each night.

 Tuna 3 ways

Snapper sampler

Yard Improvements

Well... I have had some time on my hands so I tore up the side yard... reseeded it... and all the gardens are going well too!

 The destruction on the back lawn

 The newly leveled side yard... after seeing... WHICH is already sprouting!!! :-)

 Caution Kodah... no back yard for a month... though he's found many ways to get around and through the tape.

 My herbs... rosemary, dill, basil, and oregano

 Mint... the one plant never to put in the ground because it spreads like wildfire!

 Tomato blossoms

 3 Kinds of lettuce

 Broccoli getting giant

 Ry's elephant ear

 So this is the Ice Cream Banana Tree with a new leaf!

 What I think is an avacado bud...

Kodah :-)