My Long-Winded Gardening Story

Each year I try to tackle a new project in my yard. My yard is basically just a mountain. I'd like to make it into a molehill. When we bought our property, we didn't think about the whole building-a-house-on-a-mountain. We just saw that it was the cheapest property in the area we wanted. Being first-time home buyers, we didn't really grasp the difference between a flat piece of property and a sloped property.

When we inspected the property after the house was being built, we started to realize the work we had in front of us. When we walked to the back of the house, we were greeted by a 15-feet wall of dirt. We invested another $7,000 to have the builders put in some retaining rocks in the back of the house.

The first year we lived in our house, we paid someone to move dirt from the back of our yard to the front of our yard, and Kulani and his brothers and a few friends built a retaining wall in the front.

To have dirt moved: $2300.

Retaining wall built by ourselves and cheap family and friend labor: $1500.

(Forgive me: I'm a numbers person. I like to know how much stuff costs. I record these numbers not to brag; because believe you me, I know people spend A LOT more on their landscaping. If anything, this will prove how cheap I am. But for those thinking of doing their own landscaping, I think the numbers will be helpful.)

Later that year we also paid someone else to put in grass and a sprinkling system. Well worth the money, because I don't think Kulani and I could have ever done it by ourselves, and you can only take advantage of so much friend and family labor.

Landscaping cost: $6,000.

The next year me and my little brother Ed worked on getting the sides of our house done. The landscapers never finished one strip of land that they started. Luckily, they did put in all the watering tubes: I just had to figure out how to connect it all. I bought some topsoil and paid someone to do the hydroseed. Me and Ed put in the sprinkler tops. A neighbor had a skeetsteerer and carted all the topsoil up my hill. My brother-in-law Kuhia figured out how to connect the sprinklers with my system.

Strip of grass total cost: About $600

On the other side of the garage, we wanted to put cement. We hired a guy and paid him half the money, but then he never came to do the job. $1200 down the toilet. So instead, me and my little brother Ed covered the area with mulch. The neighbor to the right of us assumed the whole area was our responsibility, due to a long story that involved the developers in the area taking out the surveyor's stake, because they had to redo parts of the sidewalk concrete. Luckily, Kulani's dad is a surveyor, and he put the mark back in the ground, so my neighbor could better see where her property started and our property ended. At any rate, we still haven't done much to this side except the mulch. But my neighbor hasn't done anything to her side yet either. Next year we will likely put in the cement driveway.

Cost of driveway so far: $1700.

In the picture above near the bottom, you can see some irrigation boxes. When we put in all the mulch, one of my irrigation boxes had no cover. I didn't think it was a big deal to have it covered or not, because (a) I'm stupid and (b) first-time home owner. Oh, it is important. So much debree and gunk got in there, that I could no longer turn the secondary watering system off or on with my long turnkey (my turn-off switch is approximately seven feet underground inside a 2-inch PVC pipe). Because I wanted the ability to turn my secondary water off and on, I had to dig to where the switch is at. It took me at least three hours of digging to get to the bottom. I made sure to have not one, but two, covers on that thing. I don't want to have to do that again. The importance of having the water turned off will be clear later when I explain my garden.

In May, I fixed my planting beds. I bought some plants and bark mulch, which I haven't had in the front of our house because I've been working on other projects, and because the watering was always a little hooey. The planting beds still need work, but it's a good start. Total cost: $50-$100.

So there's this small PVC pipe that was hidden behind a very large rock at the side of my house. I knew it would give me access to a water supply and was put there by the landscapers years ago, but I didn't know if it would be connected to my sprinklers. My parents were visiting last weekend, so I solicited my dad's help in helping me figure it out.

Using a crowbar, we pushed the rock far enough away from the PVC pipe to saw off the top.(After turning off the water source, of course. That's why I needed access to that darned on/off switch.) I turned the water back on manually using the on/off key, and nothing came out. So then I tried turning it on via the electric-watering gridbox. Bingo! Water that's connected to my sprinkler system! So I decided to build my garden on my retaining wall steps, so if we happen to leave town, the automatic sprinklers will still water my garden.

I glued a longer piece of PVC connector pipe to it, then connected the funny pipe to that. I drug the funny pipe around to my garden boxes, which are a sort-of "square-foot" gardening technique, but I built the garden boxes with stuff I'd collected over the years: old railroad ties, some wood the Mitchell's (my neighbors) didn't want anymore, and some leftover retaining wall bricks. I don't think my soil content is great this year, as all I did was use manure mulch and till it into my rocky ground (using a tiller my neighbor Ellen let me borrow, bless her heart). I'm afraid I don't have enough actual soil. Anyone out there know how to help me amend my soil post planting?

The water source. I have a whole new appreciation for old-world aquaducts and whole civilizations being built around water sources.

My mom brought me some raspberry starts from her garden, but they went into shock almost as soon as we put them into the ground. I've been praying the little fellas survive.

Another picture of my garden.


I've had many problems figuring out the right fixtures, etc. for my garden. I found this handy little contraption that's supposed to ease the flow of water to 25 psi. Before finding that, the water pressure would blow off my tubing.

A view of the garden from the upstair bedroom--look to the bottom left. You can also get a nice view of the work I have in front of me. Yes, that's all my yard and not the neighbor's. My goal is to take out a sagebrush bush a day with my pic axe. (It's the only tool that can get rid of those eyesores.) My dad says I should keep the sage brush, because they're "perrty."

Cost of garden and various watering features (drips, sprayers, etc.) and multiple trips to BJ's Plumbing Supply for the right connectors (I kept trying to fix 1/2" connector pipes with my not-quite-1/2" tubing. Turns out there are connectors for those smaller tubings.): $100.

My next project to be done in July or thereabouts is to install my pavers. I bought these pavers off of Craigslist from a family in Alpine. I hauled each of those pavers from their yard to my house via my multi-use and versatile mini-van (a mom's best tool). It took four trips. It was a very good workout. Perhaps I could get some cheap labor by marketing my weeding as a chance to "workout." Join my outdoor gym now for free!

Cost of pavers off of Craigslist: $140. Future cost of sand: $100-$150.

A Celebratory Dinner

Kulani's found a new friend nearly 10 years his junior who could pretty much be a long-lost cousin. Pat and Kulani have a lot in common. They both like to ride bikes of all varieties. They both like uncommon music. And they both LOVE to cook and eat. Because Pat works for the same firm as Kulani, they are frequent lunchtime adventurers always looking to achieve greater culinary appreciations.

Recently, Pat was accepted to the University of Utah Medical School. His wife, Chelsea, also birthed their first child a few months ago. Kulani thought it the perfect excuse to try to cook the best meal he's ever cooked for Pat and Chelsea.

Kulani thought about the menu for literally months. He'd run things by me to see if the menu sounded good. Anything Kulani cooks is good, so I wasn't the best for input as all I ever said was, "That sounds really, really good!" I'm like the friend you can't trust when wondering if an outfit looks good on you: I'll always say it does--and I sincerely believe it. (Unless, of course, you're trying to pull off wearing a tube top. Icksnay on the ubetoptay. Why does saying it in pig-latin always soften the blow?)

Since I knew this was a special night for Pat (and for Kulani because he was so excited for the dinner), I decided to do a little spring cleaning in my kitchen. I cleaned out the pantry, the fridge, the kitchen junk drawers, the oven. I worked for three days in preparation for the dinner. I put out a "Congratulations" sign. The girls love it when I do little things like that, and I ask them to help. And I even decorated our BYU-lovin' table in red, black, and white. One of my favorite meals of my life was at my friend Carol's house when we were advancing from junior high to high school, and her mother decorated the table with our high school's colors. I remember feeling so special that her mom would go to that much trouble to make us excited for the adventure of high school.

But for the actual dinner, my assignment was easy: make creme brulee and Amy from Chicago's salad. Our friend Amy, who is actually from Highland but lived in Chicago for a time, and that's how I now define her on the WWW, makes the best salad.

Kulani, had all the hard work. All-day Saturday he prepped. As designated sous chef/dishwasher, I just tried to keep up with the dishes behind him.

We decided to also invite my brother-in-law Mahana and his wife to the dinner as well. Mahana is a graduate of the U of U Med School, so we figured he could give Pat some pointers, if needs be. Plus, Mahana was in town, so we told him to join the party.

We'd try doing a multi-course dinner when we lived in BYU married-student housing. Our mistake was that we served gargantuin portions for each course (and we were much poorer, so one of the courses was potatoes). By course two, we were basically done. This time, we kept the portions small.

Appetizer - Tuna Sashimi with Fresh Ponzu, Tuna Tartar with Wasabi Aoli

Salad - Amy's Salad (Spinach, Bacon, Walnuts, Feta, and Poppyseed Dressing)

Bread - Whole Grain Bread, Vanilla Whipped Honey-Butter (Pat and Chelsea made it.)

Fish - Garlic Shrimp, Sticky Rice, Fresh Ginger Soda

Palette Cleanser - Fresh Fruit Smoothie

White Meat - Apple Cider Babyback Ribs, Potato Salad with Homemade Lemon Mayo

Entree - Filet, Potato Waffle with Fresh Horseradish Cream and Port Pan Sauce, Seasonal Vegetables

Dessert - Vanilla and Chocolate Creme Brulee

We were all too full when we were done with the entree so we skipped the cheese course, which was supposed to be Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese with D'Anjou Pears and went straight to dessert. (The above two paragraphs I borrowed from Kulani's blog.)

Whilst doing the dishes, Pat says, "After having a good meal, Chelsea and I like to discuss it in sort-of a 'post-game' manner. What was your favorite part of the dinner?" That's the difference between a true foodie and someone who just sort-of likes food. If you can actually have a conversation about the dinner even after the food is being nicely digested by God's hand-built sewer system, you know you have a passion for food.

I am still dreaming about that meal. Pat and Chelsea stayed after and did ALL the dishes to show their gratitude. It was very sweet of them. We could not have had two more appreciative guests.

By the way, I think my favorite part of the meal was still those ribs. He used Ben from Chicago's recipe, but because of smaller portions, he used babyback ribs. Oh ... my ... goodness!

My apologies about not having pictures of each course. I was just so excited about eating that I forgot to bring out the camera. But I did get a picture of Pat and Chelsea doing the dishes. I'm sure they'll appreciate this.

For My Benefit

One of the reasons for this blog is to document things that have happened in the past. As my memory fades, I forget what I've done when, so this post is for my benefit - to document which triathlons I've done and when.

2005
AF Splash N' Dash (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2006
Ironman California 70.3 (Half Iron)
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Ironman Hawai'i 70.3 (Half Iron)
Provo Tri (Olympic)
Hillman (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2007
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Lehi Legacy Hop Into Spring (Sprint)
Ironman Hawai'i 70.3 (Half Iron)
Provo Tri (Olympic)
Echo Challenge (Olympic)
Spudman (Olympic)
Jordanelle Tri (Olympic)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2008
Vikingman (Half Iron)
Spudman (Olympic)
Utah Half (Half Iron)
American Fork Splash N' Dash (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)
Ironman Arizona

2009
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Ironman California 70.3 (Half Iron)

Registered for:
Ironman Boise 70.3
Spudman
Utah Half
Ironman St. George 2010

Tentatively planned:
Ironman Arizona

The Pine Hollow Biker Gang is back!

Lili learned to ride her bike without training wheels, no training wheels, no training wheels.

A Facebook friend gave me some tips about teaching kids to ride bikes.

• Lower the seat so that the child can easily touch the pavement.
• Remove the pedals so they won't impede the child from scootching around with their feet.
• And remove the training wheels.

For two weeks I had Lili scootch around on her bike. At first, she had no balance. But by the end of two weeks, she could pick her feet up and glide. I added the pedals back on, and seriously within three tries she figured it out.

I need to post a picture of the AMAZIN' dinner Kulani cooked me for Mother's Day: broiled lobster tail, peas, salad, and filet mignon with a shrimp topping. I love you, Sweetie! And as a gift for myself and you, I bought a tool set at the Ace Hardware grand opening, so I will no longer have to borrow your set and leave them out or hidden where you can't find them. It even came with a fashionable tote bag. Tote, tote!

School Lunch

To better prepare Lilia for first grade, I decided to take her to lunch at the school cafeteria at her elementary school. Imagine my surprise when I found out they were serving ... schloppy joes, schloppy, schloppy joes! And chicken-pattie sandwiches.

I loved school lunch growing up. The nice old lady would put a check next to our names in her ledger book for everytime we came through the line. Sometimes my mom would forget to send a check, but the lunch lady would still let me have lunch, giving me a stern face and telling me to remind my mother to pay the bill. Today they have computers for that.

And working in the lunch room was the "cool" thing to do when I was in elementary school. If you were chosen to work in the lunchroom, it meant you were allowed to leave class 15 minutes early to be a server or help with clean-up. My favorite job was helping in the dishwasher area. that way I didn't have to wear a hair net and ruin my straight-as-straw hairdo.

Lunch ladies never change. They're a mix of fiesty and sweetness, much like a grandma. They want to give you all the food you'd care to eat, but they don't want you wasting your vegetables. We had a teacher, Mrs. Batista, who would guard the garbage cans and make you turn around and sit back down if you didn't eat your vegetables. I always made sure to leave room for the veggies. She was well-versed in the teacher stare: the type of stare that could scare children into obedience on a sunny day in a crowded room.

Lilia's school had fresh, cut-up veggies like carrots and cucumbers, and they even had cherry tomatoes--a favorite of young children for their explodability. They also had whole apples and pears to eat, as well as salad and canned pears. Today we had our choice of orange juice, chocolate milk, 1 % milk, or 2 % milk. In my day, we only had the choice of white milk, until high school. Then we could choose between white or chocolate milk.

We sat at the first grader's table. We got lots of stares and whispers in front of our backs. I've forgotten how non-sly elementary students are. Were they whispering about us? Uh, well, they would look at us, and while looking at us, they'd put their hand against the other person's face and whisper behind the flesh curtain. I can guess at what they were whispering about:

"That mom should not be at our table. This table is reserved for the 'cool' first graders. She is so not cool."

Lissy felt uneasy being at the 1st grader's table, so we moved to a different table that had no one sitting at it. When the fourth graders started filing into the lunchroom, Lilia said she was getting scared as well. But then her "buddy" reader came in and waved at her. That made her feel better. She really likes her "buddy" reader; an older child assigned to the kindergartners to help them with their reading.

My heart grows nostaligic at the end of school year and at the beginning of school year. Fear, joy, excitement, sadness, happiness: all those emotions bawled into one. And now my girls will be able to experience all that school has to offer.

I asked Lilia after we left, would you like to eat school lunch or have me prepare you a lunch and eat it at school? Her answer is she would prefer the school lunch. I guess that doesn't bode well for my cooking skills. Or maybe it does?...

A Short Reflection on my Mothering

My middle child just told me her boogers were running down her nose. This is the child who still insists on telling me when she has to go potty, even though she's been potty trained for close to three years. Her boogers running down her nose means I am to get her a tissue and help her wipe her nose. So I told her to take her shirt and go like this, and then I show her what a shirt is used for in southern Idaho when working in the sugarbeet fields. That's the type of mother I am.

Half-assed.

If I had to give myself a report card for my mothering efforts, I would probably earn a C in teaching them proper hygiene; D in consistency in bedtime hours; C in healthily prepared lunches; and D in proper amount of television watching.

Areas where I'm better perhaps are playing with them at the park. I get a solid A there. I'm Captain Hook to their Peter, Wendy, and Schmee (Nono is Schmee because she's on my hip most times). And I get an A for being good at wanting to scare them, but only an age-appropriate scare. Sometimes I push the scare-line boundary, however, like the time we watched Jurassic Park III together. My dad loved to push the scare-line boundary with us when we were little. His stories always involved one of three topics: old bums (beggars was an appropriate substitute, but not homeless man), rabid dogs/coyotes, and hook-armed men.

Yesterday while Kulani was teaching Hekili how to mountainbike, we went on a hike up Provo Canyon. My big mouth had to mention what scary things are found in the mountains. Lilia got spooked thinking about the rattle snakes I told her about. She wanted to turn around and go back home.

"I was just kidding! There aren't snakes in the mountains!" I barked at her, not wanting her to ruin our hiking adventure by making us turn around and go back. We continued up the trail. I get an A for being a taskmaster.

On our way down, we passed by some shady characters wearing a lot of black and smelling of a sweet smoke. Nono, the 2-year-old, was riding on my shoulders and she says, "I'm scared. It's a witch." She's into witches these days. Anytime she sees anything scary she calls it "a witch." Luckily she didn't say it loud enough for the coven to hear. I think they would have welcomed a chubby little Nono in their witches' brew that night under the full moon.

I love being a mother to these little lumpkins. I hope I don't ruin them for life.

Drawrings

The title is not a typo. Think of Mike Myers in the bathtub singing, "Well, you know my name is Simon, and I like to make drawrings."

My girls like to make "drawrings." And now that Lilia is learning to write, she likes to make stories and recipes along with her drawrings. When Kulani and I went on our anniversary date last week, Lilia created this for us:

It's a recipe for chocolate-dipped bananas. It reads:

"Bananas and Chocolate. You put it in the microwave and eat it and wash your face." (I took out the spelling mistakes.)

Then there is a pictorial of the process with a microwave, a person with a dirty face, and then a person with a clean face. At the bottom, she wrote:

"Elissa helped me." Allysa is the babysitter.

The girls are also super easy to manipulate into helping me clean the house. It's embarrassingly simple. It requires an abundance of overexuberant praise.

First I ask them to do just one simple job for me.

I'll say, "How old are you?"

And Lilia will say, "6."

Me: "Okay, since you're 6, pick up six toys from the living room."

Then Lissy will say, "Should I pick up 5 things?"

Me: "Five is a lot. Are you sure you can do it? Let me see if you can first."

They'll each pick up there designated amout, and I'll say, "Holy cow! I did NOT think you guys could handle that, and you did it like you were 7 or 8-year-olds. I wonder if you could pick up 8 things?"

The girls: "I can! I can!"

Me: "Well, let me see first."

Girls get to it lickity split.

Me: "Oh my goodness! I am calling the newspapers to tell them I have two of the best cleaners in the world here at my house! Seriously, you guys are the best!"

And then the girls keep picking up the living room and showing me what else they are cleaning, while I make a pretend call to The Daily Herald.

But seriously, in the whole-wide world, you could NOT find two better cleaners. Now if we could only get Nohea to pull her 2-year-old naughty weight around here.