Date night. Walk at Fort Vancouver.

After filling a page of our McMenamins Passport, Matt and I took a walk around Historic Fort Vancouver.

Here, you can see the Fort in the foreground and the Interstate Bridge in the background.

Matt actually was planning to have us walk along the Columbia, but I spied a garden outside the gates and he was happy to amble over with me and take a look.

Good trellis and flowers. 

Pea poles.  I took this picture because I failed to make a trellis for my peas this year and this one looks like something I could put together for next year.

Pretty walkway with roses.  Matt is pretending he pricked his finger on a rose.

I also like this method of staking the tomatoes.  I dislike cages, and this seems simple enough.

Mount Hood loomed over us.  I wondered if any of the solders who staffed Fort Vancouver with the Hudson's Bay Company ever got to visit.

Look who we found in the lettuce!  This fella had a buddy, too.

Here we are taking the Vancouver Land Bridge, one of the sites of the Confluence Project and designed by Maya Lin

One of the viewpoints.  I love how this bridge manages to completely block out the fact you are crossing over the very busy State Route 14, while focusing your attention on the history of the area and providing great views.

Moving back through time, we come to the Kaiser Shipyards.

And this military post.

At the end of the bridge is the oldest apple tree in this territory.

It is protected behind a wrought-iron fence and still producing apples.

We made it to the waterfront, but the sun was starting to set and so we walked back to the car.  On the way back we stopped at an octagonal bandstand, which gave us eight opportunities for timer pictures.  The college has repeated one of the pictures.  Can you see which one?

Interestingly, Matt referrred to this structure as a gazebo and I referred to it as a bandstand.  The informative sign agreed with me, but according to this definition, I think what we have here is a gazebo.

Morliden Doors for Billy Bookcase part I

With Julie's assistance, I have purchased fabric for my Morliden glass doors from Ikea.  This means I am close to finishing my bookcase project.

Here I measure the fabric for insertion behind the glass panel.

Some of my tools.  Super cool see-through ruler bought as part of the Pattern Manipulation Class at PCC this spring.  Also, clover marking pen which is the best marking pen I've ever purchased.

I only finished three before it was time for our date.  So here are the results mid-project.

First Friday of summer schedule. Project: Cat Litter Box Area Upgrade

Usually in May I get a surge of energy and suddenly think of a ton of super awesome projects that, when completed, will make my life much better.  Sadly, that energy doesn't stay around forever, so many are put on a list and may or may not be gotten around to.

This cat litter box update was one of those May ideas.  Happily, it came to pass rather quickly. 

Before.  Back when we had Organics to You Deliver produce to us, I used the leftover boxes which perfectly fit this area.  Three lined the sides, one per side and one on the bottom.  My cats are very good about actually respecting the boundaries of the box, but every once in a while, one of them (I suspect Antares) will spray the wall.  When that happened, I simply switched out the boxes for new ones and life happily went on.  Eventually we stopped having produce delivered to us and my box supply dried up.  I would then cobble together some boxes that didn't quite fit, as in the example below.  Then, I never wanted to change them because where would I get more boxes?  This project solves this problem.

After making a paper mock-up to test if my spacial relations were correct, I bought my supplies:  two tarps, anchors, and hooks.  We already had duct tape. 

Here, I measure my area using the tarp.

  I placed three anchors/hooks on each wall so the tarp could hang from them. The tarp grommets didn't occur often enough, so I made my own by placing two layers of duct tape along the edge of the tarp and cut squares into the tape.

I then measured the length of my tarp and cut it to size.  The shorter pieces are the sides, which are long enough to fold over each other, covering the bottom from each side..  The long piece is the back, which will drop down over the side pieces and make a smooth surface along the bottom.

Sentinel came to help me prep the second tarp.

Here's the second tarp, fashioned by using the first tarp as a pattern.  I used clothespins to hold the top layers evenly together because I needed my homemade grommets to line up precisely.  I also reinforced the folding corners with duct tape.  I had thoughts of wrapping all the cut edges in duct tape, but decided it wasn't necessary.

How it all came together.

This is a picture of the top piece elevated, so you can see how the sides overlap.

The new setup with litter boxes.

Now I can brush the kicked litter back into the pans more easily. When it's time to change everything out, I can fold up all the bits of litter I can't sweep up into my tarp and take it outside to hose off.  While it is drying, I can put my second tarp back in so the interruption in service is minimal.

I am quite pleased with this project.  Total time was less than three hours. Total cost around $25.00.  It could have probably been cheaper as the tarps seemed quite expensive, but I wasn't willing to go to another store.

Raspberries and kale from the garden.

Hooray!  Things are growing.  Here is the kale I have harvested for my Eat-All Greens project. (More on that in a second.) Also, raspberries from my bushes.  I'm beginning to realize that you don't really grow raspberries, you instead host the plant and try to keep it from completely taking over.

I bought Carol Deppe's The Tao of Vegetable Gardening because I enjoyed her first book, The Resilient Gardener, I think she's an important gardening person in Oregon and also because she has a method to increase the amount of greens you grow and use.  I love greens.

Following (somewhat) her directions, I planted the kale seed I had collected last fall.  Kale emerged.  I harvested it, started water to boil and arranged my kale on a cutting board, ready to boil briefly, as instructed.  After the water boiled and I added the kale to the pot, I noticed a caterpillar hanging out on the cutting board.  He went into the compost bin.

I drained the kale and was shaking it around in the pot, getting the extra water out, when what did I see but a boiled caterpillar.  "Eek!" said I, and fished it out.  Suspicious, I shook the kale some more and "Eek!" another one.  At that point, I thought it best to carefully comb through the kale to ensure I found any little critters that might have been along for the ride.  I found many, which were collected in the sink, as pictured here.

My finished project, happily caterpillar-free.  

And now I know to check my greens carefully before boiling.

Forktown Food Tour: Alphabet District.

Thanks to Linda, Matt's mom, visiting, we attended another Forktown Food Tour.  This time it was the Alphabet District.  Here's our menu of places.

At Kenny and Zuke's we had a reuben slider, one quarter of their salt bagel with cream cheese and a pickle.

At St. Honore Boulangerie we had a chouquette and half a croissant

At Bull Run Distilling we had samples of two kinds of vodka, a gin, a rum, a few different kinds of whisky and an aquavit.  After that we got to make our own mini-cocktail choosing from three different kinds of bitters. 

At Little Big Burger we had one of their burgers with goat cheese, plus some truffle fries

Next came Taste on 23rd where we had asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, a mushroom stuffed with smoked salmon and a salad with a strawberry fig dressing.  Also a sample of both red and white wines.

At The Meadow we had a salt and chocolate tasting.

Amazingly, after all that, we also had a brioche donut from Blue Star Donuts.  (This was my favorite part because it was a surprise and also because, I had just been touting the Transcendental Donut nature of Blue Star Donuts to a couple from Chicago.)

I did not, sadly, take pictures of much of this.  So here are the pictures I did take.

This sign, at the Bull Run Distillery, made me laugh.  Our guide said that she's had some vegans get grumpy at the message, which made me chuckle even more.

Bitters at the Distillery.

In the warehouse at the Distillery, it wasn't surprising to find this Timbers sticker.

Spirits aging.

The experimentation area.

Label.

This is a small distillery, and this is their bottling system.

Taste on 23rd was the only place I got a picture of the food.  Delicious!

Thanks Linda, for another good tour.

Dead Relatives Tour 2015

Our theme this year?  Feet!

At my grandparent's grave, that's Mom, Aunt Pat, me, Aunt Carol, clockwise from upper left.

At my great-great grandparents' grave that's mom, Aunt Pat, Aunt Carol and me. I had to step one foot out because I'm not Gumby.

At my Great-Great Uncle Tom's memorial, we have Aunt Pat, Mom, Aunt Carol and me.

Uncle Tom's bouquet is in the upper left corner. It looks like the space next to him is available, if anyone is interested.

The finished-for-now product

No longer do you see the white dresser when you come in.  Now you see bookcases.

My plan was to have two bookcases with glass doors and one without, but I've changed my mind and all three need to have glass doors. The doors I bought can be customized with panels of material and after installing one set of doors, I concluded that it will be easier to customize before the doors are installed.  So instillation of the other two sets of doors has been put on hold.

Even though Billy and I didn't get along at the beginning, I'm happy to have embarked on this project.