Pickling

We received a lot of herbs and 2 fat cucumbers in our CSA box this month, along with tomatoes and green beans from our garden. I've been wanting to try pickling, especially the methods that don't require canning or a long wait! I tried this recipe last night: 4 Recipes for Quick Pickles: Rosemary & Sage Quick Pickles, and it was very easy! I'm not sure if they taste good (still curing in the frige), but the results were very beautiful at least!

I made pickled garlic/dill green beans, cucumbers with chives and sage, heirloom tomatoes with garlic and chives, and cucumber chips with garlic and dill.

Crater Lake and central OR

We had a lovely long weekend in central Oregon a few weeks ago. We headed out after work on a Thursday to stay at the St Francis School (a McMenamin's locale) in Bend for the first night. That was really fun - beautiful and fun McMenamin's decor, pub, soaking pool, patios, etc.
The next day, we headed to Sunriver for nice bike ride to LaPine SP. My parents and Nana arrived in the afternoon, and we all enjoyed the fun weekend in Sunriver - lots of bike rides, putt-putt, shopping, and relaxing. On Sunday, when my fam left for home, Dave and I headed to Crater lake for the afternoon. It is so breathtaking!! We stayed one more evening in Sunriver for swimming/hottubbing, birdwatching and reading. We ended the trip with a visit to the High Desert Museum in Bend where we got to see nice birds and nature displays. Very fun!
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Cycle Oregon University Weekend

Some pictures from the Cycle Oregon University Weekend, out of Western Oregon University in Monmouth, OR.

First strawberry crop of the year. This was also the first weekend of the year that the farmers markets had strawberries. Summer's almost here.

Happy Hour

Carley and I hiked Angel's Rest on Friday--here are some pics:

Fun at the dog park

It was a great evening of entertainment at the deluxe Banfield dog park. With 20+ dogs there, Wags probably had as much fun as he could handle. He loves the wading pool, greeting all of the dogs, and chasing tennis balls thrown into the pool. People are always surprised to hear that he's a 6 year old dog, since he acts like he's 2 or 3 and never stops running and playing. Good ol Wags!

Poker Faces

Had a few people over for a belated birthday party...here is the wreckage.

Poker Faces

$60 of Sod, A Whole Day of Fun!!!

Today was a beautiful sunny early spring day, perfect for a bike ride, hike, bird watching trip, or laying sod. We chose laying sod. We've been trying to deal with this an area of dead grass and moss. Phase one of the plan was to pave over a section of it with a new patio--that part is done. We decided to sod instead of seed to try and get something more stable in place more quickly than seed. On hindsight it would have been better to get a rototiller but we thought that since the area was pretty small we would be able to do it by hand. It took longer than we thought, but we were able to break up the dirt and lay the sod before dinner. I'm happy with the way it looks--now we just need to keep it watered for a couple weeks so it grows new roots. We'll also have to keep Wags from push it around. Hopefully we'll do something less physically intensive tomorrow.