Strawberry Picking with Mom and Dad

We went strawberry picking at a local "pick your own" farm (just 10min away by car) on Wednesday.  It was a cloudy day and perfect for wandering around on a field for mom and dad.

The photo on the left has the strawberries picked by dad and the one below is by mom.

Seemed to have fun.

And now we have bamboo

We've been wanting bamboo in our garden for some time now.  After a year of learning about what type of bamboo is suitable for Michigan weather, how to limit spread, care and maintenance, etc, we contacted a local bamboo landscaping service to talk about what can be done (www.mibamboo.com).

The quote for buying and planting the bamboo was quite reasonable, but it would be expensive to take out the old bushes. (See previous post on moving plants).

As usual, Jia Nin documented the process and results on her flickr site:

Bamboo day 1: The plants themselves
Digging trench for rhizome barrier
The tools - trenching spade and pickaxe - reaching two feet down
Bamboo day 2: Trench done after total of 7 hours of digging
Rotor-tilling in compost
Green groove bamboo planted
Detail of green groove bamboo culm
Bamboo day 3: Replacing spirea with dwarf yellow-stripe bamboo
Two out of three spireas replaced
Dwarf yellow-stripe bamboo planted
Variegation of dwarf yellow-stripe bamboo
And the old plants are now...

Whew!

Moving Plants

There are a couple of Purple Leaf Sand Cherry shrubs (or small tree, depends on which guide you read) at the side of the house.  Lee Kiang took some photos of them when she was here 2 years back.  These plants actually prefer "full" sun, so being shaded by both our and neighbor's houses doesn't really help the leaves achieve the full "purple" color.  This makes it look a bit sickly in the fall when there are fewer daylight hours.

We've been wanting to plant some bamboo around the house since last year.  Bamboo prefers shade, so that patch of ground would be perfect for what we had in mind.  Full grown shrubs like these actually cost quite a bit at the nursery, it seems like a waste to just throw them away.  Since we have to dig them up either way, transplanting them to another space in the yard was the best solution.

It takes about 4-5 hours to move each plant, so we did it over 2 weekends.  Didn't really think about photographing the results until we were done with the first one.  Jia Nin took the photos.

Where the first plant was.

New location of first plant.

Second plant moved.

Best tool for the job.

February Snow

We didn't get anything close to the blizzards that hit the East Coast, but it was still a pretty respectable dump of cold white stuff. It's been a mild winter, for the most part. I only had to use my one year old snowblower four times this season. This is the path that leads up to the front door.  I'd say about 20cm of snow.

A before/after sequence of the pathway around the side of the house and to the back door. It's not really neccessary to clear this, but I wanted to check out the roof line after the heavy snow. If the outermost patch of snow on the roof melts and refreezes, it forms an "ice dam" which stops any more snow-melt from running off. This water can seep under the roof top and make a wading pool in the attic. Definitely a no-no.  Icicles (like below) are fine though. :-)

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

Last year, I forgot to take a photo of the spread we had for the traditional New Year's Eve steamboat dinner until after the dinner was nearly over.

With reminders from both Jia Nin and Lee Kiang, I managed to not let hunger get the better of me and let Jia Nin shoot a few photos first. (Larger version with ingredients list here)

Happy New Year!  Let the Tiger roar!

End-of-Year-Holiday Projects

Happy New Year!
        Usually, the week between the Christmas and New Year holidays is for pigging out and sleeping in.  But there's only so much eating and sleeping one can do.  Yah, I know. Can't believe what I'm typing either.
        As warm-up, I installed a small desk for Jia Nin in the master bedroom (check out the pictures on her flikr site) late November.  The standard tables that they sell in stores were too big for her purposes and we wanted something off the floor.  We found a really nice cabinet door in Ikea's as-is section for $5 and a pair of shelving support brackets at the local home-improvement store. 
Project 1: Swift 
        Jia Nin does alot of knitting.  One of the things to do is to wind yarn from a loop into a tight ball.  Something about not stretching the yarn until just before it's needed.  So instead of buying a "swift" online for over a hundred dollars, I figured that this is the perfect excuse to make her happy while letting me buy lots of tools at the same time.
        The cost of raw materials (wood, nuts and bolts, etc) is about $35.  Buying the tools... is a one time thing that'll spread itself among future projects.  Setting up a basement workshop will be a post for later in the year.  Total time spent was around 20 hours.  Finished product wasn't too bad.  I may do a bit of rounding-off of the corners.

Project 2: Add lighting for the living room 
        Actually, the lighting was added in November.  A few pieces of Ikea's Ribba picture ledge and Grundtal halogen spot lights added soft illumination for the living room.  Perfect for watching movies, playing Nintendo Wii, etc.
        However, we didn't want the lighting wires hanging  down the wall, and especially not in ugly plastic channels.  So the solution was to run the wires in the wall.  U.S. homes are framed in wood supports and then clad in drywall (a kind of plaster panel).  After drilling a few small holes to check what's behind the drywall, figuring out which circuit breaker shuts off electricity to the living room, and buying the parts, time to get it done.

        Replaced the single switches in the original living room switch panel (above left) with doubles (above right).  
        Ran wires behind the walls up to where the lights are, terminating in a power socket (left).  Each socket is controlled by a switch which gives me the option of adding more lighting in the future.
        Finally, screw all the parts in place with the covers and we're left with the cleanup.
        Time elapsed: 4 hours.

(Note: using a flashlight to for the photos because the breakers are still off, and phone's camera's flash is really weak.)