Extreme Gardening

One of the major reasons that I decided to move from my apartment into a house was so that I could have a garden.  Now that I have moved, I have decided that I want a garden NOW.  Even though I will be leaving for Colombia in a week and a half, even though it's the middle of the summer, and even though I am currently living there by myself, I have decided that it is a good idea to go ahead and build four raised garden beds and a drip irrigation system.  I can be very impatient sometimes...

So, last week I started scheming.  I made some diagrams and headed out to Home Depot after work.  Basically, I figured that I could use some cheap lumber to make frames for the beds, and then fill them with soil, and then run a drip system from the hose outlet using a small sprinkler timer.  Pretty simple, right?

As it turned out, the only thing that went as planned was the construction of the frames for the raised beds.   It didn't take me too long on Saturday to screw the lumber into square frames, and put them in place.  Then, I decided to fill the beds with the 7 bags of soil that I had bought.  It was at this point that I realized that one bag of soil really doesn't do much - 0.75 cubic feet of soil is pretty insubstantial in a 4'x6' garden bed that is 6" deep.  Oh well, at least my frames looked nice...

The completed frames- two along the driveway, two in the space next to the garage.-

Next, I went back to Home Depot to get supplies for my drip system.  There, I discovered that there are two companies that make tubing and fittings for drippers.  The first company, Toro, you've probably heard of.  All their drip systems were based around a type of tubing called "Funny Pipe" (when I was trying to remember the name, all I could think of was "Crazy Hose"...), which has a series of specialized fittings that only fit their Funny Pipe Tubing, which costs $25 for 50 ft, or something like that.  I, being cheap as well as impatient, decided to go with the generic brand tubing and fittings - $9 for 100 ft of tubing, and only ~ $1-$3 for most of the fittings.  These fittings looked a bit sketchy in the store - normally, fittings for flexible tubing are basically barbed, tapered cones that fit inside the hose.  The fittings that I bought fit around the hose, rather than inside the hose, and they only had a single barb to keep the hose in (see diagram).  Working in lab, I've become a minor connoisseur of tubing and fittings, and these did not look good.  But, I figured, "why would they sell them if they don't work?"

Today, after hauling 15 40-lb bags of soil from Home Depot and filling the two furthest beds, I finished connecting up the drip system, and it worked!  Well, at least until I heard a popping noise, followed by the sound of gushing water.  As it turned out, those fittings were as bad as I had suspected - with any pressure in the line, they tend to pop out!  I ended up rushing all over the yard, trying to reconnect each fitting as it blew apart.  It looks like I've got some work to do to get this thing running...

They're growing!

I decided to check on the birds again today, and it looks like they've gotten bigger!  I don't think any more have been pushed out of the nest since then, though.

Birds Nest!

This has nothing to do with traveling, but when I was taking out my trash today, I noticed a dead bird on the sidewalk:

"I wonder if that dead bird has anything to do with that large pile of, uhhh, bird droppings," I thought. Then I looked directly above the pile of droppings and found myself staring into three sets of eyes! I hurried back to my apartment to grab my camera.

Then, as I was leaving, the parents flew back and waited on the railing for me to go away.  I just hope that they don't push the rest of them out of the nest, too...

Travels in Kiwi-Land

Because I've been a bit remiss in documenting my kiwi adventure, I think I'll describe the first half of my trip in Haiku form:

Departure delayed
Taxi-ed around LAX
Long flight not too bad

Sprinted to Jetstar
Rainy day in Wellington
Saw museum and gardens

Wet, rainy morning
Ferry took us to more rain
Drove into sunset

...ok, this is getting a bit tiring...back to normal prose:

After the beautiful sunset over the Tasman Bay, we arrived at our first hostel, the Barn. It didn't look much like a barn, but it was comfortable, and in a very pretty area on the edge of Abel Tasman National Park. We had underestimated the amount of time it would take to drive on the windy New Zealand highways, so we didn't get to spend any time in Abel Tasman park. So, we spent the next two days driving almost the entire day before arriving in Wanaka for our WWOOF experience. The scenery was gorgeous, and I took a ton of pictures out of the window of the car, but we didn't have time to stop and enjoy it very frequently (with the exception of Pancake Rocks and Franz Josef Glacier). When we finally arrived in Wanaka, we discovered that the town is completely overrun by snowboarders at this time of year, and were lucky to grab the last room available in one of the hostels - a small shed separate from the main building, known as the "love shack". Bonnie and I have pictures to illustrate the decor of the shack - it was worth a good laugh when we arrived.

The past week, we have been WWOOFing at a farm just outside of the main town of Wanaka with a very friendly family. While we were there, we moved dirt into the raised garden beds, weeded, dug potatoes, turned over soil, chased chickens, bonded with cows, were entertained by the antics of children, discussed philosophy, psychology, and food, and nearly put on a puppet show. An excellent week. We also decided to stay an extra day so that we could go skiing midweek, and I am very glad that we did that - the conditions were great, and Bonnie and I both did quite well, and were racing each other down the slopes by the end of the day.

Now, we are in Queenstown, taking a rest day and waiting for the bad weather to pass before we head over to Milford Sound. Stay posted for more pictures!

The Austin Food Cart Adventure

In preparation for my upcoming move to Austin, I spent the last 4 days there on a mission to find a place to live. Fortunately, by the end of day 2, I found a great apartment, only ~3 miles from campus, and right next to a bus stop for the campus shuttle. So, I ended up having 2 days of spare time, and I mostly spent them driving around Austin and getting acquainted with the area.

One challenge of traveling is always finding food - I was staying in a bare-bones Motel 6 where I didn't even have a mini-fridge, so I had to find places to eat lunch and dinner every day. Because Austin is well-known for its excellent food - the options range from heart attack-inducing barbecues to farm-fresh vegan cuisine - choosing a place to eat can be a bit overwhelming. So, I decided to pick a theme so that I could narrow down my food choices: everything I ate came from a food cart or trailer. Although this might sound like a recipe for greasy, inedible food, there are actually some really excellent food carts in Austin. They tend to be run by young people who really enjoy making food, but don't have the money or the inclination to invest in a brick-and-mortar restaurant. This generally means that the food is excellent, the prices are cheap, and that their hours are a bit odd, but for a student on a budget, this is perfect. You can get an idea of the remarkable quantity and variety of these food carts at http://austinfoodcarts.com/. Here's my quick summary of each place I visited and what I ate there.  I'll put more details about each place in the picasa album:

Dinner #1: Counter Culture.
Their Specialty: Vegan food
What I ate: The jackfruit bbq sandwich, with a side of quinoa (total: $8) 

Lunch #1: La Boite Cafe 
Their Specialty: Coffee and pastries
What I ate: a sandwich with pesto, farm-fresh goat cheese and roasted red peppers; an almond croissant; the lavender lemonade (total: $11)

Dinner #2: Odd Duck Farm Fresh to Trailer.
Their specialty: Farm fresh food
What I ate: The grilled peach and heirloom tomato salad; the grilled zuchinni bread (total $7)

Lunch #2: Izzoz Tacos
Their specialty: Tacos
What I ate: 2 fried avocado tacos (total: $6)

Dinner #3: G'Raj Mahal
Their specialty: Indian food
What I ate: Makhani Biryani with vegetables (total: $9)

Hawaii

As a reward for all of the graduating undergrads and grad students, the geology department runs a field trip to Hawaii during spring break every year. We traveled around the big island, learning about volcanoes, volcanic rocks, and coral reefs. It would take far too long to describe everywhere that we went, but we spent the first half of the week mainly near Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and the second half of the week near Mauna Kea. I just put up a selection of the several hundred pictures that I took on my trip, so you should check out my Picasa album!

Back to School...

After 18+ hours in airplanes and airports, I made it back to Los Angeles and have spent the past week relaxing at home. Tomorrow I move back into Caltech, and school begins at the end of September. So, I probably won't be going on many adventures for the next 9 months...

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my summer and seeing all my photos!