Happy birthday, Story!

I can’t believe Story is five years old today. We got her right after we got married (which also doesn’t seem like nearly five years ago). We (or at least I) put sooo much thought into what breed to get for our first dog. The ACK describes the Westie as “a small, game, well-balanced hardy looking terrier…possessed with no small amount of self-esteem.” It is absolutely true! Story is one of the friendliest dogs I’ve ever known. Especially now that we have shy Kate, it’s clear how different dogs’ personalities can be. Story has never met a stranger! She is also the very best cuddle dog. Very rarely do I sit on the couch without her on my lap.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of her from the last five years. Happy birthday, my favorite Westie!

Spring is here!

And you know what that means: time for my seasonal blog post! Just kidding. Maybe.

But seriously, spring time is garden time! Although I was little behind this year, I’ve got lots of seeds started inside including green onions, cauliflower, celery, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, kale, and marigolds. My whole garden has been under black plastic for about two months in an attempt to kill the horrible creeping grass, and today we finally took the plastic off. I’m not sure the grass was entirely dead, but it was at least severely weakened. I pulled up what was left in the beds, mostly around the strawberries, which somehow survived under there! Matt tilled the rest under.

We bought some plastic terrace board this year to put around the edges of garden to deter the grass. I’m going to cut strips of the black plastic I already have to put in the pathways and cover it later with wood chips or mulch, which I can hopefully score for free on craigslist. So the next thing on our garden to do list is digging a trench to bury the edging so grass can’t creep under. Here’s what the garden looks like after today:

And if you’d like to see the whole plan for this year you can look at it here. I’m trying out a new garden planner website which I like better than the old one except for the fact that there’s a lot of zooming and scrolling involved. Also, the beds in my garden plan aren’t in the right places (to make the whole thing easier to see at once). So zoom out to 25% if you want to see the whole thing.

In other, even more exciting news, I’ve got a new job! I landed an internship at Mountain Meadows Farm. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for several years but only recently seriously looked into it, because who wants a farm intern that’s going to be out of the country for a month in the summer? I went out this morning for a trial workday of sorts and by the end of it they offered me the position. It looks like I’ll start sometime next month, and I’ll get to do some of everything from planting and harvesting to packing CSA boxes and working at farmers’ markets. There’s even a good chance I could stay on for the off season too. It’s also a full time position, so I’ll be making significantly more than I currently do. The only downside is that it’s a 35 minute drive away, but it was really one of the closer farms to us, so that’s ok. I’m so excited!