And we're off!

We're in the airport, waiting for our slightly delayed flight to Chicago. The lady at the counter told us it was delayed an hour, but the board at the gate says half an hour. Either way, we're prepping for a run across the airport at O'Hare.

We both packed light. Adam's suitcase weighed in at 33 lbs, and Emily's was 27. Lots of room for souvenirs. Our flights in the middle have a 44 lb limit, so that was our target. Thankfully, our destination is 90 degrees currently. There was still room for a repackaged Carcassonne in a tennis ball can.

It's a niece!

My brother Adam and his wife Courtney had a gender reveal party on Saturday. They gave the sealed ultrasound results to the baker who baked the gender color into the cake. My parents, her parents, and her grandparents were there to watch them cut the cake. It was pink!

Here's my cute little brother.

Pears and Butterflies

Well, summer is coming to a close. That means that we start to harvest and put away our produce for the year. This year we had the first fruit from our urban orchard. That's right, we got a pear!

Ok, it's not the prettiest pear you'll ever see. But it's the only pear we got this year. One pear tree blossomed, and the other did not. Somehow, one blossom got pollinated. Despite a very rough year with early thaw, late frost, a hot, dry summer and a brutal attack from pearleaf blister mites, our solitary pear survived! What you see in the photo above is the good side. The other side had some mite damage. The good news is, the mites don't really hurt the fruit other than cosmetic blemishes. After the requisite ripening period, we cut the pear in half and shared it. We both agreed that it was, hands down, the best pear we have eaten. It was pretty amazing.  Here's hoping next year is more productive.

This summer saw the planting of some new things in the yard, including our apricot tree. With that, our urban orchard now contains: pears, plums, cherries, apricots, blueberries, kiwi fruit, grapes, cranberries and raspberries. Throw in the garden produce, a patch of rhubarb and the odd morel or two, and we've got a pretty productive little quarter acre.

After UGM, Emily was ready for some time off, so we had a long weekend this past weekend. We went up to Wisconsin Dells to play mini golf at Pirate's Cove (we tied). After that, we had lunch at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty, followed by a trip on the Upper Dells boat tour. It was a good day.

On Saturday, Adam rode his bike to Devil's Lake with some friends. We took the long way to get there, hoping to stretch it to a metric century (100 km). Unfortunately, there were 20+ mph winds, complicating matters significantly, and slowing our pace to a crawl. We cut off the last 10 miles, making it to the park in 50 miles (80k) instead. Oh well. It was a nice ride with some good friends.

On Monday, we went to Olbrich Botanical Gardens. It was a great time of year to be there. There were a lot of late-summer plants blooming, and we caught a flock of cedar waxwings eating crabapples. We also saw a lot of butterflies. Some pictures of the butterflies are below:

It was a good weekend. It won't be long now before it's time to cover the hoophouse, plant the garlic, and pull the last of the green tomatoes off the vines. It's a sad time of year for a gardener, but it's just part of life. 

Crazy Tomato!

I've been negligent in documenting my garden this year. Needless to say, it has been a year of great learning for me. I'm just about finished with my Master Gardener certification and have been reading a wide variety of gardening books. I also drool over my Flower Factory catalogue on a regular basis. I already have my list started for next spring!

Our vegetable garden has been doing well this year, despite the drought. That's in great part to Adam's attentions to watering. Here's our biggest tomato for the year. The measurement (1.642) is in pounds. We ate this beautiful brandywine in bruschetta with fresh sourdough bread from Clausen's and garlic and basil from our garden.

Front yard: before and after

I never did post pictures of how the front yard turned out. It really took all summer to kill everything, dig up the sod, till it, level it, put in the edging bricks, plant perennials, put in mulch, and plant grass. I can't wait for spring to see if everything comes back and how much it will grow.

Here's the front yard when we bought the house in 2008. Note the size of the baby cedar tree we are standing in front of. The landscaping consisted entirely of yew and juniper bushes.

 Here's what it looked like in October 2011 complete with sitting area (yes, I painted the chairs myself) and new, soft grass. The tree is now taller than the roof line. That's one of our 2 pear trees in the foreground. We're really hoping for pears in 2012.

 Here's the half of the yard that we don't have to mow anymore. Everything looks small now, but give it a few years and it should fill in nicely.

Butterfly Summer

I know this is a very belated post, but I wanted to show some of the pictures we took this summer of the butterflies in our yard and at Perrot State Park. I suspect it was a good year for butterflies because of the heat.

A dark morph female Tiger Swallowtail enjoying our butterfly bush.

 A Silver-spotted Skipper, also on the butterfly bush. Although that bush is not native, it's not super aggressive and it sure does attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. My mom in Fond du Lac has had trouble with it dying after a few years, but I think Madison is just enough warmer that it's ok.

 A male Tiger Swallowtail chasing a dark morph female Swallowtail by our grapes.

Another Tiger Swallowtail on a native thistle at Perrot State Park.

 A Black Swallowtail.

 A good picture of a male Tiger Swallowtail.

 I'm pretty sure this is a Northern Crescent.

 This one is a Hackberry Emperor.

My biggest disappointment is that we also saw many Giant Swallowtails at Perrot and somehow failed to get a single picture. They are not common and I've never seen one in our yard, so that was a real treat.

Winter is on its way

With last week's snow, most of the garden is dead. All that's left is lettuce, kale, and broccoli (the small shoots it keeps producing). Apparently you can pick kale after it's covered in snow and well below freeaing. I picked the last of the rainbow swiss chard on Friday. It was so pretty that i had to take a picture before Adam chopped it.

We also brought the pot with our jalapeno plant into the sun porch and that is still alive and well. I thought about taking it into the house, but it's kind of big.  It still has around 25 mature or close to mature peppers on it.

We also got our first installment of our CSA winter storage share on Thursday. About 70 pounds of carrots, potatoes, turnip, squash, rutabaga, radish, brussel sprouts, pumpkins, garlic, and onions. We made a rule that everything we cook from here on out has to include at least 1 root vegetable or squash.