Where does my food come from

Growing up on a farm we always understood the concept of growing food.  I enjoy attempting to keep that concept close to home.  Here is a picture of our little vegetable garden.

In the planter box ont he right we have a pretty successful strawberry plant that the boys enjoy checking out wuite often.  We planted it this spring and hope that is re-seeds for next year.

Our rhubarb plant is probably the one we use the most throughout the summer as my wife enjoys to make baked good with it.  I also enjoy a raw stick or rhubarb as well.  It reminds me of cutting grass growing up.  I used to grab a piece out of the plant as I pushed the mower by it.

The pink flowery stuff is oregano which turns out is quite a successfull weed (I mean plant).  We haven't been so successfull with harvesting and drying it but we keep trying.  We have enough of it.

The tomato plants are tied up to the deck railing in the back.  Those will hopefully be used for some salsa when they ripen up.

The garden is green but the grass infront of it is not doing so well.  I think this means I need a bigger garden.

Learning about myself through home projects

I finished up a set of slide our drawers for our pots and pans.  The picture on the left is the builders standard cabinet with the half shelf.  We have been discussing drawers for a long time.  I finally got to the project.  The image on the right is the two slide out drawers.  I am not sure how much the builder would have charged us for these two drawers but I purchased the materials for about $75.  The most expensive part was the full extension sliders.

This set of drawers mimics the set my dad and I worked on putting in the bathroom so working this project worked out pretty smooth.  I enjoy working on these type of project because of the influence of my grandfather who passed away early this year.  I miss him and the lessons that he taught.  The most important lesson was that any problem could be solved if you really wanted to solve it.

Now this picture is evidence that I am just like my grandfather in many ways.  With the scraps of wood that I had left over from the drawer project I built this guy with the boys.  No scrap of wood is too small to be useful.  The boys put the face on and I expect they may paint him up in some way.

Memories are made when you least expect it.  Take those special times and moments that you share with your friends and family and make them count.

Ride on

Throughout the summer months I try to use my bicycle to get to work.  Google maps estimates it at 15 km and I normally do it in 35-40 minutes.  The road way where I live isn't really ideal for cyclists but I do have a bike lane for the last 3 kilometres or so.  Thankfully, the trip home has slightly more down hill sections then up hill ones.  It is satisfying to get to work on your own power, if only we could do something about the safety of such a trip.

I would like my primary motivation to be getting fit and staying active but the bigger motivator is the financial burden of the second car for the family.  We have been surviving on one car for a while and we would like to keep it that way for as long as we can.