Phatveggie's Angora Rabbitry

Well the rabbitry has finally come to life. This week I brought home two angora rabbits from the same litter. Vidal (Gore Vidal) is the fawn colored one and his little brother is PeeWee. PeeWee is a fighter. Bless his little heart. Today I bought a REW doe whose name is Eudora (Welty). We have set up a rabbitry in our garage. So far we have been able to keep the temperature in the 70's. We pull the cool air in during the night and then close up during the day. Next summer we will have to buy a swamp cooler for the studio/garage.

They love their play time and treat time in the afternoon. I give them parsley and lettuce from the garden. I have been developing grooming habits so they are used to me. I plan on getting four stock rabbits and keep them for a year before I do any breeding. We have set a limit for our rabbitry for 10 rabbits. That should keep me busy.

How to visit a French Bakery

Went to a Garden Party

Today we enjoyed the Annual Garden Tour Benefit. We started out early since the temperatures were to exceed 100 degrees today. We were inspired by many things that we saw. I did not capture everything with the camera since I got carried away looking at plants.

I was amazed that the rose had some many colors coming from one cluster of blooms.

There were seven gardens on the tour. We traveled from Arvada, Golden, Wheatridge, to Lakewood. One of the gardens was an oversized model railroad.

From the wild, wild west to the sinking saint.

I love a grape arbor. Can't wait until we have one.

I am now following the blog of one our stores,Fancy Tiger, in the Denver area. I love the photo that they added of the unique pieces of spinning equipment.

Estes Park Wool Market

This weekend we headed up to the annual Estes Park Wool Market. It was a beautiful day for the festival this year. Actually I was shocked to look up and see the smoke from the High Park Fire near Ft.Collins. Of course the shopping for fiber was tempting, but we went to look at the animals first. We were most excited to see and talk to the breeders of Angora Rabbits. We hope to have the space ready for some this summer on our little homestead.

Salad Day

We harvested our first salad from our assortment of greens. It was so good.

Watching the Garden Grow

Yin Yang Salad Bed Kale Yea! We were able to pick some of our first radishes.

Square Foot Garden Meets Sheet Mulching

Last month we continued our process of building our vegetable garden. We wanted to continue with our square foot garden beds because the raised bed is beneficial for so many reasons, but we had to get a handle on all the weeds in the area. In addition, it is necessary to amend this clay soil. We are going two routes with the garden. We are sheet mulching the remainder. After this we will build terraces in the back section. I think that strawberries will be very happy up there, and I will be even happier to eat them.

We put the dairy based compost under neath the cardboard and the brewery based compost on top of the cardboard. Then we placed a few inches of mulch on top.

Earth Laughs in Flowers

When I first learned of Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote from his poem Hamatreya, I thought it was a feel-good line. I prefer to keep it that way in my head and take it out of context. After all, it does seem that the earth laughs in flowers. There is nothing like a good laugh. We are certainly developing a nice place for some earthly mirth in our front garden. My partner and I exchanged roses for our anniversary this year.

We even have some jonquils blooming late in the season because we didn't plant them until this Spring.

Phatveggie's front perennial garden in progress

Last year I started working on the shade perennial garden in the front yard. I worked up the soil and added compost. A few days later, we had a big wind storm, and the large ash tree kept breaking off large limbs. There was irreparable damage to the poor thing so we had all the ash trees in that cluster cut down. I was saddened because I had picked out all these wonderful shade plants for the area. It is now full sun to partial shade.

At the end of summer we planted a crabapple tree. It has beautiful red bark and lovely red flowers. The crabapples are very small berry-like fruits that stay on the tree into winter. The tree will eventually add to each season with color. It is Scott’s birthday tree, and it is very exciting to see this Spring. We planted bulbs during the Fall, and they have delighted us with color in the front garden this Spring. A new selection of plants has been selected to add to the perennial garden in the coming days.

Gardening 2012

Last year we had our garden raised off the ground because we were doing earth moving on our property to get the area ready for our new garden home. We are very excited to start our work this spring.

We had the earth leveled on the side of our garage. It had a significant slope to it, and the water did not drain properly around the building as well.

We have taken the legs off the planters and made them double so that more soil can be inside of them. Last year the soil was not deep enough. In Colorado it cools off so much at night that it affected the soil temperature. This year we are hoping for better results with them on the ground. The soil should retain its heat. We are doing the lasagna gardening or sheet mulching to create our area underneath the gardens. We are using tons of cardboard to layer the areas underneath and in the walkways. We will later add mulch to the walkways to further aid in keeping out the weeds.

This year I would make my Mom Ray proud because we are following the Farmers Almanac planter's guide. We have already planted our root vegetables in two of the boxes.

We are using plenty of organic compost that we have from dairy farm waste and brewery (i.e., Coors) waste.