There is a small garden area off the side of our place. Three of our windows look out to it. It was so covered with weeds that after pulling all the weeds, tilling, and planting, our landlord’s wife asked if we had put up the winding stone barrier to contain the garden. She’s really quite thrilled that we planting there as well as in all the pots she gave us. The dirt along the house isn’t very good. Even after after 1 bag of top soil, 1 bag of compost, some organic clay buster, and adding some manure, it’s just not that great. In hindsight more topsoil and compost should have been added. I guess there is always next year. But before we give up, check out what we did…

My buff handsome hubby tilling.

Here is part of the tilled garden, hens and chicks succulents, and irises.

Aren’t they so lovely?!

Dirt ready for planing seeds (with leftover plastic spoons from our BBQ as labels), seeds and raspberry bushes from Marissa, more seeds from Kate and Sita, and my trowel (Jim is adamant that it’s not a shovel).

What a perfect way to give away seeds!

Aren’t they so lovely? Each type looked so different from the others.

After both the community garden and our home garden planted Jim and I enjoyed the lovely weather. Check out some of the pots:

Everything is looking much more vibrant than when I last took the photos, but I wanted to document the early stages. About a week after planting the seeds some of the radishes started to poke up (see below). The arugula, kale, squash, and peas are looking good too, but the beets, romaine and spinach haven’t appeared. Maybe they won’t. I’m not too worried as I’ve got all of those things growing in the community garden. Sadly, the raspberry bushes didn’t make it. The weather has been too chilly and they just couldn’t take it. I am sad about this as they were transplants from Marissa’s garden and I also love raspberries. Along with the veggies, we bought some and then were also gifted some flower seeds. They have been dispersed throughout our home garden and many are starting to appear! More photos later!

Our friends Heidi and Noah petitioned to their HOA to build a community garden. It passed and they/we built one. Not many people were interested in it so we were granted a generous amount of space. The sides of the raised beds and the door are made of old fencing that their HOA replaced, the soil and rebar came from Heidi and her connections with the Broadway construction project (she had a buddy dump the dirt over the fence, and some of the fencing was donated too. Noah and another guy along with Jim’s help did most of the work. Then, between Noah and Heidi and Jim and I, we got a bunch of bags of top soil and compost and Noah got some llama manure. Before adding all those goodies to the dirt, we sifted all the large rock out of the dirt with a giant sift Noah made. The soil is awesome!

The Boulder Community Gardens had a plant sale a few weekends in a row and Noah, Heidi, Jim and I went wild and purchased a ton of plants and seeds. It was way too cold for a couple weeks after getting the plants so they had to stay inside. (It has snowed 6 times since we got back at the end of April!) When it got warm enough we planted. Most of our plants and seeds went to the community garden, but the herbs and edible flowers were planted in pots at our place. We’ve also planted some more seeds at out place. I see the whole thing as being a massive science experiment on growing and sustainability. I planted a tea garden at the preschool I used to work at, have had potted flowers, tended to the preschool’s garden, and planted lilies last year at our old house (which have grown back this year!) but other than that I haven’t had a proper garden since I was a kid (and that was really my mom’s garden). I’ve been so impressed by the generosity and hard work of our friends. It’s fun to be apart of something you do as a group, each of us checking on the garden to see if things need to be watered, pruning, weeding, and replanting when critters have dug things up. It really turned out to be an awesome garden.

These first photos were taken a few days after planting. Jim and I love riding our bikes there when it’s warm.

Two weeks after planting we stopped by the same time our friends Noah and Heidi did. They had planted a week earlier but our seeds had started to sprout too!

Three and a half weeks after planting we were delighted to find that our tomato plants were bearing fruit and our cucumber and yellow squash seeds were sprouting (which we had only planted a week before)! The rest of the plants really burst with life.

Jim and I went again today to check on them and even with cold temperatures and 3 days of rain everything looks great. I’ve been educating myself on how to care for plants, esp. pruning and harvesting. It’s quite fun. One of our spinach plants is ready for it’s first harvest!

No, this isn’t a post about the movie Avatar (I haven’t even seen it).

This post is about how to add a picture/gravatar (globally recognized avatar) to your blog comments. Not sure if you’ve noticed when reading comments on a blog you love, but attached to each comment is either a randomly generated image or a picture of the person leaving the comment. When I first saw that I thought, “Hey, I want my photo next to my comments too! How do I do that?” When I learned they were called gravatars I must admit I rolled my eyes. I thought “comment picture” made more sense, but then again, what do I know.

If you’ve got 3 minutes you can set one up for yourself free here and then any time you leave a comment on anyone’s blog (including your own) you’re photo will go with it. Not only does this make the writer(s) for a blog cheerful to see the faces of their readers, but it’s also a way you can start becoming part of the blogging community. People will recognize you, and if you leave interesting comments, people will be more apt to check out what you’re working on by visiting your blog, Etsy shop, twitter account, etc.

Back in early December we were told that Laura would win the election. She was the right handed helper of the president at the time.

This is Luis, one of the guards of our community (and our favorite). He doesn’t speak any English and knows we understand very little Spanish, but he’s super patient with us and loves to converse with us. He was pro Laura and got us green Laura wristbands when he got his.

Showing off the Laura wristband.

Luis got excited about the photos and posed with Jim and Sam the cat (one of the two community cats). Poor Sam the cat often gets her food snagged by Lita.

Side note on Luis: He stopped burglars from robbing our community, by hearing/seeing them (all dressed in black) scaling the walls on the west side of the community and shooting two shots into the ground to scare them off. Way to go Luis! No such problems since! (Knock on wood.)

Laura won and most people we talk to are happy. I was surprised though that leading up to the election many of these signs were splattered with paintball paint. Did you know that not only are all the alcohol selling establishments closed on election day, but the cops plaster the windows of such shops with black garbage bags? Dumb use of money if you ask me, but I guess they really don’t want you to drink before you vote because you know, your vote may be swayed. Another interesting thing about election day here in Costa Rica is that people volunteer their cars to their preferred party and people drive all around the country, taking people to vote.

On our trip to Nicaragua week before last I wrote a new life list in my handy, flexible, blank paged Moleskine. (I’m really into this kind of stuff and have a dream board as the wallpaper on my laptop. What can I say? I dig visuals.) Here’s my beauty of a list:

Learn to sail and sail the Aegean. Write a collection of life stories about love and things appearing to be love and get that book published. Research my and Jim’s family histories and find a sick way to store the information online. Stay in a hotel on stilts over the ocean. Learn to surf. Get 100 subscribers to SamAhern.com. Write a cookbook and have it published. Finish the family favorite’s cookbook and give is as an Xmas gift. Sell my baked goods again. Become as confident in my vegan/gluten free/refined sugar free baking as I am in my “conventional” baking. Volunteer at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Buy a house in Boulder, greenify it when needed, and have it be a gathering place for friends and family. Throw an Alice in Wonderland themed tea party in my garden. Cultivate a flower and vegetable garden with a fruit bearing tree. Host my family for Xmas and Thanksgiving, but not in the same year. Become the best partner I can be to Jim. Travel internationally at least once a year for the rest of my life. Continue to cultivate patience and self-kindness. Have/adopt children and teach them the importance of kindness and responsibility. Own a cafe with my sisters and name it The Bedouin Sisters’ Bakery and Cafe (don’t steal that OK?!). Sit every day. Make a quilt for each of my god children. Have one photo of mine in a magazine. Keep traveling. Get my scuba certification. Get back to receiving a monthly massage. Get my yoga certification to strengthen my practice and maybe teach every once in a while. Take my whole family on a trip. Pay off my school loan in my name. Pay off my school loan in my dad’s name. Love up on Sasha and Lita as long and I’m blessed to have their crazy hairy bodies in my life. Buy my dad a house on a body of water, or at least get him the jet-ski to go with the house. Own my home and car outright. Live close enough to the grocery store and other places I like to frequent so I can walk and bike easily. Have a herd of goats and let children come over to play with them. Have five rental properties, with renters in them, paying rent (and then give them to my god children and children). Express my love and appreciation for people and their efforts, often. Read over twelve novels a year and a bunch of other non-novely books. Know that nothing outside of me is going to make me happy. Have a TV (or a good monitor) only for movies (preferably foreign flicks, con films, or musicals…and maybe some Fraggle Rock) and not as the focal point of the living room, if at all in that room and most definitely never in the bedroom. Finish my ngondro. Keep my math/science mind buff and develop my writing muscles. Become an early riser. Travel back to Saudi at least one more time before my dad retires, but hopefully more so I can bring my kids there if possible. Find a fulfilling way to earn a living that contributes to my family. Split my years between Boulder and somewhere by the ocean (with lots of other added trips). Plant a tree when my children are born, on my own property. Do the November Course at Kopan. Be She-Ra for Halloween (gold cuffs and all). Drive along the west coast dipping into Mexico and Canada. Take a train trip across the US. Become a certified vegan chef. Pose nude for an art class. See Coldplay again live (preferably multiple times). Enjoy a chocolate croissant in Paris (that I ordered in French). Travel to: Thailand, India, Nepal, Tibet, Vancouver, San Francisco, Halifax…the list goes on and there are many more specifics. Revisit: Turkey, Italy, Spain. Drive to Alaska with Jim and the girls in a truck. Have grey hair and rock it. Be a swimming yogaing machine at age 60.