Monthly Archives: February 2011

Gardening for a Dummy

Historically, I have always had somewhat of a brown thumb. Plants and I have not gotten along well. However, my dad is wonderful at gardening, and I have grown up eating freshly grown vegetables. Now that we have a house and a yard, I really wanted to grow my own garden.

Over Christmas, Jake and my dad built me a nice little 4’x8′ raised garden. Now that it’s mostly warm in Houston, I got to planting. I decided this year to try broccoli, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, and a few varieties of peppers (bell and jalapeno) and tomatoes (better boy, roma, and grape or sweet 100, TBD). It seems that everybody else decided to plant gardens this weekend too, because the tomato options were limited. I found out that the Bonnie man delivers to Lowe’s on Thursday, so I’ll have to to go back then for my small tomato variety.

So, here’s what I’ve got so far:

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If you click on the picture, you can see hover over the notes to see what I’ve planted. If you don’t want to, I’m going to explain it anyway.

The taller stuff is in the back row so that it doesn’t block the sun from the front row plants (I’m told this is important). On the left I’ve planted some cucumber seeds that will grow up each of the 3 vertical poles in the tomato cage (hopefully – I was too lazy/cheap to get a better system, and I couldn’t pull apart the bigger cages).

To the right of the cucumbers are my tomatoes – better boy, roma, and then small TBD.

In the front row are bell peppers and jalapeno peppers in the cages, then romaine lettuce and broccoli. I actually planted the lettuce and broccoli last weekend, and they’ll supposedly be finished harvesting pretty early, so maybe I can put something else in there later?

I’ll try to post updates as I hopefully keep these plants alive and grow some food. And if I am successful, I’m going to need some good salsa and pico de gallo recipes.

I’ve also got some herbs growing – in one planter I’ve got cilantro, rosemary, and parsley. In the other, 3 basil plants:

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The basil was starting to get a little big, so I actually used this recipe and the food processor I got for Christmas to make some pesto.

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Fun with Google Analytics

I’ve used Google Analytics to monitor site traffic for a while. Every once in a while I find some really interesting stuff. For example, I know that my most popular posts are my Cruise Review and my Zotero Style posts.

I also find the keywords used in web searches that land on my site very interesting. The current top ten:

  1. allison mccoy
  2. allison beck
  3. “powered by wordpress” lacy knitting
  4. alison mccoy brook house millbrook bedfordshire mk45 2jb
  5. allison mccoy painter
  6. instant roux directions
  7. kill hipster
  8. knitted baby blanket patterns
  9. superscript parentheses+zotero
  10. use for leftover velveeta

I know that most of these weren’t looking for me or my personal site, but it makes me curious about Allison McCoy the painter, or Alison McCoy from Millbrook, Bedfordshire. Or why anybody would want to kill a hipster (here are 5 ways though). And I’m glad that I’m not the only one who has needed to use up leftover velveeta – I hope they found my Easy Cheesy Taco Pasta yummy! 🙂

More Baby Blankets!

Obviously I enjoy making baby blankets for friends! Here are some that I’ve made in the last year:

The first blanket I made was for some friends having their second baby, and they weren’t planning to find out the sex. I didn’t want it to be too boring, so I chose a few different gender neutral colors and fell in love with this pattern. I made a few modifications, which you can read about on Ravelry. This is one of my all time favorites, and I think I’ll end up making one of these for baby McCoy, if and when that day comes.

Honeycomb Stroller Blanket
Pictures:

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The next blanket I made was for some friends who would appreciate something really unique. OpArt is one of the most beautiful, intriguing blanket patterns that I have seen, so I thought it would be a great fit. I chose red because I wanted to start knitting before the couple had found out the sex of the baby, and it really did the pattern justice!

OpArt
Pictures:

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Finally, a friend was having a baby girl but decorating in bright primary colors. For some reason this beautiful orange sherbet colored yarn called out to me, so I chose it and picked out one of my favorite fun patterns!

Curlicue Blanket
Pictures:

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