Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | by nathan

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008 (in at least 5 parts)

Image courtesy Flickr user Rod Murrow.

When you work in education you have a sort of skewed view of summer. While we’ve only just seen the final threats of frost, the academic year is almost over, and with that annual transition comes a bit more freedom and relaxation. True, I will continue to work 40 hours a week through the summer, but things will be relaxed and free for the immediately forseeable future, and I’m beginning to make summer plans. These include a week at a cabin in Dillon, Colorado with my family, a couple days off after Oklahoma City Pride in which I’m going to see the B-52’s, Cyndi Lauper, Margaret Cho and Joan Jett on the True Colors Tour in Oklahoma City, and, this next project.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008.

I was thinking last week about setting some new goals for myself for the summer, and the very first thing I came up with was to go see at least 5 places in Oklahoma that I’ve never seen. The image above, for example, is in Major County’s Glass Mountain area, a place I’ve only heard about in passing, but - look how beautiful it is! As much as I love my state, there are a ton of places in it I haven’t seen - some I’m sure that I don’t even know exist.

So, this summer I’m going to take 5 trips around the state to places I have yet to go. The old holdouts - Meers, the Wichita Mountains, Red Rock Canyon - they’re all great, and I’d love to see them, but I want to find some new places, some new day trips. I WISH I could go ahead and get a one of these:

But I can’t afford it as yet, and anyway, Calvin can ponk around the state for a summer, his moon roof open and the speakers blaring. (Unless some lovely benefactor wants to buy it for me, or if I get a wild hair, sell Calvin, and buy the Vespa anyway).

Anyway, here’s the challenge for you guys: I need suggestions. I have an Oklahoma travel guide, an agritourism map and some friends who know this state more intricately than me, but still. Suggest away! I’m eager to explore Oklahoma, and I’m eager to bring you guys along with me, even if it’s just in blog form.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | by nathan

The Gunshot, 6:30 a.m.

This weekend I ran a leg of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon as part of a relay team. This photo was taken at N.W. 4th and Robinson, just a block from the starting line, next to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. My leg started just over an hour later, near N.W. 36th and Walker, and continued up through Crown Heights, up Western Avenue past Sushi Neko and Deep Fork Grill, past Chesapeake, and up N.W. Classen to 73rd street. I posted my best time ever for a 5K run not on a treadmill (32:54), beating my team to the next checkpoint by a good 4 minutes.

I AM SO GLAD IT’S OVER. As you can tell by this photo that Brian took of me after it ended:

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | by nathan

Here Bees! Heeeeere Bees!

Monday, April 28, 2008 | by nathan

Peony, Before It Opens

Friday, April 25, 2008 | by nathan

Look! I Created Food!

Well, okay - God created it. BUT I HELPED!

Check this out:

See that little yellow flower, there? That’s going to be a freaking TOMATO! There are a whole bunch more on the same plant.

See, I’ve been so busy with life and all its appertaining craziness of late - almost all of it good - that I forgot to tell you all about my garden. After Sam ate my first batch of plants (remember that?), I was discouraged but not defeated. I ordered new seeds from Organica Seed and Seed Savers, and I started anew, in adorable little IKEA pots in my kitchen.

Then, do you want to know what happened? All my plants but one were stricken by some awful fungus and died. Seriously, it was quick, too - I left for work and they were fine. I came home from lunch and they were all laying over, wilted, like someone had let the air out of them.

This guy survived, and I’m so proud of him:

Someday soon he’s going to be providing my household with delicious heirloom Marglobe tomatoes. Yummy!

See, a couple weeks ago I decided it was now or never; I had to get this garden started, to coin a phrase. So I got out the old rototiller that I’ve somehow inherited from my dad. It was quite the testosterone rush, let me tell you, throwing that thing down and coming up with dirt. Quite the rush indeed. I immediately wanted to go build things and have sex. But that’s another story.

I got new seed flats - I’m using peat pellets this time to start my seeds. But also, I’ve been reading a lot of gardening books, especially The Seed Starters Guide, and I decided that I needed to give my seeds even more support. So, I went to Target and bought a shelf, and to Lowe’s, where I bought four grow lights and some zip ties. I attached the lights to the underside of the shelves with the zip ties, and kablammo! Grow shelves! Now my neighbors can all think I’m growing weed!

But I’m not. I’m growing purple opal basil.

And cherry tomatoes:

And cantaloupes:

I’ve also got some cucumbers, yellow strawberries, bolivian rainbow peppers, dill, carrots, Calabrese broccoli, Ailsa Craig onions, and white bush beans under those grow lights. It’s all going crazy. The beans got so big after just a week that they had to be moved to the lower shelf, with some tomato plants that my buddy Jaye brought me:

The cool thing is, that’s not even all of them! Wednesday night after work there was a thunderstorm coming, and I wanted to get as much of this in the ground as possible. So, with lightning on 3 sides of us only 1-2 Mississippis away - gardening is occasionally an extreme sport, as it turns out - we put down a row of young tomato plants and a row of beans:

The hardest part, emotionally, was thinning out the superfluous seedlings from the peat pots. But some of them came up so easily, so completely and beautifully intact, that I couldn’t resist the urge to put some of them back down in pots to see how they did. And, with these 99-cent Home Depot clay pots, I did exactly that. So I ended up with a basil, dill, cucumber and cantaloupe plant each in its own pot:

So far the only thing that’s bearing a little fruit are the jalapenos, which I also bought from Home Depot because I was feeling impatient with waiting for seedlings to get started. One of them wilted a bit, because I inadvertently set the sprinkler too far away from it. It’s all recovered now, though, and it’s got 3 tiny little peppers on it, and its brother has even more than that:

These jalapenos are growing next to the 6 bell pepper plants I put down. I got bell peppers in orange, yellow, and red, because adding a variety of colors to your vegetable diet is very, very healthy and delicious and aesthetically pleasing. The bell peppers have had the hardest time so far, because we’ve been experiencing really high nighttime winds that have buffeted them quite a bit. I’m not completely sure how to help them out, but they do seem to be hardening off quite well on their own and even showing some new growth, which is always encouraging.

One last thing and then I’ll let you go. This is mint. I have two pots of it:

Next week I’m going to add mulch & compost to all this goodness, and probably put some more stuff in the ground.

Friday, April 25, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam and the Everlasting Gobstopper

This is Sam:

He’s kinda wet in this photograph; we’d given him a bath.

This? This is the Everlasting Gobstopper:

The Everlasting Gobstopper is Sam’s favorite toy of all time. It’s mine, too, because, unlike the first fuzzy toy that we got Sam, this one has miraculously survived being torn apart and having its fuzzy innards splayed all over the yard. Harrah AND Sam have both tried to tear this toy apart, but they just can’t seem to.

This is what the Gobstopper looks like when I throw it in the air, take a photo with a really fast shutter speed, and then photoshop the image a bit:

Makes a great photograph, eh?

Sam really likes this toy; he gets really super excited every time I pick it up and make it squeak. I throw it, and he brings it back to somewhere like my vicinity - usually about 5-7 feet to my right. He hasn’t quite got the hang of ‘fetch’ yet, but it’s OK. Look how much he likes the Gobstopper:

Thursday, April 24, 2008 | by nathan

Bride of Marmaduke

This is Regan, my neighbors’ gigantic Great Dane. Isn’t she pretty, and a little scary? She’s huge, but she’s a really, really lovable girl.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 | by nathan

Last Year We Had 3 Of These; This Year We Have Twenty of Them

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 | by nathan

Lotus Flower Candle Holder

I found this lotus flower candle holder at Target, and I just spent 15 minutes looking at every candle holder on the Target website so I could link to it, but I had zero luck. Still, I’m sure you could find it there. It gives off a really great light on the back porch.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 | by nathan

Who’s Rocky Now?