Garden Clean up

This afternoon I spent a couple hours in the garden doing some clean up and weeding.  The mexican sunflowers were falling all over my peppers and looked really ragged so I just ripped them up.  The chamomile has been dead for a while and the yellow pear tomatoes were scraggly so they both got yanked.  My neighbors' cactus broke and there was a big chunk laying on top of several plants.  I'd hoped they would clean it up, but its been over a week so I hacked it up and tossed it in their plot.  I also pulled up a bunch of bermuda grass that has been gradually sneaking in from my other neighbor unattended plot.  I have decided that after this year I am leaving this plot.  We are either moving from Davis and I will leave the garden :(  or I will just change plots.  My current plot has a lot of perimeter compared to area due to it elongated shape and it is just too much path maintenance for me- especially when I also have unattended neighboring plots.  There is no hope for keeping the weeds at bay.   I also don't like being near the cactus.  Its very pretty, but people are always tramping through my beds to get to it.  hmm.. Maybe I should rename this post "Garden Whine."

Emily and Kelly's Excellent Adventure!

Emily and I are starting a spur of the moment road trip up the northern CA coast this weekend! Emily has been awesome and basically planned everything- here is our proposed route.  I am going to take the Amtrak from Davis to Oakland where she will pick me up and we will begin our journey.  We will sleep in Mendocino, Humboldt Redwood SP, Eureka and Redding with stops along the way wherever we see fit.  Maybe Emily has a more thought out plan than that but as far as I know we are playing it by ear. I don't really care, I am just excited to be going somewhere!

I am really excited about taking some pictures! I finally figured out how to load the 120 film into the Argus 75 (had to trim off the edges of the spool) so I am ready to shoot!  There are only 12 pics per roll and I only have one roll so I have to really plan out each shot.  This will be such a different feel than shooting with the digital camera.  With digital I just take as many pictures as I want, get all the different angles, lighting etc., and then pick the best one once I download on to the computer.  I have found that the ones that look the best to me through the viewfinder are not always my favorites once they appear on my screen.  So I will really have to dig deep and find my inner photographer to get some good shots.  Then I will have to figure out how/where the heck I am going to get the film developed.  But that's a whole other post.

Goodnight!

New Argus 75

Yay! My new camera finally came! On the left is a picture of the front- the button with the white dot is the shutter; the knob on the left side is the film winder. That's pretty much all there is to it! The top glass is for the view finder and the bottom is the actual lense.  The red flips away when you take the picture and then you wind the film knob until it reappears.  On the right is a shot of the view finder in its flipped up position.  The image is so clear and nice- the pictures don't do it justice.

I played around with the through the view finder shots.  As you can see my first shot had lots of glare from reflection off the glass.  I remedied this by hiding me and the digital camera under a blanket while I took the shot.

yay! problem solved! Now I just need to find something more interesting than my living room to take a picture of..

Photo Walk

This afternoon I went on a photo walk. I think I might have just made that term up, but its where you walk around somewhere and take pictures- pretty genius if I do say so!  I just went around campus and I never realized how dead everything is on Sunday afternoon.  I like to take pictures when there are not so many people around; it makes me feel less silly.  I don't know why I feel silly.  I think people are looking at me and wondering 'why is that girl taking a picture of *insert random thing here*??'  But they are probably not paying any attention at all.   I also like to take pictures of people but I always think people will get mad- are there laws against taking pictures of people in public without their consent?  I guess not, because then all the tabloids would be breaking the law.  Anyway, I am rambling now- here is a sampling of the pics!

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Walnuts are evil

I have gotten this terrible idea in my head that I want to run a marathon.  I am scared to sign up though because they are expensive and what if I chicken out or don't have time to train or some other unforseen emergency arises that I must attend to?  Then I will have wasted money and I hate wasting money.  So to ease myself into it, I have been trying to get myself in a running schedule of 3-4 times per week to test my schedule and see if I can squeeze in anything else.  So far it has been going OK.  I feel like I am getting faster so that is good.

On Monday I decided I wanted to do a long(er) run - around 4.5 miles.  Compared to a marathon that is like nothing, but you have to start somewhere!  I got to about mile 4.0 and I started getting pretty pooped.  I'm not very good at long runs because I always go too fast.  I have a need for speed- seriously, my knees like to go fast.  So, its hot, I'm tired, just pushing through that last half a mile when all of a sudden it feels like someone is tearing my foot off my body.  I look down and see a walnut rolling away from my throbbing ankle.  Then I start to feel a little woozy and cursing ensues.  I hope there were no children or elderly people around because I probably scarred them for life if they were.  I was not conscious enough to notice- I did notice that there were people going by and surprisingly none of them asked me if I was OK.  Maybe walnut attacks are so common in this area that no one even notices anymore.  Anyway, after I regain my sense of awareness I start the half mile hobble home.  It was a long hobble.  I almost pooed in my pants but I made it.  TMI?

So this is the second time this has happened.  Except last time I was 2 miles away from home.  I think I need to find a path with shade trees that do not produce trip hazards...

New Camera!

I love old stuff and lately I have been wanting to get an old (antique-old) camera to play with.  I wanted to be able to use medium format film and to do some fun through the viewfinder (TTV) shots with my macro lens.  I also think it will be helpful in becoming a better photographer to have a simple film camera to play with. I had been monitoring etsy and ebay and finally came across one that was advertised as 'working' and not just 'as is' on ebay.  Its an Argus 75 twin lens.  It has a fun flip up view finder and takes 620 film, which according to the internet is 120 film rolled onto a different sized spool. And best of all it was only $12!  I am sure it will take me a while to find film and figure out how to get it into the camera but the TTV stuff should be fun in the meantime!

Zucchini Bread

Derrick got a zucchini from one of his coworkers and requested bread so I made some.  I used this recipe.  The only thing I changed was the cooking time- it took around 70-80 minutes, but our oven is always slow.  It is DELICIOUS!  It has a nice crust on the top and the inside is very moist and yummy.  We have already almost finished one of the loaves and I just made it yesterday.

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Watermelon

This weekend we harvested the first watermelon of the season!  The variety we grew was called Desert King.  It has yellow flesh and is drought tolerant.  Derrick picked out the seeds and took charge of caring for them.  He was nice and shared the fruits of his labor with me, though.  Here are the pics![gallery columns="2"]