Weekend Before Europa Trip

Super Greeny, Moms, and myself are heading to Vienna, Austria next week.  Before leaving there were some very important matters that needed attended to - mainly - picking raspberries, making raspberry wine, and racking our other wines.  Curt, Winger, and myself ran to Snyder's Berry Farm to pick some raspberries (no pics), and then Curt and I completed a wine trifecta for the day.

Here's a picture of Curt cleaning the carboy preparing for our strawberry wine to be racked in to:

The strawberry wine had been in the primary fermentor for 2 weeks.  It's now resting with less sediment in the secondary glass fermentor.

The far right carboy houses our Strawberry Wine.  The pink hue gives me the feeling that we'll be sipping with our pinkies raised while watching double rainbows - but it smelled awesome.  

The middle carboy is full of our orange wine, which we racked into the empty carboy.

The "Ale Pail" was cleaned and sanitized for our raspberry wine. 

Here's an up close look at the Strawberry Wine:

We now have Strawberry, Raspberry, Orange, Small Orange, Dandelion, and Apple Weis made and aging.  Next year at this time is going to be unreal.

Quick garden update.  Our little peppers on the back patio got munched:

Here's what they used to look like:

If I catch the culprit, they're gonzo.

Here are a few of the potted plants.  The tomato plant is in the back.  A pepper triforce is in the back to the right.  Zucchini and Long Neck Squash are in the pots in the front:

After a long, hard day of picking, gardening, and wining - here is Curt, Winger, and myself enjoying a few beers (Curt and I) while watching some fireworks.  

Keep it real cherry pickers. 

Ketchup Blog

Understand and accept my complaining - I like to write stuff here in this internet space but I lack the time to do it.  I'm not good at it, but I enjoy it and would love to be able to do so more often.  IF I could blog more often, then I would not have to publish a post recapping the last 3 1/2 months. 

Heck, pictures are fun so I'll do it anyway.  The late April/May/June of garden/outdoor season in pictures for the Awesome household (mainly Winger and myself unfortunately [because Greeny is always holding the camera {but that just means that I'm doing all of the work] ]), 2010.

To kick things off here's an Easter shot of the fam.

Here's Little Winger, New Edition, and Myself preparing the small garden we keep at our house.  Currently we have some thriving beans, onions, lettuce, cilantro, mint, and pumpkins in this small garden.  The two large gardens at the farm are what keep us busy.  

Cute?!  You should see me after a hard day of work in the garden!

Greeny and New Edition after a bath.  He's staring in the direction of the TV - I think there was a Pens game on.

Here as promised is a sweet picture of Little Winger, Kody (the awesome bear I named from the zoo), and myself. 

The first patio fire of the spring/summer. 

Winger's first ever S'more...

...and his second.

Peppers in the back patio planter box.  These random dudes were left behind when their older brothers and sisters were moved to the large gardens.  They stayed indoors for a few weeks seemingly too long.  Could be an awesome late, late harvest - could be goners depending on first frost.  Either way I enjoy the challenge.

 

If there is one phrase we have heard more than "go uppa barn" over the past few months, it would have to be "go pit berriz."

...So we did...

Every day - and sometimes night.  We have a great harvest and there are still more to be picked in the sunnier locations around the pasture.  The harvest could have been much larger had Winger not eaten 1 out of every 4.  

We're planning on making some jelly and/or preserves - and some wine. 

Three weeks ago we got our first tomatoes from the patio plant.  She's doing unbelievably well.  We're going to have 3000 beautiful fruits from this plant.  

Pizza on the grill the other night...

...and a fire...

...and then this happened at some point of the night...

And then Greeny and I woke up with hangovers.

Free, transplanted Rose of Sharon bloomed the other morning, and despite our worst heat wave in 5 years...

...Winger and I hung outside all day - building planter boxes so as to not waste a bunch of wood scraps, mowing, gardening, and...

...hanging in the shade with Sidecar.

Lastly, the boys spending time with Mommy since she's home for the summer:

I'll get some garden pics uploaded here in the next week or so, which means I'll probably post something about them in October.  

I would also like to detail our fall planting/harvest for the garden this year.  We'll see.  

Keep it real yinzers.   

Darn Site Updates and Changes and Introductions

 Full-time job.  Check.  Dad.  Check.  Brother.  Check.  Husband.  Sometimes...check!  Gardener/home-remodeler/beer maker/beer drinker/beer drinker/beer drinker/sports watcher/sports player/sometimes hunter/sometimes player/sometimes hater/sometimes player hater/college student (haha virtually)/brew student/gentleman's chef/weekend warrior/ultimate warrior/camper/hiker/biker and last but not least...blogger.  Check. 

That there my friends is why I am unable to "blog" as much as I would like.  Super Greeny feels the same way regarding her blog: Times Like These - and i'm not even going to get into her list of activities on a daily basis, we would be here all day. 

That is why we have "decided" (actually I kind of just asked her because she is much better at writing informative pieces) to share duties here on Let's Save the Darn Planet! (we are now rated PG-13 as well).  And I actually think she agreed.  Awesome news huh!?

 

Sorry, had to throw one more "EFF" in there.  Since we both want fame and glory and blog awesomeness and she is a much better orator and picture taker than I, this is obviously the greatest decision - pretty much of all time. 

So please welcome Super Greeny, and prepare to be blow away.  You'll think twice the next time you eat fast food. 

Keep it epic.    

Black and Gold...and Green

Cool stuff.  Dahn Tahn Pittsburgh is getting a "green" roof.

The roof will help keep heating/cooling costs down for the building and will hold and filter storm water. 

This is the first building of its kind that is city owned, following the likes of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon who both have similar structures and designs. 

How cool would it be to look down on the city from Mt. Washington and see trees/shrubs/flowers on top of all of the buildings?  Super cool. 

Also, there was legislation passed to "require contractors involved in city-subsidized developments to operate air-friendly vehicles and reduce water runoff through the use of green roofs, man-made wetlands and rain gardens."

Thirdly, Pittsburgh is this year's North American Host for World Environment Day.  Head over to the site to see the calendar of events - unless you're canoing this weekend. 

Take it easy yo.