Gardening

I know this isn't tremendously exciting, lots of people garden, but for me this is still new and I finally have the time to really work on getting a garden together this year!

We bought our house in July 2013, and it had some plants that came with it. In the front yard, some gorgeous bleeding hearts and some ivy plants. A Crab apple tree and a few bushes that I haven't figured out what they are yet but I appreciate them just the same!

Here are a few things I was lucky enough to start out with:

Might be a crocus. Bloomed early, gone already!

Not sure what this one is! A spring bloomer of some kind (They are blooming now and it's April!)

Bleeding hearts by the front door

Daffodils

Not sure what these are yet! They are spring bloomers however!

These all bloomed in summer. The orange ones were there most of the summer, and the purple bloomed in late summer.

A summer blooming plant that the butterflies love. I am working toward a butterfly garden, so this was great to start off with!

I love these little plants. Also in the back yard, they have small purple flowers, and are some kind of succulent, meaning they store their own water, like an aloe plant.

In the back yard. These flowers look dead by winter, but always revive in time for Spring!

This ivy likes to creep toward the door. 

My first Spring I learned a lot about weeding. I learned how thistle, while pretty, was determined to grow no matter how often I weeded it, and was likely a non native species. 

I also learned about bindweed, which looks like a harmless morning glory, but really it's a weed that will happily take over your yard!

The thistle in question. I met a lady this summer who let them grow, then she removed the heads and burnt the rest of it. I guess that's one way to kill the thistle. This is either Canada or Bull thistle (I think)

Bindweed. Pretty flower, but will grow EVERYWHERE.

Anyways, I got to start off with a lot of great plants! But now it's time to add some of my own!

I started a lot of seeding inside, and I started with seeds from my groceries. Such as scraping out the seeds from a bell pepper and planting those. I have been warned, that due to plant breeding and genetics, the fruit I may eventually get from these seeds may not be the same color, size, or shape as the original bell pepper. But I don't mind, I just want it to taste good!

Sugar Snap peas. I planted a few straight into the ground last year and got an okay size yield. I plan on planting many more this year!

Rhubarb! I found the root in walmart (i have heard it's better to plant the root rather than the seed) and once it's established, I will have to wait one year before I can harvest it. Rhubarb is one of my favorite plants, so I am excited!

I wasn't sure the bell peppers were going to grow. They  finally started sprouting, and I will save many more seeds so I can plant a bunch! It seems that less than half of the seeds I planted sprouted (there are two seeds in each pocket here, and only two have come up)

I purchased the seeds for this. I have a catnip plant still going, but it's starting to die and I wanted a backup in case I can't revive it! That, and I'm hoping to plant some of these outside!

From another seed packet. These seem to be finicky. At this time, only the one on the left is still alive, the one on the right didn't get enough water and shriveled up = ( 

Celery! If you keep the bottom of the celery and place it in water until the green shoots come out, you can then plant it in soil and watch it grow! 

Pineapples took me a while to figure out. You need to remove the leaves and the bottom of the top part until you see some roots. Then you plant it in water to let the roots grow out a bit. The you can plant it in soil. 

Roots are coming out

Another view of the roots

I bought an aloe plant last spring in a tiny little container. It is now 5 times the size! 

Lastly, I have cat grass for the cats. They love to graze, and having some inside means they don't overeat the grass when I let them outside. 

I just for a lilac root, and am VERY excited to plant this! Perfect for butterflies, bees and birds! I have been told they grow like weeds, and I am ok with that.

Lastly, I have started to put aside my used coffee grinds for the plants, to get them that hit of nitrogen (for those plants that need it).

I still have a lot of work to do, and I really want to focus on native plants, and plants that are good for butterflies, bees, birds, and even bats!

Scuba Adventures

In the summer of 2013, my fiancé got me a pretty awesome present; PADI scuba lessons! I had always wanted to get scuba certified, and was so excited to finally take the classes and explore a whole new world!

So far scuba has been a tremendous adventure and I have loved every minute of it!

I signed up for classes in September. I had to take two classes, and then two pool sessions, and to get certified I had to have 4 open water dives. As fate would have it, my first class I drove to was through a huge thunderstorm, just a few days before the September 2013 flood.

My first pool session was the day after all the roads got flooded, and John was going with me to do a refresher. He hadn't scuba-dived in over 5 years. We checked the roads and made sure we could even get to class, and it turns out just enough roads were not flooded that we could get there!

Highway 25 was flooded for most of the day, but was done to this level when we drove by

Most roads looked like this, underwater and no way through

So after I finished my class and passed the written test, it was time for an Open Water Dive. We were going on a cruise in the Fall, and thought we might have a chance to do my open water dives there. That didn't end up happening, and it wasn't until May that I ended up getting my open water dives.

There are a few places to dive in Colorado (big lakes like Aurora, which I hear is very very cold!) But I opted to go with FlatIrons Scuba to Homestead Crater, Utah.

John went with me (more diving experience for him!) and we drive the 8 hour road trip to Utah. Our mistake was going after watching the new Godzilla movie first, because when we left it was already late at night and we had a loooong drive ahead of us!

We switched off halfway through, in Wyoming, and I took over driving for the last 4 hours. Utah had a lot of deer road kill, which I'd never seen before. In Maine, if someone hits a deer there are usually three trucks already there fighting over who gets to take the carcass home.

We got to the hotel at 5am in the morning, exhausted. To our great dismay, we found out there had been a mix-up with the reservations, and we didn't have a room. The hotel was kind enough to let us sleep in a room for three hours however, and we were so grateful!

Homestead Crater has an underground hot spring, and it's one of the few places you can dive and not need any kind of wetsuit. It's too warm for there to be any life, but you can find a toy lobster and turtle sitting near the bottom.

This was a two day dive, two dives on one day, two dives on the second.

Our room, bed covered in scuba gear. 

This is the top of the crater. Looking down the bridge you would see the water underneath.  

Looking down

After we finished the classes (and I became an official PADI Openwater diver!) We had the long drive back home again. This time it was day, so we could see our surroundings!

Utah is a pretty state

We got through Utah pretty quick. Most of the drive was in Wyoming.

Pronghorn Antelope!

Almost missed the sign again! Finally back in Colorado!

In 2014 John and I got married, and decided to take our scuba certifications a step further for our honey moon. So, we went back to FlatIrons Scuba (those guys are AWESOME) and took the Advanced Open Water dive classes and pool session. 

For the dives, we invited John's parents to go with us (they hadn't been diving since they got certified around ten years ago?) and we all went to Key Largo Florida!

This was another crazy adventure. There were four dives each day for two days. Two in the morning, and two after lunch. The sea was rough, and we ALL got sea sick!

Normally I'm the only one who gets motion sick, but John got sick first, and Deb and Bob both got sick in their boat. I was the only one who threw up the second day, what a rough ride!

The only real difference between open water diver and advanced is that you can go a lot deeper (100ft instead of just 30ft) and it was a very fascinating experience going that deep. 

We followed a rope down (they suggest you guy gloves, and I am SO GLAD we did, those ropes would have hurt and likely had fire coral on them!) so we went from the thrashing jumbling surface where the waves tossed you around like a drowning buoy (but we had our regulators in of course, so we could breathe!) and as you descend, hand over hand into a deepening blue you stop getting tossed around and everything feels still and calm.

It was beautiful and strange.

We went down to the U.S. Spiegel, a ship sunk on purpose that sank wrong. later a hurricane uprooted it and set it down how it was intended to sink.

While it was fascinating seeing the sunken ship, you had a lot less time underwater because you are deeper, and I admit I preferred the shallow dives where you can really see more!

Someone saw a tiger shark at the deeper depth however, and I admit I wish I could have seen it!

I DID get to see a shark on the trip however, a beautiful nurse shark! I had always wanted to see a shark in the wild, so that's one check mark on my life's to see list!

I wasn't able to take many photos until my last dive. We are not allowed to take pictures while we are in class because it is distracting. So, once I passed all of my dives, my last free dive I took as many pictures as I could!!!

Rainbow Reef lead the tours, and they were a fantastic crew!!

Some birds saw us off

Leaving the shore behind...

These darn jelly fish were everywhere, and they had a pretty mean sting to them!

Swim through. These are awesome because I had finally gotten a strong control of my bouncy and loved swimming through without touching anything! 

Our dive guide stopped by some coral where he knew a moral eel liked to hang out. Much to all of our surprise, the eel came out of the coral and started swimming toward us. These guys can be pretty dangerous, they have a nasty bite and much like a komodo dragon, they have a lot of bacteria in their mouth. If you get bit, it's not just the bite you have to worry about.

The eel swam toward us and we all backed up, and it went right by, swam around some rocks where two spiny lobsters were hiding. It turned its head at them, and snuck around the backside of the next rock, where WHAM! It grabbed a lone spiny lobster and swallowed the poor thing whole!

The first rock, where two lobsters were on guard

That was close...

Here he is around the second rock, lobster already mostly disposed of

The lobsters spine that fell off

Mmmh, dinner

This sting Ray was gorgeous! We got pretty close to it too!

Parrot fish

Squirrel fish

Barracuda!

Going through another swim through. Love these!

We learned about jellyfish stings on this trip. I had been stung before when snorkeling in Costa Rica, but this was different! These jerks left marks and geez did they sting!

Jellyfish Stings. My arm

John's Jelly fish stings.

So far this has been all of my scuba experiences, and I certainly hope for more! Just, make a less rocky boat next time! We were all taking a ton of Dramamine and Bonine to try and keep the stuff in our system so we would feel less sick on the boat. It helped a bit, but it was still a rough ride! 

Looking forward to the next scuba adventure!!! (With hopefully more sharks!!!!)