The beginning of our new garden!

Janelle and I our pumped to have our own garden in our own yard.  Today I tilled the grass.  I believe the next step will be to get dirt, here are two pictures Janelle took, it will be fun to see the changes take place!  The garden space is 16X32 almost 3 times bigger than her garden last year in Seattle.  We think we are going to grow most of it by seed, so we only have about 3 weeks to prepare.

I am growing a Hop garden on the other side of the garage.  I have picked out 5 different hop plants to grow.  I started brewing beer last month and I am excited to grow my own hops.  I should of taken some pictures of the process but I was to focused on making sure the beer turns out great.  My friend Bud joined me on the adventure.  We bottled Saturday Feb. 13th so it will be ready to taste on the 27th.  We did taste some of it before bottling, of course it was warm and flat but it tasted really good.  We will see how it tastes in 2 weeks when its cold and has bubbles.  I can not wait!!  (it's a IPA)

Valentines Day

Lower Elwha Dam

Janelle and I had a lovely Valentines Day.  The day started out with us going to Church and then we headed west on Hwy 112, we were going to drive to the very corner of Washington, Cape Flattery.  Flattery, it just sounds like a place to go on Valentines Day.  We went and saw the Lower Elwha Dam, which will be taken down (blown-up) in the next year and a half.

On our way driving down a back road to Salt Creek Beach we saw a Eagle right off the side of the road, what a beautiful creature!  We arrived at Salt Creek Beach to find mostly blue skies.  We had a picnic lunch on the beach with hot chocolate!  We walked the beach and enjoyed a rainbow, a nap and the pleasure of being lightly rained on while the sun was shining.  I think that is romantic? Anyways, we could not of asked for a more beautiful February day.

LOVE!

We continued our trek and stopped in Sequi and Neah Bay.  Neah Bay is also the home of the Makah Tribe.  We took a picture of there welcoming Indian figurings.

Finally we got to Cape Flattery where we took a 1/2 mile hike to the corner of Washington.  There were many beautiful views that pictures can't fully represent but here are a few we took.

 Cape Flattery Lighthouse Cape Flattery Island

What beautiful trees and small "Rock Islands"

 This had a deep cave, signs said caves ran under us as well!

Looking North, you can see Canada

  Looking South

On the way home we stopped by a little cafe called the Blackberry Cafe.  They served delicious desserts,  so we decided to have dessert before dinner.  Janelle had a chocolate brownie with a blackberry frosting and hot fudge and I had the raspberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream.  The blackberry pie had already been all eaten up. 

When we got home we cooked dinner together, grilled salmon, brussel sprouts and Janelle wanted my special hashbrowns.  We ate while watching the U.S.A women's hockey team clean-up on China.  I can't give you anymore details of our Valentines Day but the whole day was special, we had such a good time!