Since the family is away for a few days I’ll be able to spend some time in the garage and finish up construction of the cabinet. This evening I worked on the drawer. It ended up being a bit deeper than I thought, which is a good thing. I was afraid it was going to end up too shallow and unusable.

Assembly was pretty straightforward. I think the trickiest part was figuring out how to create a set of guide rails so that it 1) had something to rest on and 2) wouldn’t tip when you pulled it out. And here’s what I came up with:

Here are the garlic bulbs I picked out of the garden tonight:

I stumbled across this tonight… http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

I use the Google image search function almost every single day. If spending a few minutes of my time will help make it better, then count me in.

…the Japanese Beetles. Every year they plague our yard and devour the Nishiki Willow tree we have in our backyard and the weeping Cherry in the front. This evening while sitting outside I started to notice them already. And they’ve already discovered our new trees! I went ahead and sprayed some of the Ortho stuff that I use every year (that I’m not sure why I use anyway because it doesn’t seem to work) around the grass and those two trees in particular. I found some info tonight that suggested using soapy water to deter them and to try to kill off as many of the first ones you see, as they’re the scouts that end up attracting more to your yard. I also put out a single trap along the one edge of our backyard and will probably put one out front too once I find the bait that I bought a few weeks ago.

The garden is doing well… we got off to a rocky start when everything got killed by a late frost between April and May so I replanted from seed and some nursery grown plants. So far, the crop of the year award goes to the strawberries. I planted them last summer and they were successful in surviving the winter. We’ve been picking a few ripe ones here and there, but last night I got all these:

In the first box we have the strawberries, cabbage, cucumbers, and some romaine lettuce.

In the rear box are garlic (planted last year), pumpkin, squash, a bunch of different tomato varieties, hot peppers, and some herbs.

When I re-seeded after the frost had killed everything I was very generous with my tomato seeds. A lot more of them have sprouted up than there is room in the individual squares so in the next few days I plan on transplanting a few of them to other squares and seperate containers.

And finally a shot of one of the first tomatoes:

<rant>
At just about $4 a gallon it’s going to cost me $120 to fill up my truck!
</rant>

The one nice thing about being able to work from home as often as I do is that you can save a lot of $$$ by not commuting on a daily basis. If you can do it, I highly encourage it. Not only do you not have to deal with the high price of gasoline these days, but you get to see your kids a lot more. There’s nothing in the world quite like having your 4 yr old bring you a plate of lunch that Mommy made for Daddy. And of course, who can pass up the little surprise visits where they come running over to see what you’re doing or ask when you’ll be done.

But seriously, what’s going on with these gasoline prices? I consider myself to be fairly intelligent, but I can’t get my head wrapped around why these prices are as high as they are. I don’t understand the speculators, I don’t understand the record breaking profits, I don’t understand the discrepancies in price between here and Jersey or here and my inlaws, or the price at the station down the block as compared to the station one mile from here. Just like it has with many other people I’m sure, it’s jolted me into a state of awareness of how much we really depend on oil. Between the price of food, to shipping costs, to the drive down to the shore this summer - I’ve become a lot more conscious of how much of an impact these gasoline prices are going to have on our life - and I don’t like it.

It spurs thoughts of solar panels and wind turbines and re-usable energy sources… electric cars anyone? Hmmm.. how about a middle ground. What about the idea of installing solar panels on the caps of my truck and a D.C. motor that I can switch to while driving? I can’t be the only Avalanche owner who’s thought of that while paying $100 to fill up…

Here’s what a 19 month old can do to a laptop keyboard:

Took me about an hour to finally get all those keys back on. “Tab” is still a little sticky though.

This afternoon I racked the Chilean Merlot. I decided to do it in the kitchen this time, instead of my basement - and it worked out much better. Next time though, instead of seating the carboy on the chair like I have here in the photo I think I may just put it on the floor. I had to do this towards the end anyway, as the suction got wonky on me a few times as it got closer to the bottom.

Sugar reading at this point is 1.000. The stuff floating around on top of the wine is about a cup or so of oak chips. I also added about two cups of water once I was finished racking, just to top off the carboy.