august yard pics and bombus fest

this dragonfly caught my eye... the rest of these garden pictures followed.










this little bombus is flapping very fast!


lots of lavendar and an unidentified flying moth




bombus-fest 2008




blue flowers in the ecoturf...


more acidic hydrangea

Newly Completed Project

i just finished up a project for the Wing Luke Asian Museum in seattle. the project was design of exterior signage for a new building they just recently moved into. there were many different elements of the signage plan, but because of budget only the most important were installed.



this picture it shows the 3 major elements, a corner sign, main entrance sign, and an orange graphic that wraps the building to tie all the window fronts under one unifying graphic representative of the museum.



this is a view of the corner sign which also lights up. i'll post some night shots later.



this is the main entrance sign. the design had to change, putting the sign inside since there were some permitting issues, and mounting issues if it was exterior. one drawback is the window reflections.



and lastly, here's a bonus picture of mitten eating kava's leftover dinner.

July 4th and 2 year anniversary trip

kava and i took a trip to the north cascades national park over the fourth of july. it was a vacation and two year anniversary celebration trip. this is diablo dam a source for seattle power.








kava loves her trail mix.

we took a short walk along the happy creek trail and found this secret door that led to a secret trail.





we saw this lilly



and another view of diablo lake



the next day we visited sakuma bros. farm to pick strawberries, which we are still eating as strawberry shortcake every night.





next we went to padilla bay national estuarine research preserve.





this is the cow we were watching when kava's mom called.



kava's naturalist 6th sense allowed us to identify this noble fir.

kitties!

Here's a cute kitty movie for all kitty fans:

lawn update

Staying on top of this blog thing is hard. Even though the site rarely changes our yard is changing constantly.

The new "envirolawn" is growing in well. It hasn't been mowed yet and is currently about 4 inches tall. The flowers are taking better than the grass seems to be. There's also some bare patches, but we're assuming that it'll grow in over the years.



So far we've only got white flowers.

first movie

today we made our first movie. it stars the chickens. enjoy!

cutest picture

this is wing at the airport last weekend.

bugs and diseases

here's a pic of wing watering the lawn. yesterday i noticed leafhoppers on the roses... and the hemlock is getting some brown needles. also, the lacewings are probably hatching on the rhododendron about now. i fed a tent caterpillar and a root weevil to the chickens. my poor strawberry tree and bunchberry are getting eaten by weevils.

the progression of mocked lawn

when we first moved in our lawn looked green like this. in a few months that changed entirely.

we first decided to solarize a portion so that we could replant with grass instead of weeds. but the summer last year was not too hot, and this is how it ended up... sad!



then we decided to sheet mulch the entire front yard, but first we had to dig out the grass in the middle.



then we collected cardboard for months and laid it down.



October 2007: we planted some stuff in the yard from our old p-patch, then we covered everything up with cardboard and mulch- it looked pretty nice in the beginning.




now it looks like this (but there is some ecoturf growing in the middle that you can't see yet and the wide-angle lens distorts it a bit)



suffice to say, it's not over yet! we did actually receive some compliments from neighbors in the past two days, which was nice!

bonus bunchberry

mocked yard

nobody drives by our yard without turning their head. we saw two people walk by and shake their heads. but at least it's more interesting than grass. that's why they look at it. we're creating a naturescape... everyday squirrels and crows visit the yard and dig around for grubs, earwigs, spiders, rolypolies, and occasional morel mushroom. they leave behind empty peanut shells.

we hope to encourage other birds, bees, and pollinators with our service berries, nootka roses, and mock oranges. we are the mocked yard, the mocked orange. we encourage comments~ please stop by!