10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF MOVE TO YAKIMA ~ GARDEN UPDATE ~ OUR VISITOR ~ PARTING SHOT

10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF MOVE TO YAKIMA

Linda and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary of living in Yakima on July 3rd. When we moved out to Yakima, I kept a journal of our move. Actually, I had already been keeping a birding journal for several years, but I decided to do one that detailed our move. This past week, during our coffee in the mornings, I read aloud the journal entries from 10 years ago when we moved. It was an interesting perspective on the actual trip out here and what we did after we arrived. We had planned to arrive in Yakima a week before the moving van so we could clean and paint without all our stuff in the way. This meant we had to get creative with things since all we had was what we brought with us in Linda's car. This consisted of a few clothes, one fry pan, painting supplies, our pictures and mirrors (we couldn't trust them to the moving van), a blow-up bed, and our Precious Baby. Now, it's a well-known fact that Linda and I love to relax at cocktail hour on the weekends. But when we moved we were so busy working hard every day that it was pretty much cocktail hour every afternoon! The day we arrived, Linda went to the store and got two white plastic lawn chairs so we would have somewhere to sit, and we had our drinks on the front porch with our cooler serving as a table. On the 10-year anniversary of this day, we recreated that scene as best we could.

Better chairs than 10 years ago!

Here is a picture of our house in Lumberton. We absolutely loved this little house and hated leaving it, mostly because we renovated it with the help of a friend and had so much sweat equity in it. But it was a bit small, just over 900 square feet.

Our charming little house in Lumberton

On June 28, 2007, we packed up Linda's little car and left our home to set off across country, with Precious Baby in a large carrier cage in the back seat.

We arrived in Yakima on July 3rd.

Here is what our house and front yard looked like then.

Our house in Yakima 10 years ago

See all that lawn in the front? And see the sprinkler? This is not something we wanted to do ongoing, mow and water grass all the time. If we were going to use up precious water, we decided to use it to benefit our environment. So we transformed it into this below in the ensuring 10 years.

Our bird and bee-friendly yard today

Reading the journal entries from 10 years ago each day has turned out to be a great way to remind us of what it took for us to move here. And some of them are quite hilarious, although I'm not sure that's what I intended back then! We put in a lot of hard work on our new house, just like we had on the one back in Lumberton. We continue to do this as we plant new things in our yard each year.

To give you some idea of the transformation we have made to our home in the past 10 years, below is a series of pictures of the back yard taken when we moved.

Notice how small our tree was

The back vegetable garden area was just weeds

Kinda looks like the desert, doesn't it?

So we pretty much had a blank slate to start with and we went from there. Here is a video I took today (07/12/17) showing the same area as is shown in the pictures.

Big difference! We both love to garden and we love sitting outside under our tree when the weather (heat) permits. We don't have to worry too much about rain because during the warmer months, it seldom rains here. During this past week we have discussed the things we like about living here in Yakima, and I believe the thing we both like most is being able to grow so many plants and vegetables in the summer. It makes living through the cold, hard winter months bearable.

GARDEN UPDATE

All this talk about the yard has my mind wandering to my favorite subject this time of year: my vegetable garden. Before we went on vacation I was battling some kind of bug that was eating everything up. When we got back from vacation just 3 days later, I could tell that things had grown. I put down some diatomaceous earth around my plants, and in a few days it seemed like the bug infestation slacked off. I don't know if it was that or the fact that the plants were getting bigger, but whatever it was I was glad. But that didn't help the plants that were eaten up entirely...rest in peace, little Zavory Habanero and Tequila Sunrise peppers. But on a good note, the little Hab that I had put in the pot is getting bigger, so I am happy about that.  Here's a video that I took this morning of the garden as it is right now. Summer Girl had to get in on the act, too!

OUR VISITOR

One day this past week we saw something that is a rare occurrence here in Yakima. Linda found a frog on our front porch. This is only the second time in 10 years that I have seen a frog in our yard. And he is not like the toad frogs we had back in Lumberton. But still, he is a frog so we are hoping he will eat many bugs while he is here!

Our little frog friend

PARTING SHOT

It has been a busy week since we got back from vacation, but we are caught up now and so we can relax a bit. Summer Girl has been relaxing with us sometimes in the afternoon. Here she is doing her impression of her favorite superhero. She said, "I'm Batman!"

That's all for this week, please check back again next week for another edition of "Southerner in the Northwest."