Harvest!

We harvested our first wave of tomatoes from the garden today. Not a bad haul for only two plants of red heirloom tomatoes and one unstaked yellow plum tomato plant. The basket holds some basil, which we've been harvesting for a while.

There is a single bull-nose bell pepper and a single Anaheim pepper on their plants looking pretty close to ready to remove. I'm optimistic the flowers on the upper part of those two will produce another round. It's probably not going to come to fruition, but I can hope.


It's been a bad year for tomatoes in this region. Many farmers and backyard gardeners are losing their plants and fruit to the Late Blight fungus. Evidently, it's the same pathogen that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840's. One of my plants doesn't looks so healthy, but the fruit are looking fine so far. After pulling these today, there are only a handful of immature tomatoes on each. I'm crossing my fingers and will wait and see.

I made insalata caprese tonight with the tomatoes and basil (with mozzarella, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar) as an appetizer Bethany could eat as soon as she got home from teaching her yoga class. I also made a big bowl of pico de gallo to adorn our dinner of nachos with chicken, refried beans, red pepper, and cheese. There are still more than 10 good-sized tomatoes left to make vodka sauce for tomorrow night's dinner.

Homebrew electric-assist recumbent bike

During our stroll tonight, we ran across this handsome DIY electric-assist recumbent bicycle outside of Armand's (yes, of the famous fish sandwich). We didn't see the owner. Alas.

Wonders of remodeling

While Bethany was at yoga tonight, Silas, Guthrie, and I took a stroll around Bloomfield. The Bloomfield Bridge Tavern has undergone some interesting renovation in its years. It is sad that the stained glass window no longer ever sees the light of day (in photo above).

The picture below shows a great faux-bricked in doorway as well as a brilliant retrofit set of windows. I wonder if the board was intended to keep the rain off the mailboxes or if it has some other purpose that's unclear to the casual observer.

Mourning dove turns into morning doves

The mourning dove's nest is getting a bit crowded. The picture above was taken today by Bethany. The one below was from the morning of 27 April, four days ago. They seem much bigger in such a short time. An earlier post was this one: Mourning dove family.

Crappy GM part, but nice run

The brilliant engineers at GM designed the plastic thermostat housing to last past the warranty period and not much longer. I hear it's a known problem with the Aveo.

Guthrie and I were on our way to go running at the park. I know, we were driving the car to go running, so maybe it was a suitable penance. Bethany called in the disabled vehicle to the Better World Club, and Guthrie and I ran the 4 1/2 miles back to the house. The Better World Club has been good for the past 2 or so years we've had it. I'd been a gold member of AAA for 19 years (started under the parents), but they lost my patronage because of their anti-bike positions.

Anyway, the light was nice on the Cathedral of Learning on the Pitt Campus.


The light was nice for viewing the new Children's Hospital towering over Bloomfield and Lawrenceville.


This is the Gully. It was probably once a nice valley with some sort of stream at the bottom. The stream has been replaced with trash and car-fluid runoff from Bloomfield, Oakland, and Polish Hill. A dedicated busway, railway, and a road do use the bottom.

Irma Freeman Center

The building renovation for the new Irma Freeman Center for Imagination is progressing in Garfield/Bloomfield. I don't know much about it beyond the website and admiring the exterior work, but they have an interesting series of classes lined up for the summer. Their goal is to make art and sustainability accessible to the diverse community that lives in Garfield, Bloomfield, Friendship, and greater Pittsburgh.

Bloomfield church

I love the temporal nature of the interaction of glass and light. I work with stained glass at times and am very fond of how it changes character with the time of day or night and with artificial light sources. Religious themes aside, churches frequently have some very amazing craftsmanship in their architecture, and many have wonderful glass art. This is the church at the catholic grade school in Bloomfield. Maybe it's just a chapel, as there is a catholic cathedral down the street. I haven't been in either yet. This style is very similar to that of the church I attended with my family growing up. The architecture is also similar, so they were likely built around the same time. I'll check the dates sometime and also post some pictures of the glass back in my hometown when I make it back there.

Mourning dove family

Spring is really here. The mourning doves have returned to the nest in our back porch awning. If you look at the strata in the nest, this is at least the fourth year they've been using this particular nest. The woman dove has laid her eggs and won't leave the nest, even with Guthrie running back and forth under her as he goes outside a million times a day. The picture doesn't do it justice, but she has a beautiful ring of teal around her eye. I hope we don't stress her out too badly.

You can see our neighbor's magnolia tree blooming in the background too!

Getting into the garden

This past week, I started getting the garden set for the spring. I pulled finished compost from the bottom of the bin. The sticks aren't decomposing all that fast, but the kitchen and yard scraps do just fine. Well, eventually just fine. The outer material against the bin walls is dry and dessicated. The upper core spent the winter in nasty anaerobic mode and smells really, really bad.

I still have to remove what's grown up and to turn the compost into the soil.


I also pulled a really beautiful wasp nest from the awning.


For posterity and embarassment's sakes, here is a larger shot of our downtrodden back yard before I did any work. I wish I could say it looks much different now, but it doesn't. I hope the grass seeds I sowed take and fill in some of the patches in the grass.

Recent Pittsburgh shots

Here are some random photos of recent strolls around Pittsburgh. The mural above is in Shadyside. The next one is of Cappy's Cafe, where we ate for the first time a week ago. It was good. It's always stood out to me, because my childish brain reads it as "Crappy's" every time I see it. We have almost always eaten breakfast at Pamela's when we go to Shadyside for breakfast or brunch. It was a nice change to try somewhere new. Plus, there was no line.

The picture below is of Bloomfield from the 4th floor of West Penn Hospital. I had a checkup regarding my hernia repair (still solid). I always like looking at the neighborhood from above. You can actually see our house's roof and chimneys in this picture (or at least the larger original).

This is in the Strip District.

The Easter Bunny is dead

Huffing natural gas, died of asphyxiation.

Super Bowl with only one Pittsburgher

We watched the Super Bowl over at Maya and Ryder's house. It turns out that Silas was the only Pittsburgh-born person in the room, which I found pretty interesting. Nonetheless, Maya and Jan love football in a fully naturalized Pittsburgher way. :) Not that Ryder and Ben weren't showing the Steelers love, but not as exuberantly as these two ladies. Rachel, Bethany, and I aren't much into football in general, but still find the Super Bowl interesting and fun.

Silas was fascinated by the big HDTV. He hasn't spent much time in front of one. We don't have one, but he gets a little time in front of the computer. It was cute how he'd get super absorbed in trying to figure out what the TV thing was, but then people would start cheering, and he'd look back at them trying to figure out what they were yelling about.

It was a fun night.



Ryder's cheesing it up in the background. He was kind enough to lend Bethany his hat and Terrible Towel as well. We wandered the closed off streets of Bloomfield for a bit before I took Silas home. He fell asleep despite the crowd and fireworks and police sirens.

Urban hike to Oakland

As I can't really do much exercise yet because of the surgery and recovery, I went for a nice urban hike. I wandered from Bloomfield into Oakland and back. Total of 4.4 miles, not including inside distance walking inside of the buildings. I stopped into a lot of businesses I'd never been in. I also went inside a big old catholic cathedral. I made it to the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History a bit under an hour before closing. I'll post pictures in following posts.

The GPS got pretty confused a couple of times. For instance, on Craig St. below. I promise you that I didn't run around in circles in the middle of the street.

The GPS unit doesn't really like urban areas so much with all the buildings and whatnot. I did go into a few shops here. I perused some great antique books at the Caliban Book Shop and Townsend Booksellers. Both had some wonderful old texts. Caliban has a small corner devoted to music, which they call Desolation Row CDs. Perhaps it's a separate business that rents the little nook. In any case, I got the new Animal Collective and Blitzen Trapper CD's. Jury's still out on both. I've only gotten one quick sort of background listen in. There is a nice little Indian grocery and a Middle Eastern grocery and food counter along the route.

Leaving Bloomfield heading toward Oakland, one must cross 'the Gully.' It's where the water once ran out of the hills toward the rivers before this place was fucked over by having a city put on it. I get really sad sometimes when I imagine how beautiful this area was before it was concreted over with Pittsburgh. It makes for a nice city, but damn it, I'd much prefer the original hills and the spectacular confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers without taming from the dams. I bet the gully was a wonderful wetland and riparian area.


From the second floor of the building that houses Dreaming Ant, the sun paints a nice glow on the buildings of Oakland.

Parade

While Bethany was at yoga today, Silas and I went to the parade through Bloomfield. Of course, I'm not really all about celebrating Christopher Columbus and the BS regarding that whole deal. However, it was nice day to stroll around with a baby in one's arms. The picture above was about one minute from the house and captured a moment within 30 seconds of Silas falling asleep. He slept through the entire parade, except for one jump when DJ Magic Mike had some mishap that caused screeching feedback through his PA system.

Autumn in Bloomfield

Here is a picture of Autumn in the forests of Bloomfield. :)

Makin's for pasta sauce

Bethany drove this issue, and I'm glad. It feels appropriate to use our late crop of tomatoes for a big old pot of pasta sauce. Bloomfield is the "Little Italy of Pittsburgh" after all.

New porch roof and gutter

It took six months to actually get someone out to the house to repair the leaky porch roof. It's finally done. New sheathing, shingles, and gutter to replace the box gutter that was essentially a filter and funnel for water to pour out onto the sidewalk in a nice sheet instead of going down the downspout. Of course, the shingles they installed don't match the mansard roof shingles above. Rats.

Banana Stand ice cream

I'm trying to catch up after not having posted for so long... Here are a few pics from our walk up to the Banana Stand ice cream shop with Maya and Ryder a week or two ago. I only had my cell phone with me, so the pictures aren't any good. I can blame poor composition on that, right? Ryder is the only one I ended up getting a picture of with ice cream.

Best picture of the farmer's market

So, I took this picture of our neighbor Tom with Bethany and her mom in the foreground. Tom is the old man holding his shirt collar in the center of the picture. Tom lives directly across the street and is a wonderfully sweet man. When we moved in, he helped us carry stuff in from the truck. We frequently see him sitting on his front stoop striking up conversations with passersby or walking up to Rocky's for his $2.50 breakfast. He's fond of referring to Bethany as the boss. :)

I think it's great that it turns out that I caught the little girl staring up at him. She's a cutie. I see her around the neighborhood from time to time with her parents. Also, the woman cyclist walking around wearing her helmet and is mid-bite of a plum or some other fruit. And then there's the poor guy walking with his son toward the camera. If you look closely...

Bloomfield farmers' market

Sadly, the summer has screamed by and today was the first time I've landed in the Bloomfield farmer's market. For being three blocks from my house, I'm embarrassed that it's taken me so long. It's small, as Pittsburgh distributes its farmer's markets all over and on different days, but it was nice. It had a nice selection of veggies, including at least one organic farmer and tasty, tasty items made by My Goodies Vegan Bakery.

I met Bethany, Silas, and Bobbye up there after a nice hill climb route home from work. Bobbye bought the fixin's for ratatouille, which we ate for dinner. Bethany and I got an assortment of vegetables, organic eggs, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from a Mennonite family. Oh yeah, and some pierogies. When I cook them, it'll be my first pierogi experience in Pittsburgh, despite it being a sort of traditional food here.