How 'bout them apples

How 'bout them apples :) Can't wait to pick these little babies... straight from our backyard! Just a few more weeks? months? I don't know how to tell if they're ready for the picking. Don't y'all just love love love the rains that we've been getting this Spring? I just hope it goes on and on and on...

Biggest so far

What a treat! This is the biggest cantaloupe so far from our garden. We haven't had any rain in this triple digit weather for the past few weeks. It's a miracle that our garden is still going.... and going... and going...

My reward

... for a little bit of watering a few days a week. Fresh produce from the garden! Today we had our first 3 digit temperature for the year. These melons are a real treat :)

More organic cantaloupe

I never knew cantaloupes could be so productive.. Pretty soon we'll have to look for recipes to incorporate these into our smoothies. These two were from this morning's produce from our garden.

Healthy oatmeal waffles

Doesn't that look yummy? Well it is! This waffle uses oat flour (oatmeal that I just pulverized using my blender) and no white flour! Breakfast for the family.... done! The recipe came from this website http://cookieandkate.com/2014/easy-gluten-free-oat-waffles

organic cantaloupe

Got it this morning from our vegetable garden. It had a light yellow color on the outside, so at first I thought it was a goner. But when I cut it open it was so juicy! The juiciest one we've had so far... and we have already eaten about three of these coming from the garden. And it is organic, no pesticides, just water and plenty of sunshine :)

Fresh from our backyard

Just got this from our backyard. Some double knockout roses, basil, flat leaf parsley, squash blossoms, and lots of roma tomatoes!

Austin Habitat for Humanity

Oct 29. I had the opportunity to join another group of volunteers for the Austin Habitat for Humanity. It was just one day of building whatever part of a particular house that was chosen for our group. There were 20 of us -- mostly IT people who have no previous homebuilding experience. It turned out that we were doing ceilings for the day. The house was in the Sendero Hills neighborhood, located off Sandshof Drive, 78724.

You can see my back in the picture. The drywall is stacked close to where I was standing in the picture.

So I learned that ceilings are made of 5/8" thick drywall (as opposed to 1/2" drywall for walls). The pieces were 4' x 12' and weighed 110lbs each piece. Kaya pala ang hirap buhatin e mabigat pala yun.

In the upper right corner of the picture we can see the ceiling in one of the rooms -- I was one of the 4 people who installed the ceiling in that room! {Pat on the back ahem}. After that room we had to do the hallway, which was difficult to do because the width was not the same all throughout. And on top of that, a lot of people were using the hallway to bring drywall into the back rooms. So we had to do starts and stops to accommodate them. Plus there were fire sprinklers, vents, and electrical sockets that needed small circular windows on the drywall in the correct place and with the correct diameter.

We were told that about 2 tons of sheetrock was installed that day. We started at about 8am in 45 deg F weather, and ended at 4pm in 75 deg F temp, sore to the core.

A very productive day.