The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey

Save Ferris

Yeah, there's crappy news from around the world, but I'll just keep trying to make lemonade. Or at least a really good cup of coffee. The bright spot in visiting CNN today was seeing a picture of the young Matthew Broderick, and thinking to myself, "SAVE FERRIS!" On the coffee front, there's Sweet Maria's to help me with that. Tonight I roasted a pound of Panama Las Flores de Boquete using my Behmor 1600 roaster, profile P4, D mod. I let it run the full 23 minute roast cycle, and it took the coffee about a minute past first crack,…

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Brian Bilbrey

June weather visits for a bit

When I go out into the back garden after work, it's a good time to let Lexi roam back there for a bit. We're concerned that she'll discover and widen a rabbit gap, and make her great escape. So she doesn't get unmonitored play time in the back yard. I suppose I should do something about that one of these days. Not today, but maybe in the fall. Meantime, the garden is becoming productive. Frankly, those potatoes look yummy. Red potatoes have always been more visually appealing, but fresh out of the ground is a world of difference compared to…

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Brian Bilbrey

Garden rising

Yeah, yeah, the lawn is brown and grotty - that's what comes of 3+ weeks of no rain. I've done about everything I can do to bring the rain: Today I watered in front for about 5 hours, and I washed my car. In a little bit I'll be barbequeing, which might just tip the scales in our favor. The garden, though, is loving the hot sunny weather. The fastest-growing tomatoes are about walnut size now, and I've got some 6" zucchini on those vines. The onions are doing well, and some of the peppers are starting to become fecund,…

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Brian Bilbrey

Hey! Potatoes!

Yep, first out of the garden, just a few weeks after going into the ground, I've got fresh red new potatoes. These were literally hanging out at the surface of the soil - I spotted them when doing a bit of supplementary watering. And joy of joys, it appears we might get a small smattering of rain tonight - I hear the thunder bearing down on us. The radar confirms that rain is nearly here ... but often it seems to split north and south, and miss us altogether. We haven't had any rain to speak of in perhaps three…

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