Christmas Tree

We have delayed our purchase of a Christmas Tree until the very last moment. It wasn't because we didn't want a tree, but because we couldn't fine someone to deliver a real tree to our house. Fortunately for us, we eventually found a farmer who was nice enough to do just that.

Little did we realize that the tree was too big for our living room! It is about 8' tall and we had to re-arrange our living room furniture a bit. We also needed to buy more Christmas ornaments and lights so the tree wouldn't look empty.

Enjoy the pictures.

A white Christmas

For a little while I was worry about not having a white Christmas: the weather was up to 8C and raining and all the snows were melted. Luckily for us, on the day of Christmas Eve, it snowed another 10cm or so and we ended up with a white Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

White-out

Today, I conquered snow :)

New work computer and 30" monitor

Some of us working in the lab were lucky to get a new quad-core computer with a 30" LCD monitor. All I can say is that this computer is fast and the screen is beautiful! I wish I have that kind of spare cash and am able to hypnotize myself in buying one.

Took a while to get ubuntu 7.10 Gusty to work with the 30" LCD. The trick was to add "nosplash" to grub, in addition to the usual addition to the xorg.con for the proper driver/resolution.

truffles, yum yum

Our moms came visit us in Kingston early October. We took them to a fancy italian restaurant for dinner one saturday. Food was delicious. We had steak on a lava rock, tuna steak, salmon pate, and truffles with pasta.

Bobo's Christmas present came early

We bought Bobo a new bed last weekend. It is fluffy and soft, she likes it a lot.

Halloween

Sorry for the lack of updates. Elvis and I have been both busy and lazy. Here is our Halloween pumpkin, cute eh? P.S. we ran out candies that night.

Mii look

ok, I have been receiving a lot of comments and reactions about my "new" look. Just today, Kitty and I had lunch in a Korean restaurant that we have not visited for a few months. But we used to go to the restaurant quite frequently and the owners certainly know who we are.

The thing was, the restaurant owner didn't recognize us in the first place: I was sitting at a corner table facing away from the counter. After he brought us the menu and saw my face, he actually pointed his finger at me and said: WOWOWHH.

Winnie said that I look like Jesus. I take that as a complement.

Just about everyone who played Wii with us said that I look like my Mii. Just to be clear: I created my Mii character way before my hair was long and grown mustache. Maybe subconsciously I always want to grow my hair and mustache. BTW, Mom and Dad had no idea what I look like now.

Tomatoe platter

How often do you get to have 7 different kinds of tomatoes in one setting? By having a veggi garden, you can do it every single day :)
We also painted our bench purple, what a nice color!!

Green bat

Hiding in the thick leaves is..... a green bat! Everything seems to grow so much faster once there is a heavy rain followed by a few days of sun. While we were busy building the bench and picnic table, this opo gourd has been growing quietly.

Lawn furnitures

We had quite a lot of lumbers at our disposal. Some were the left-overs from our deck, some where left in our shed by the previous house owner. We thought we'll make the best out of it by building some lawn furnitures.

Our first project was the bench. It was made almost entirely from the old (gray) lumber. Most of them were warped. Kitty spent the entire day sanding it, and it looks quite nice. We have yet to decide if we'll stain/paint it.


Our second project was the picnic table. It was made entirely of new lumbers; the 2x12 were the left-overs from our deck, and we bought the rest 2x4 and 2x6. It is about 6' long, with the seat at 17.5" high.

Oh and the planter, that was just for fun.

Opo gourd

Guess what we had for dinner? yeah, this ugly Opo gourd. It is actually the second gourd we picked so far, but this one is much larger than the previous one.

Opo gourd, when eaten fresh, does taste slightly sweeter than the store-bought ones. We have not bought other vegetables for almost a week now; relying only on tomatoes and opo gourd as our source of vegetables.

Tom, my rear house neighbour, commented that my garden "looks" crowded. Well, what can I say, this is my first year gardening. If we are still here in Kingston next year, we'll plan it more carefully.

After dinner, we spent an hour cutting the 2x4 and 2x6 for the picnic table. All the cuttings were finished, we only need to assemble the parts together. We plan to finish it tomorrow.

Tomato Salad

Excuse for the shaky hand. We had four different kinds of tomatoes for dinner today. On this picture, you'll find yellow pear, black pear, Japanese Trifele Black, and golden dwarf champion.

We actually build a bench using the old woods left by the previous house owner. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it as it looks quite old/rusted. We borrowed a sander and we plan to sand/paint it.

We also bought more 2x6 and 2x4 from Homedepot today. We have two pieces of 2x12x12' boards left over from our deck building. I plan to build a picnic table with it, but I need more woods for the legs and beams. Trust me, PT woods are actually quite expensive, more so than we expected.

Japanese Trifele Black and Eggplant

Today I have my first harvest of the Japanese Trifele Black tomato and eggplant. The Trifele Black wasn't quite ready actually, but I snapped it off with ease. It still tastes pretty good.

The eggplant is quite interesting in how it grew actually. It started very slow but once it got to certain size it grew quite rapidly. This particular eggplant was 1/2 of the current size just a few days ago.

Golden Tiger

Well, it is not exactly a tiger. Here are two more tomatoes from my garden: a golden dwarf champion and a tigerella.

The golden dwarf champion doesn't taste too much different from the store variety, but the tigerella is surprisingly good. It also looks extremely exotic. I'll definitely plant it again next year.

First harvest

These are my first harvest: a New Big Dwarf tomato and a chili pepper. The chili pepper has a lot of heat in it, I like it a lot.

We spent the morning constructing a pergola. It is composed of 2 6x6 posts and 5 2x4x16 boards. We used 6x6 posts (instead of the regular 4x4) because we want to secure a hammock onto it. Now the deck is finally completed.

Solid cube of green, oh, and my first red tomato

Hiding in the solid cube of green leaves is... a RED tomato! We have been waiting for this moment for a long time: our first home-grown tomato. This matured tomato is a New Big Dwarf. I'll pick it in a few days.

The opo gourd is taking over the garden. It looks like it is multiplying itself every 2 days. It is so heavy now that my little bamboo pergola cannot support it. It is also choking the tomatoes as it grows around the tomato, blocking the sun-lights and wrapping its vines around the tomato leaves. I wonder if I should prune the opo gourd a bit?

oh, the deck is done. I'm building a pergola tomorrow and more pictures will follow.

Railing

Day-6 of deck building. I didn't go to work and stayed home to help with the construction. Steve was late and actually left early after he received a phone call. We did, however, installed some of the railing. Steve showed us how to install the palings quickly: the trick is to install the top rail first, then each paling can be aligned horizontally against the top rail. Each paling was fastened with 4 screws and is 4" apart from each other.

Steven wants to finish everything by tomorrow. We'll see if that will happen, as the pergola is yet to be built.

Deck construction, Day-5

It looks like Kitty and Steve were having too much fun building the deck. It was a hot and sunny day, and these two didn't get much done other than getting the decking of the upper deck (10'x7') installed. Steve called it a quit at about 2:30pm; he was supposed to drill more holes for the pergola(s) along the deck. I guess the weather got to him.


This is what the deck looks like by day-5. I'll be helping them tomorrow for the rest of the construction since Steve wants to finish it by Thursday. Hmm...working under the sun for a computer geek. Flora said I am too pale so this may turn out to be a good thing.

Deck

Day-4 of building a deck.

BTW, if anyone has a good translation for deck in Chinese, please let me know. I tried to explain what a deck is to my parents but couldn't find a good translation for it. Perhaps 平台?

Kitty and Steve was busy installing the decking today. For the lower-deck, they have so far used more than 2000 screws. Apparently Kitty did more than half of it, a rather impressive workload. I wonder, how much should I pay Steve for his labour? :)


Kitty really enjoyed building it.

Kitty the handywoman

We finally started the deck construction. When I said *we* of course I meant just Kitty, since she is the handy one between the two of us. Steve (the guy in the yellow shirt) is our contractor. He is very nice and professional.

Day-1 involves just digging the holes. The frost-line for Kingston area is about 39in; the holes they dug were 4-feet deep. Our plan is to have a small top-deck of size 10'x7', a lower-deck of 16'x22', with a 3' feet of stairs between the decks.


Day-2 involved getting the city inspector to measure the depth of the holes. Once it was passed, the concrete was poured into the holes. On Day-3, once the concrete were set, joists, beams, and posts were installed.

Yes, Kitty did 1/2 of the actual work, following the instructions given by Steve. She is very sored, tanned, and proud.

nest dissolved

I apologise in advance. The picture isn't pretty and can be quite unsettling. This is what the wasp nest looks like after I sprayed it with foam-pesticide.

The pesticide actually dissolved the outer shell of the nest and killed the wasps and their eggs. Quite a nasty sight, I must say. Worse, I have to remove it by hand.

Snake!

A side effect of having a composter in your yard is...... SNAKE! Actually, the snake was not found in MY composter, but rather in my neighbour's. I believe the snakes in question are common garter snakes (襪帶蛇). Yes, there are 2 of them in the composter.

Apparently snakes like composter. It is warm, wet, dark, with lots of bugs and insects for food. Also, the heat generated from the compost also helps developing the eggs. I just hope that 1) I don't get snake in my own composter, and 2) there won't be any eggs being hatched from this pair snakes.

Now I wonder where did that frog in my yard go....

Wasp nest

It looks like my house is indeed turning into a jungle. We have a small wasp (黄蜂) nest right in the our front door. Too bad it is not the regular honey bee: I'm sure some of our local bee keepers will be happy.

It is time for some pesticides. I don't like it but I have no choice.

Frog!

You can imagine my surprise when I spotted a frog in my yard. Kitty and I live in a 10-years old subdivision, and the closest body of water is more than 1km away. I have no idea how the frog got here.

This is a good sign though. Amphibians breath through their skin and hence they are very sensitive to pollutions. Having a frog in the yard is a sign that our soil and water is relatively clean. Good thing we don't use pesticide.

The jungle

This is what my vegetable garden looks like now. In a few weeks it has been transformed from plain dirt to wild bushes. I'm really amazed on how the tomatoes are growing. If you look at my earlier picture of the garden, you'll see that all these tomato plants started with a height less than 6 inches. Some of them are more than 2-3 feet tall now.


The eggplants are growing quite slow actually. It was only a few days earlier that I noticed they are flowering. The Thai basils are growing quite slow as well. My friend's mom in Burlington (Ontario) has Thai basils that are a few feet tall/wide now. Kingston weather has been quite cool so far and these tropical/sub-tropical plants aren't growing as fast as it could.

tomatoes are coming

Did I mention that I have 10 tomato plants? Yeah, I rescued 1-2 more tomato plants from a local gardening centre at the end of the season. The first 8 tomato plants I planted in June are doing very well: 4-5 of the 8 already have large tomatoes on them, and the rests are in the flowering season. This is good as they will all mature in different times during the season, assuring us to have a continuous supply of tomatoes for a few weeks.

The picture above shows the tomatoes from the Japanese Trifele Black. The plants is about 2.5 feet tall and it has grown like a bush. More pictures will come soon.

Kitty's first planter

Kitty has finally got her hands dirty and made her first planter! I was very surprised that she actually played with the soils. But the result is astonishing! The picture speaks for itself: isn't the planter pretty?

We debated if we want to have annuals or perennials to plant in our yards. Perennials are nice in the sense that you only have to plant it once and you get flowers every year. The problem is, you only get the flowers for a few weeks a year. On the hand, the flowering season for the annuals we have lasts for months so far. For this reason we decided to go with the annuals for this planter.

Economy of rain-barrel

I've wondered about the economy of rain-barrel. Utility Kingston is selling a 200L rain-barrel for $30. However, the water-rate for Kingston is about $0.6546/m^3. So a simple math ($30/$.6546*5) shows that I need to fill up the rain-barrel about 230 times in order to recover the cost of the rain-barrel. It certainly doesn't rain 230 days in a year in Kingston. And I have to cut the downspout.

However, it is the right/green thing to do. I'll probably do it.

just my 2-cents.

Peony

Mom said that the flowers are Peony (芍药), which is different from 牡丹. Overnight we got a lot more flowers due to the warm weather. Amazing.

Flowers

The warm weather has triggered some blossom. Here is a picture of the flowers in my yard. Please let me know if you know the names of the flowers, I'd appreciate it.

Tomatoes and Pears

We built a small bamboo pergola for our opo gourd to climb now. With all our tomatoes, egg plants, and other vegetables, the vegetable bed looks packed and we don't have room for anything else. The list of tomatoes we are growing are:

1. New Big Dwarf: released in 1915 as a cross between Ponderosa and Dwarf Champion. Compact plant, large pink beefsteak with rugose leaves. 90-days,
2. Golden Dwarf Champion: compact plant with rugose leaves. Medium round butter-yellow fruit. 83 days.
3. Lime Green Salad: Beautiful compact plant. The fruit is bright green ripening to a yellow green. 58-85 days.
4. Black Zebra: Beautiful deep green and brown stripe. 1.5" fruit with complex sweet and smokey flavours. Indeterminate. 80-85 days.
5. Tigerella: Huge crops of red fruit with orange stripes. When under ripe, they are light green with dark geen stripe. Indeterminate. 55-75 days.
6. Japanese Trifele Black: blemish free and are not subject to cracking. One of the very darkest black tomato varieties available. Determinate. 80 days.
7. Black Pear: Grey brown fruit with brown shoulders. Very productive and full of flavour. Indeterminate. 75-82 day.
8. Yellow Pear: Bears high yields of yellow, pear-shaped 2" fruits all summer long. 75 days.

The combo pears bears 5 different kinds of fruits: Bosc pear, Comice pear, Seckel pear, Bartlett pear, Anjou pear. We haven't decided where to plant it yet.

We also laid in some bricks for our flower bed. Pictures will be available soon.

more tomatoes

Spent most of today doing garden-improvements. First, we bought 3 more varieties of tomato, making it a total of 8. I'll try to find description for each of them and post them on the web.

Second, we bought a "combo" pear tree from HomeDepot for $30. It is a pear tree with 5 different kinds of pear branches grafted onto 1 tree, so it will fruit 5 different kinds of pears. Too bad it may take several years for it to grow any pear, and we may not be in Kingston when it happens. Oh, and we already have argument about where we should plant the pear tree. I want it to be beside the vegetable bed (and behind the shed), and she wants it to be in the middle of the yard. Go figure.

Lastly, we bought more herbs: garlic chives (韭菜) and Chinese parsley (香菜).

I'll be spending tomorrow building a bamboo pergola for the opo gourd to grow on. Pictures will be uploaded when it is done.

my raised-bed vegetable garden

For the past several weeks I have been busy building a raised-bed vegetable garden. Yes, I feel old; when I was younger I thought only old people (i.e. my parent's generation) are interested in gardening. I guess I'm one of them now.

The dimension of the garden is 4'x8'x16". I was afraid that the 1" ceder board wouldn't hold the weight of the soil on the long side so we (Burton and I) put some reinforcements. The total costs for building it (hinges + ceder + soil + peat moss) was about CDN$200.

Currently we have 5 different varieties of tomatoes, 2 pots of opo gourd (瓠瓜), 4 pots of eggplants (茄子), 1 pot of chili pepper (辣椒), 4 pots of Thai Basil (九層塔), 1 pot of rosemary (迷迭香), some bokchoi (上海白菜), chives (蝦夷蔥), and green onions. We'll see how well it grows.

wedding pictures

Greetings,

Kitty and I got married on April 14, 2007 in HsinChu, Taiwan. The set of photographs, though not completed, can be found at Kitty's picasa site. Enjoy.

occupational hazard

being a computer-scientist, obviously the first message is "hello world". Don't ask.

testing

hello world