Car Tenting

We took the kids camping – no, tenting –  no, really, the best description is something like – car tenting – this past week. It's significant because this is the first time we've taken all three of them somewhere other than the neighborhood park to sleep overnight in a tent.

Fritz and I have always thought that we wanted to do outdoor things like this with the kids. However, with the arrival each successive kid, the idea of camping felt increasingly onerous. Take a child in diapers, who barely sleeps through the night, out of her familiar bed and put her in a tent with her two excited siblings and expect a good result? Hmmmm... But! BUT! This summer it started to feel like a possibility again. We are very hopeful that this trip was the beginning of many more to come. So instead of telling you it was a great success, let's just say it was a good start! We learned a lot! We made a big long list about how to improve our next trip. And, as is almost everything with kids, I think the more we do it, the more habitual it becomes, and the easier it is to continue doing.

Here's our very picturesque campsite.

It can be difficult to get a campsite within 90 minutes of the metropolitan area in the summer. Like most people with kids, we didn't want to spend all day in the car to get to our destination. Most of the campsites were booked months and months ago. We booked this 2 months in advance, for one mere night, but we still had to choose a night midweek to actually be able to reserve a site.

That meant we missed out on some things. Like getting firewood at the camping ground store. (It was closed. And we weren't willing to spend a lot of time driving the kids around in search of firewood for sale elsewhere.) Fortunately, there was the beautiful lake to compensate for the disappointment.

And the kids weren't deterred from making their own version of a campfire.

Fritz took a lot of initiative, from initially finding our camp site, to the driving, to the food, to the packing, to walking the three year-old back and forth from the bathroom one-hundred-and-twenty-six times. It was nice.

When we returned home and I was once again thrust into the position of making almost every decision and responding to almost every call, I thought maybe I didn't appreciate our 24 hour camping trip quite enough.

But nobody got very much sleep. We were glad to have the whole weekend to recover.

Bamboo Update, Fifth Growing Season

Last year I did not update on our bamboo privacy screen. It was the second year of really dismal growth and I could not bring myself to write another sad post.

Bamboo plant screen, looking pretty good, after the 5th growing season.

This year, the bamboo is doing really well again. It is almost perfectly the green wall of foliage between our house and the neighbors that I hoped it would be: about 8-10' high and dense enough in most places that you can not see through it.

July 2016

So, here's a fifth season update as well as some speculation as to why seasons 3 and 4 were so bad. Links to a review of each growing season are at the end of this post.

Stats:

• 20 linear feet of bamboo planted in 4' wide x 24 inch deep planter.
• Colorado USDA Zone 5B at an elevation of about 5200'
• Four cold hardy, running bamboos: Rubro and Spectabilis varieties (purchased online from Lewis Bamboo) and Yellow Groove and Bissetii (from a local nursery).

Early June 2016. The leaves at the bottom are last year's growth.
The stalks or culms rising above are this year's new growth.
The culms will unfold into branches and leaves once the culms
have reached their final height. 

Lessons Learned during Seasons 3 and 4:

1. Our cold hardy bamboo can survive temperatures of -20 Fahrenheit, but it has massive death of foliage above ground.
2. If the temperatures stay above 0 degrees, the cold hardy bamboo keeps GREEN leaves all winter. (Below 0 degrees Fahrenheit and the leaves turn brown and the culms/stalks begin to die from the top.)
3. If hail or snow collects on the bamboo during the grow season (mid May-mid June), it can destroy much of the growth for that year.

February 2016. The main reason to have bamboo: it stays green in the winter
(unless the temperature falls below 0 degrees Fahrenheit).
The bamboo is so short because it was really damaged by hail
during the previous growing season. 

Our favorite varieties continue to be the Spectablis and Yellow Groove. The Bissetii is also doing fine. We contemplate removing the Rubio once in a while. In the very first photo above, the center area which is thinner and lower than the other areas, was originally planted with Rubio. The varieties haven't mixed with each other as much as we thought they would: they still tend to hangout predominantly in the 9 square feet in which they were planted. (No widely invasive running bamboo. Yet.)

This year, our bamboo did most of its growth over the month of June. I've covered the particular growing habits of the cold hardy bamboo in previous posts. I suggest the links below if you want to learn more about it.

July 2016. The bamboo leaves and branches have unfolded from the culms.
The bamboo will remain like this until next year,
barring extreme cold or hail.

Future:
We've decided that if we would like the bamboo to stay like this, we are going to need to protect it better from Colorado's (sometimes) extreme cold and (sometimes) hail. Some commenters pointed this out to us over the last few years. Now that we see the potential of the bamboo, we are planning to act on their advice!

Before the fall, the goal is to build a light (but strong and visually unobtrusive) wood framework over the bamboo that can be covered if the weather suddenly turns bad. If we get it done, fingers crossed, thumbs pressed, I will share it.

It's so much more inviting out there, I would also love to find some comfy outdoor seating. And a rug. That would be nice, too!

Links to Past Posts:
1st Growing Season (positive)
2nd Growing Season (positive)
3rd Growing Season (negative)
4th Growing Season (negative, no post)
5th Growing Season (hint: you're reading it!)
The Deck
The Bamboo Planter
SaveSave

June Wrap Up Segue

Our summer vacation started with the kids playing... I kid you not...school! Because, I don't know, what else are you going to do at 8:00 in the morning when there's no longer a bus to catch? Apparently, it was pajama day for Trixie.

Then, Mattias spent several days in his pajamas because he had a tonsillectomy. Mattias also lost two adenoids and his two (loose) front teeth with the tonsils. I wonder if there's a discount for removing body parts in bulk during surgery? Six body parts – that's half a dozen!

(Who am I kidding? Knowing the medical industry, there's probably a surcharge.)

My brother flew into town for a surprise Feel Better Soon! visit. I got teary eyed when I opened the door and saw him standing there. Mathias's spirits were lifted by the idea that somebody came to see him.

We lifted Mattias up on this chair while tracking the growth of the bamboo this year. I should probably do a bamboo update. But for now, this is turning out to be SUCH A GOOD GROWING SEASON! Thank goodness, really, because if every year was like the last two years, I'd...I'd...be discouraged from ever attempting to grow anything in our yard again. The kids have been very helpful in snacking harvesting from all of the edible landscaping we've painstakingly planted over the last 5 years.

We painstakingly attempted to feed this baby bird once he fell out of the nest. Sadly, he did not make it. But certainly squeezing mashed up meal worms through a syringe counts as a solid attempt. Maybe he would have preferred the strawberries?

In addition to the strawberries, this year we have a good number of currants (Johannisbeeren). Fritz was all set to make an Obstboden, which is a German cake with fruit on the top, until we went outside to start picking the currants. Then he declared that there weren't possibly enough currants for a cake, so we might as well leave the currants for the birds. (Oh, Fritz. He can't be bothered to make any sort of food unless it is in huge quantities.)

Finally, here's a photo of Not Enough. I thought this was a nice amount for Something.

Psst - Did you see my blog challenge? If not, check it out here.