Spring on the Nature Trail

These are some photos from the Nature Trail here. It is early spring and stuff is alive and I love it! This is at the beginning of the trial where the ground is alot higher and dryer... later the pictures will be more from a swampy boggy area. This misty rainy look is really what spring is like here, we have a few days of sun scattered in but it is always misty rainy and foggy. We had an essay contest at the youth center and one of the kids wrote that what she loved most about spring was the rain, because it means summer is right around the corner.

Remember to look at any photo full size just click on that photo

There were tons of fern emerging on the trail, it reminded me of New Zealand except of course they are not the size of my face.

Thick Stemmed Wood Fern

This is down in the swampy boggy area

Nodding Anemone

Red Trillium

Asian Skunk Cabbage

Asian Skunk Cabbage

Japanese Mountain Fern

Eastern Skunk Cabbage

Vidal's Lady Fern

False Hellebore

Scarlet Leaved Vibernum

Pine

Sakura Yabusame (Cherry Blossom Horseback Archery)

Sakura is the Japanese word for Cherry Blossom and Yabusame is a type of mounted archery in traditional Japanese archery. An archer on a running horse shoots three special "turnip-headed"arrows successively at three wooden targets. Every spring there is a Sakura Yabusame festival in Towada (about 45 min. from Misawa). In the two years we have lived here we never made it to this festival so I really wanted to go this year. Unfortunately it has been a fairly cold spring and the cherry blossoms were not quite out yet. All the pictures look kind of bland and brown but imagine this crazy warrior woman archery on horseback in a sea of pink blossoms... petals blowing in the breeze and coving the ground almost like snow! It would have been amazing. It was still cool but not quite what I was hoping for. 

So like I said earlier each rider gets three shots... there are three targets down this path they ride, after each shot there is someone with an umbrella... a closed umbrella means a miss and an open umbrella means a hit!

I thought this girl was very pretty and she looked so happy and proud to be competing!

After the first few passes I decided I wanted a better view so I climbed a tree! Surprising? No. 

Me in my tree

This lady was really good! Bullseye!

After watching out fill of Yabusame we wandered around the rest of the festival... it was pretty small so I am talking like 5 minutes of walking... but the first thing I found was a SAMURAI!!! I called me up to him and but his headdress on me and we did a warrior pose!

Then he decided to cut Derick in half!

We then visited the horses... I think this was Derick's favorite part.

The Green and Gold Harar Coffee... straight from Ethiopia

Yesterday at work my friend and coworker Kimmy gave me this bag of coffee she said her brother sent her from Africa... he sent like 10 bags and she is only a casual coffee drinker so she shared the love!

If that is not the coolest looking bag of coffee I don't know what is... Based on the look of the bag in my mind this coffee was dried on some rocks in the hot African sun and packaged by children earning money for their families. Upon a little research I learned I was right in at least on part... heres what I found on google about this coffee... 

Harar Coffee (Sundried only)

It is produced in the Eastern highlands and is exported from the town of Dire Dawa. The bean is of medium to long pointed size and has a greenish to yellowish/golden color. Harar coffee has medium acidity, full body and the distinctive deep mocca flavor. It is one of the finest premium coffees in the world and is grown at an altitude of 2000/2750 meters. Recent laboratory cupping by Mr. Bahalwan for Ethiopian Specialty Coffee Ltd., USA show excellent results for the use of expresso coffee because it produces a foamy "tigretto" type cream.

From EthiopianSpecialtyCoffee.com

Now... I have to be honest. I was a little scared to try this coffee... you know when you open a bag of Starbucks coffee... or walk down the coffee aisle at the grocery store and you are enveloped by the sweet nutty calming smell of coffee... this did not smell like that... it is so strong it smelled like straight burnt ass. But I have never been one to let something like a little fear (especially over coffee) slow me down. So this morning I promptly... or not so promptly depending on your definition of early opened the amazing bag of coffee... which wasn't hard it was only held closed with a couple of staples... I knew then this was going to be epic... just look at those grounds!

I put the grounds into my Moka Pot... if you don't know what that is I will tell you... its a stovetop espresso maker invented in Italy in the 1930's and commonly used in Europe and Latin America. It has a water chamber in the bottom and a grounds chamber in the middle... as the water heats up it pressurizes sending hot water through the grounds and up into the upper chamber... it is fantastic! 

I added the super dark espresso from my pot into a mug of frothed milk... 

BEST LATTE EVER

Not even kidding this was the best coffee I have ever had! 

Now I really want to travel to the town of Dire Dawa in Ethiopia!

Dangers of Scooters

Last Saturday I was working and racing the kids at the youth center on the scooters... medium length story short I was going very fast cause I HAD TO WIN... against 9 year olds... and my scooter ran into the wall and my leg ran into the scooter... I thought I was going to die... it hurt so bad at first I really thought I was going to puke... but I wanted to show you guys what this all really means

this is a scooter

 These are kids playing nicely on scooters... 

we don't play on them like this at the youth center... 

that would be lame

Now that you know what a scooter is and how it works... 

this is what they can do...

Battle wound Day 2

 Day 3

Day 4

Yes that bruise extends from my butt to my knee... wicked!

Easter Eggs

This is a project that I started over a year ago... I wanted to make some really cool easter eggs that I could use for a couple of years so I wouldn't spend tons of time every year making really intricate eggs... My thoughts were make some super fancy ones and then every year just makes some simple ones to go with them.

sooo...

I figured I could just blow out some eggs and use them for a while... blowing out eggs is a lot harder then people say... or maybe I am just bad at it... well now that I think about it everyone and everything said it is hard... but stuff that normal people say is hard is normally pretty easy for me... not this... it was hard.

AND this was all happening about a year ago... because of course I am always late... I started this right before easter... not enough prep time... and then Derick shattered his leg and spent two weeks in the hospital and 2 months on bed rest... so I had a bowl of blown out eggs sitting in my studio for a year... lame.

BUT the good thing is this allowed me to travel back to the states (for my sisters wedding) and purchase a sheet of vinyl while I was there... which was critical in my egg decorating plan... so here is what I did... I chose two different designs for my eggs... I chose plaid and blossoms... I was planning on dying them two different colors so I put on one set of vinyl stickers... like so...

I used a craft punch on the sheets of vinyl for the blossoms and then just cut some electrical tape into small strips for the stripes

Dipped them in yellow dye (20 drops yellow food coloring, 1 cup hot water, 1 tsp vinegar) And then I let them dry... took those stickers off put on a new set in new spots overlapping parts of the old spots... and put those in pink dye (5 drops red food coloring, 1 cup hot water, 1 tsp vinegar) but I only left them in the pink for a few seconds because it was so much stronger then the yellow. Let that dry then added a few touches of glitter!!!

Spring in the Garden

I am frustrated... a guess its a good frustrated... I have more adventures and sweet photos then I have time to blog about. Its better then having nothing to blog about... but still sad. There are so many cool things that happened this winter that I still have not posted about... and now its spring... and I cant bare to talk about winter anymore because I am SO EXCITED about spring that you guys will just never know what else happened this winter... oh well...

and on that note... ITS SPRING... here is look at whats going on in my garden! 

(everything is coming back from last year besides the pansies)

Pansies in a pot

Sedem

Lime Green and Black Clover!

More pansies

Hyacinth breaking through