ziggy-stardust

I (34F) live with my husband (34M) in Seattle, Washington with our two pups. I've been at my new job for over a year now as an administrative coordinator. I work for a research department at a cancer center that focuses on cancer care and research. My third place is at the local plant nursery, shoutout to West Seattle Nursery. I enjoy "window shopping" for plants, identifying the mystery plants in my garden by finding the same ones at the nursery so I can learn their names and their growing habits, and bringing home plants to add beauty to parts of our yard. I've really been enjoying walking around my neighborhood and seeing what plants do well in the zone I'm in (Zone 8b) and taking notes on how they look during the different seasons, the sizes they can grow to, and what type of light they need to thrive. We built raised garden beds this year and had a successful first season of growing plants from seeds and starters including grape tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, carrots, wasabi, chives, dill, rosemary, sage, lavender, thyme, nasturtiums, marigolds, and 'Night Sky' petunias (google that one, they're so pretty!). We worked on adding features to our yard to get it certified as a wildlife habitat. This means we are committed to providing essential elements of wildlife habitat: food, water, cover and places to raise young. We want to add more native plants to our yard, more perennial plants for pollinators, hummingbird feeders, bird baths, to not use chemicals or pesticides, and leaving areas to grow over to give cover to the resident neighborhood bunnies, squirrels, birds, and other critters. My longterm goal is to become a beekeeper and have my own apiary. This year I planted over 275 bulbs in the front yard: tulips, daffodils, crocuses, guinea-hen flowers, and alliums. I'm so excited to see them pop up this spring!! I bought the majority of my bulbs from Breck's, it has an amazing selection of bulbs/plants/flowers to choose from and can sort by zone and other features. Another goal of mine is to build a flower cart or flower stand to have in my driveway and load it up with cut flowers from my garden and then let people pay what they want to make their own flower bouquets. I've seen this done in a couple neighborhoods I've lived in and absolutely loved it. My plan for the spring is to buy and plant dahlia bulbs/tubers to have a fall flower option to add them to the flower cart as well so there's flowers from spring through fall. I also really love working on getting better at photography. I've been practicing taking photos with my DSLR camera and my Fujifilm Instax camera. The DSLR camera I use mainly for wildlife and nature photography and the Fujifilm Instax camera for capturing moments at home, exploring cities, and recently used it for at cousin's wedding and created a full album of instantly developed photos they could take home at the end of the night. It's been so cool getting to learn how to take better pictures with composition, light, color, texture and all the other good juicy things that go into making good art. I've enjoyed working on my sourdough bread skills with shaping the dough, trying new and classic ingredient combos, and baking it to perfection to share with friends and family. I joke with my neighbors that I appreciate them being up for testing my bread because it gives me a reason to keep practicing and sharing with the people I care about. I'm getting better at making bagels as well, same elements to work on like shaping, flavors, and bakes. The best part of baking is getting to share it with others. It's what makes my heart full and literally feeds my community. I would love to do a pop-up bagel/bread event, maybe one day. I've been learning a lot about dog training and getting better at teaching our dogs how to walk on leash. It's so cool getting to teach your dog something and have that bond and connection of understanding what each other needs. I've always loved dogs, when I was little I had the "Dogs (Eyewitness Handbooks)" encyclopedia that had an illustrated look at dogs and discusses the appearance, habits, and development of more than three hundred breeds. To this day I love watching dogs in the area and trying to identify what breed(s) they are. Right now we're training our dogs to do more advanced tricks, finding ways to give them enrichment through toys, treats, and play and just loving on them any time we can. The two dogs in my profile picture, Rupert (13M cockapoo) and PJ (12F puggle), and they're the first dogs my husband and I had when we first got together. We had them for over 12 years together and we recently said goodbye to Rupert this month and said goodbye to PJ last year. Right now we have two young dogs, Luna (pug/cattle dog mix) and Frida (double doodle) and have been learning more about their personalities and training them.