Garden Dinner

Recently we purchased some new patio furniture from Lowe's as it was on clearance. Megan claims that this isn't some attempt at making me rip up the old falling apart concrete patio and replacing it with paving stones, but I don't really believe her. It's pretty nice stuff, but I have to admit that sitting at it might be more cool if say the patio was even somewhat level. :-)

Earlier in the day, we'd gone mountain biking and worked up quite the appetite. It had been a hot hard ride so we decided to have a garden dinner on the new set. I grilled some chicken and picked raspberries, strawberries, and peas, while Megan worked on boiling some (garden-grown) Yukon Gold potatoes and then added some (garden grown) peas and corn to it. She also made up some salad with lettuce and mixed greens from the garden. We have, for the first time ever, full heads of romaine this year. We've always had some romaine, but they've never developed full heads until now. -shrug- I guess that's to balance out our very pathetic two spinach plants that came up this year. For drink we had a bottle of Bella Sera pinot grigio. Dinner was darn good, as you can see.
While we were out there, we took Calvin out and put him on his leash. He likes being outside while we're out and spends most of his time chasing bugs, sleeping under the raspberries, or getting his leash completely tangled on any available object, including himself. He also vastly prefers to be out when it's cool (I imagine we would too if we walked around in a fur coat all day). He was having a good time running around. As soon as we sat down to eat, over came Tina, the neighbor's cat. She's been hanging out over here quite a bit. At night, Calvin runs from window to window talking to her. It's kind of funny for, oh, about the first 10 minutes. Then it's just kinda loud and obnoxious. Anyway, Calvin last saw Tyler outside and Tina had been over at the same time. When he saw Tina, I think he thought Tyler was coming back too. He whined and cried and ran around like he did the morning after Tyler was hit. He finally calmed down a bit, and then started trying to play with Tina. Tina generally doesn't want to be played with it seems. She does however love tormenting Calvin, although I think it's unintentional. Calvin is of course dragging a big string around and darn it if that's not fun to play with if you're Tina.
We've posted a few more pictures of the garden as it is now. If anyone wants to come water and weed it while we're gone, let us know. We'll let you eat all the raspberries you can stand!

Tyler - April 2004 to June 14, 2006

Today we had the terrible responsibility to bury Tyler. He was hit by a car early this afternoon right near the front corner of our lot. We had been playing with him outside only hours earlier. He and Calvin had been rolling around and having lots of fun with the neighbor cat as well. Megan and I had gone in for a little while and then a very considerate guy came up to our house to tell us he'd found Tyler's body. It was a shock. Pardon my french, but it was a hell of a shock.

After Paco, our first cat had been hit, we decided we weren't going to get another cat. A neighbor's little girl brought over Tyler to us though. She'd found him as a stray and thought that we should have him. Since he was a stray, Tyler really did not like to stay inside. He loved to be outside, running through the yard and garden, rolling in the dirt, and generally living life to its fullest (that of course also included sleeping deeply on summer days outside under any convenient bush or tree that provided shade). We decided we would compromise and that we would let Tyler go outside, but not put in the cat door again and not let him go out at night. We thought (and hoped) that he would then be safe. We were clearly wrong and it's killing us. Calvin is now alone and seems a bit depressed. We showed him Tyler's body before we buried Tyler in the back yard, across from Paco. Calvin is now going to be limited to his current status of being inside unless he is outside with us and on his leash or rope.

We're going to miss Tyler a lot. He was such a dapper little guy. If there was a cat version of James Bond, he could have played the role with ease.

We've put up a small memorial web page for him. Thanks for reading.

Summer must be here...

Well, summer must be here as there are fresh ripe raspberries on the vine, blackberries are nearly ripe, and the garden is really growing. We've been fortunate that we've had consistent rain over the past few weeks since the garden has been in. Other than having way too many weeds to deal with effectively, the garden is going great. We've harvested a couple quarts of raspberries already and will have lots more for at least another week or two. The blackberries have not yet fully ripened up, but they're getting there. We have a few strawberries, but since we just planted them this year, we weren't expecting a bumper crop. We've planted peas, cucumbers, 4 kinds of squash, 2 kinds of corn, carrots, lettuce (mixed), spinach, onions, garlic, a variety of herbs, 4 kinds of beans (pole, black, bush Blue Lake, and something else I can't remember), potatoes (mostly Red Pontiac, but we have a few volunteers from last year that we can't yet identify), tomatoes (roma and a variety of others), and peppers (Anaheims and a mix of bells). Of course, we're looking forward to eating all of this and reducing our grocery bill too!

My mom (Dodie) was out visiting us for a few days this last week. While she was here we took the opportunity to visit the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA on the 62nd anniversary. It was quite an impressive memorial and we were impressed with the number of living soldiers who were there at the ceremony. We'd driven by this memorial innumerable times on the way to Megan's parents' house, so we were glad to have finally stopped to see it! We went to lunch up on the Blue Ridge Parkway and ate at the Peaks of Otter Inn. It was pretty good food, but the service that day left a lot to be desired. Still it was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun.

We're now getting ready for our 2nd trip to Cancun (I suppose I should not be saying something like "neener neener neener - we're going to Cancun 2 times within a month and a half"). :-) Rather than just laze around by the pool, we're going to get out this time and see some of the Mayan ruins and hopefully snorkel in an underground river. We are also hoping to take a zip line tour of the jungle and maybe see a few crocodiles somewhere along the way. I think I speak for both of us that we hope we see the crocodiles at any time other than when we're snorkeling!

Finally, to show you that it really must be summer, here's a picture of Tyler having a siesta on the recliner. It doesn't look like a comfortable position at all but he slept there like that for a couple hours!