Summer gardening

It's summer and the garden is in full swing. Please ignore the mess on the driveway! We were in the middle of putting some additional supports in for the tomatoes when we took these. Yes, that doesn't explain the apple tree piece sitting there - tough!

We've almost completely finished up our harvest of berries for the year it seems. We've got a very few blackberries left, but the raspberries and strawberries are done. We didn't get nearly as many blackberries this year as last, but we can't complain as we have more than 3 gallons of raspberries frozen right now! And that's not counting what we picked and gave away or didn't pick while we were on vacation. When Megan gets back from CA (she's there with her mom currently), I'm going to make up some raspberry chocolate ice cream. I guess I just spoiled the surprise, so if you see this before you get back honey, just pretend you didn't! You might also notice the grapes in the background (okay, seriously, how could you miss them?). We might get some edible grapes off them even.

As you can see in the image above, we've got a few slightly healthy squash plants. Ugh. There are 4 mounds there and you can't even hope to see the 4th in this image as it's a pasta squash and not nearly as tall as the others. The tomatoes are off to the right here as are the various peppers (some of them hidden by the squash). We had ripe tomatoes on the 4th of July, but haven't had any more until today. I guess it wasn't hot or sunny enough?!?! Whatever, we'll have plenty this year, but not as many as last year. That's fine though as last year we were just overwhelmed with them. Apparently this year we chose to do that with squash. Off to the left of this image, is our row of beans. We have 2 kinds of bush beans and also some black beans - the bush beans are about ready to start being picked. We've already harvested all of our potatoes. For the first time ever, we're getting a really good carrot crop. Previously we've had very poor luck with them, from just getting the seeds to germinate to having the few that did grow reasonably. This year has been much more successful for some reason.



Here's our corn. We have two types growing here. One is a new hybrid and supposed to be the sweetest corn in the world. The other type is the same as we've grown successfully before (sugar something...).



Finally, the flower garden is growing well in the back. One problem we had was stuff seeding into our path (or growing really tall and falling into and blocking the path). We've put in a fence on the right-hand side of the path to keep the California poppy out of the way, but we clearly need more! The stuff in the path is particularly obnoxious this year because while we were gone in June, lots of stuff (non-weed even) came up in the path. This should be painfully obvious in the above image. Most of what's growing in the path is basil. Yes basil. I transplanted probably 6 plants when we returned but some of them were just too big to easily transplant elsewhere. And I'm not joking when I say that there were 20+ basil plants in the path even after transplanting. We've somewhat given up this year on getting it out and are just planning on having lots of pesto. This isn't bad as we have lots of garlic. I've used one garlic bulb from the garden (center tall things) and it was great - spicy and about the size of my fist. We'll get some more to overwinter again this fall as that seems to be really key.

Well, that's it for now. If anyone needs basil, beans, or (PLEASE someone) squash, let us know. Or just come take it from the garden. Seriously.

It's a girl!

Since we lost Tyler, we've been trying to evaluate whether Calvin would need a new friend. It was hard to watch him initially as we were only around a few days before leaving for Mexico. He seemed to enjoy his time in Richmond with Louis and Star (Erin's boyfriend and the family cat respectively) while he was there. When he got home though, he just seemed a little lethargic and depressed and just didn't have anybody to play with. We decided we'd have to get him a pal, but wondered whether he would be better off with a kitten or an adult cat. If you've seen Calvin with his "hedgehog", you'd know, as we decided, that a small kitten is probably not a good idea! We decided to look for a cat about his age. Our vet had just found a young cat at their door. She was very skittish, but they eventually caught her on a Friday and we met her on the following Monday. Adult cats don't always get along, so they allowed us to take her home for a trial period (one week) with Calvin. Calvin immediately took to her, but she was a little stressed to deal with him. See the picture of Calvin to see what he's like, even with us!


See, Calvin's a wee bit talkative. Okay, he's a lot talkative. He is friendly though. He brought her toys to play with and makes happy trilling noises when she's around. He's been nothing but nice to her. She, so far hasn't been so nice, at least to Calvin. She also doesn't seem very playful, which is what we were really looking for as a buddy for Calvin. She is a super-cuddler though. When Monday came, we had to make up our minds about whether to keep her or not. She wasn't really exactly what we're looking for as a play buddy though. That said, she's a gorgeous cat and we hope she will mellow out some and be willing to play with Calvin, especially since we decided to keep her. Apparently she heard about this though, and since we paid the adoption fee for her, she's been a bitch toward us, not only not cuddling but actually hissing at us when we reach down to pet her. She is putting up with Calvin more though and did play a little bit today, but not with Calvin. We named her Diana after the Roman goddess of the hunt (and also the Moon). The vet says this may just be that it's taken her a week to catch up on her sleep and food (she was very hungry and exhausted when we got her), and now she's feeling independent enough to go find her place in our world. We're still optimistic that she'll come back around to her super-snuggly prior self. In fact, we're betting that if nothing else, when winter comes and we have the heat set low she'll *have* to get snuggly again.

We are pondering the possibility of getting a kitten to 1 year old cat in additon to Diana and Calvin. We're becoming more and more convinced that Diana is never going to be very playful, and Calvin is still moping around. He really needs someone to play with and we just don't have time to play with him as much as he'd like us to! And let's face it, Brett's just not fast enough to race him several laps from the basement to the second floor. I can't believe we are thinking about getting 3 cats...

Mexico - The Return

We just returned from Mexico, again. Yes, life is difficult, but we struggle through. If it makes you feel better, this trip did not go nearly as smoothly and was far less relaxing because of it. We had some problems with the hotel in Charlotte when we arrived to fly out. We had even greater problems when we arrived in Playa del Carmen. We stayed at the Wyndham Viva Azteca and we would not recommend it to anyone. When we arrived we were told that they didn't have the requested rooms for us (us being Megan's family - Dave, Marty, Brandy, and Erin - and Megan and me). Instead of 3 rooms, we were given 2 doubles and had to share them. As compensation we were offered a spa treatment of our choice (limited by money and time required). The massages that at least Megan and I received were hardly worth a dime, less yet as compensation for a hotel not able to count the number of rooms they have and compare that to the number of reservations that have been made. The resort also had significant problems with seating at the beach and pool. There was a general lack of chairs and guests would claim the chairs overnight even to get the palapas or other preferred (sometimes any) spot. The resort seems completely uninterested in doing anything about it either. It's completely ridiculous. They also had very poor food. I got food poisoning from a dinner at the Viva Cafe in Playa del Carmen proper. Most everyone else had digestive problems of one sort or another during the trip and Megan's still fighting to get hers cleared up. The reservation system for not eating at the buffet was ridiculous and we wasted over 2 hours total over 2 days trying to get reservations. When we did get into the specialty restaurants they were never anywhere near capacity so we have no idea why it was so hard to do. Finally, one of our bags got left at the resort when we left, containing the iPod, and we had to scramble and get a hold of the resort and send it up in a taxi to the airport. It made it to us, and we got to the gate, by the skin of our teeth.

What was good about the trip? The ocean was great as usual. It was warm and there was some surf as well. I just wished we'd had more time at the beach. We also got to go to some of the ruins in the area. We rented a car and drove over to Coba and Tulum and went through each of those sites. It was very interesting, but very hot and humid. We'd like to go back one more time, especially to Coba, to go to a region of the site we didn't get to. The picture above is of Nohoch Mul which is a 42 meter tall pyramid. Megan and I climbed up it, sweating like crazy, while Megan's family enjoyed the view from the base. Megan's not really fond of heights, but didn't have any troubles going up and only a little bit of difficulty coming down. To give you an idea of how tough/dangerous this is, the guides were overheard to be very pleased that no one had died this year! I think 7 - 9 people have died at Coba over the years and Tulum was a very beautiful site with lots of ruins and a great beachside location. We didn't go down to the beach as we had early reservations that night at one of the specialty restaurants though.

We've posted some of our pictures from the trip. Take a look!