I know that I have lots to update :) But you'll be happy to see that I've taken lots of pictures this morning and even had time to upload them nice and fresh for you to see. Jaime and I recently bought patio furniture for our HUGE patio. It rained this morning so there are leaves and pollen splotches all over it but despite that I love it. It's so nice to have breakfast outside, to wake up with the world you know? I'm finding myself more and more eager to grill out. I love the idea of cooking your meat outside and eating it while the sun goes down. I love the nice weather and everything about being out in it. Like eating all my meals outside :)
Our good friends Austin and Sarah will be moving this week. We've had the pleasure of living next door to them (well.. two doors down but who's counting) this past year and are sad to see them leave. Really sad. They have been the hosts of numerous parties and I'm starting to realize that Jaime and I may soon be the host of the next outside party. Which makes me think of our patio. And makes me think of how different it will be without our neighbors there. I realized it when I was thinking about watching the Alabama games this coming fall. We hosted a lot of those and had several friends come to watch at our place. Without Sarah and Austin our party might be a bit small. That's when it hit me. We'll be saying goodbye to them this week which is harder, I think, for my husband than it is for me. We're secretly hoping that graduate school in Oklahoma fails horribly and by sheer luck they'll be forced to move back here, back to our street to be our neighbors once again. Actually we don't hope that graduate school fails miserably at all. I wouldn't hope anything bad for them. But we do hope that they come back. At least for Black Christmas right guys?
I don't know if you remember the last picture I put up of my entire garden. "Entire garden" minus the few potted flowers and strawberries on the front porch. Well you might want to scroll down to make a comparison because this jungle is completely different looking from the pictures taken just 20 days ago. I'm not only amazed at how huge my garden has gotten but at how well my camera worked this morning. Perhaps it's a morning person like me. I know that this plot doesn't look like 30 pots full of plants but you'd be surprised what I have tucked away back there. I obviously need to do some rearranging so that everything can get adequate sunlight.
My greens are growing in nicely and I'm so happy that they are thickening and getting sturdier. I think these are the Turnip Greens since they aren't all ruffly on the edges. These and the Mustard Greens will need to be transplanted so that half remain in these troughs and half in a new set of troughs. I didn't want to move them before they were sturdy because I was fearful that I would tear them apart. It's amazing how something so delicate can turn into something so different. It's amazing how things change over time. All the sudden, in my own life, I see myself as a different person. Older, more mature, and capable of so many more things that I imagined myself doing when I was in college. After I graduated college my biggest ambition was to live in my own apartment and to have a dog. That was it! Quite a lofty goal.
Look at these! Cantaloupes! I don't know if I'm supposed to put more soil around the necks of these plants or not. I know they grow as a vine and I intend to lead them up some sort of trellis when they get a bit bigger.
I suppose part of the reason I see myself in a different light is that my life is settling. This summer Jaime and I will have been married 3 years and all the sudden I feel like it's gone by so quickly. At the same time I'm so glad that those years are behind us because they were difficult. Learning to live with your husband is one of the trickiest things I've ever had to learn and I'm so thankful that we've made it this far and that things are looking bright. Jaime started a new job this week. Still research, still science, more work, more hours, but I think, more fulfillment. I think this has also affected me since he is part of me. This job doesn't end when the grant is over, it appears to be endless as of right now and I think that gives us a sense of permanence.
The dogs were not pleased that I shut them inside while I took pictures. They want to be with me all the time. ALL the time. They stood at the sliding glass door and barked like someone was trying to break in. Only really.. they wanted to break out! Huxley (the darker) is learning to cuddle and sleep under the covers with us. This is such a relief since before he would find the most uncomfortable places to fall asleep and would be almost impossible to move around after he found them. This past weekend we spent a wonderful time with my parents in South Carolina. A very quick and short trip but a very nice one. They are doing some renovations on their 1920's home and at the moment the only usable bathroom is in the new 3rd bedroom upstairs in what was (as of Christmas 2009) the attic. Jaime and I slept up in this nest on an inflatable mattress with the dogs. One morning my father snuck by us towards the bathroom and for the first time ever the dogs simply looked up at him, growled just a tiny bit, and then fell back asleep.
Churchill will be 4 this summer, Hux only 1. But since we've had the dogs they have barked at every unknown sound. They bark at strangers, they bark at my parents when they see them in the morning, they bark at the door knocking, me pouring cereal in the morning, a car driving up to the driveway. They bark whenever they feel like they need to say something which is almost all of the time. That is why it's such an amazing thing that they didn't bark at hearing my father come upstairs, or watching him walk right by us. Let's hope that this is a recurring amazement.
I know that this close up of a phallic symbol is odd to put in a blog. But, is it just me, or does that look like it might be, maybe, a little baby zucchini? I'm really hopeful. I've been looking over my plants every morning and every evening it seems for signs of fruit (or veggies). This weekend while we were gone it rained. I wasn't here but I hear that it was more than just rain. My plants must have been ecstatic because I found this little guy hanging out and several others that looked a lot like him. I could be totally wrong. He could just be part of the plant and not a zucchini. But I have high hopes.
Speaking of high hopes. My friend Lauren can attest that when we began our garden experiment almost all of our swiss chard decided to kick the bucket. Out of 12 plants that had sprouted only 2 remain. When I came back from the weekend I was so shocked to find this very healthy almost double the size swiss chard waiting for me. Look how thick the stems are now! And so brightly colored. This one is Lauren's and is hard proof that she does not, in fact, kill everything she touches. Hanging out behind and to the right of that pot is my pot of string beans... or snap peas? I can't remember what I planted. It's some sort of vine that produces peas/beans. I have to stake them tomorrow so they have somewhere to go. Right now they are in dire need of direction. Maybe these guys will really be like Jack and the Bean Stalk. Maybe they will really grow super fast. I mean, they went from seed to over a foot high in 20 days. What will they do now? Tomorrow can't come soon enough :)
I'm leaving you with the most beautiful thing I've taken a picture of in a long time. I feel like this needs to hang on someones wall or something. This is what happens when you stop watching your garden and simply let it grow. This is what I came home to from South Carolina. Zucchini is about ready to start producing. I hope that the bees do their jobs and if they don't believe me, I'll be out there with my q-tip pollinating this sucker on my own. I've heard that Okra flowers are beautiful. I'll have to wait a while for that. For right now though, this Zucchini flower has made my day.
