Recent Photos





We (F, J, our visiting-from-Australia friend S, and I) took a hike in Redwood Regional Park, and climbed Redwood Peak, hoping for a great view. It was a nice climb, and the redwoods were nice and cool, but the view was not so much of a vista, really, as the peak was densely forested.

Just before we left, Justin decided he needed a haircut so he wouldn't look like a hobbit in his new hat, which is not even featured in any of the pictures. Next time!

Pobala Persimmon Tree






Advice, anyone?

Just to be clear, these pictures represent two fallen branches. The skinny one that is still attached in the picture has been cut off below the cut. The other one is still as shown here.

Meandering through the Pastures of the Past

Unearthed many treasures and nostalgia triggers in boxes that have been stored in my parents' barn since at least 1998.

A few highlights:






Cornhusk dolls: These are some of the folks who lived in my dollhouse. My mom made the man and the baby, I think.
Answering machine: My sister says that we were the first people she knew with an answering machine and this was it.
Diorama of flower fairy: This was not for school, but the kind of thing a kid like me did for fun. Originally there were dried and pressed daffodil flowers as part of this I think, but they had long since crumbled and fallen away.
My first knitted projects: a bag/purse, a bear, a lion.
Pegasus: yes, this was mine.
Macrame: my mom made this and I think it's great. It definitely speaks from a certain era, doesn't it?
Apache roadster: I don't actually have any memories of this, but I'm guessing it was my older brother's.

More in another post.

Yard and Garden update

Poor neglected blog, usurped by the promiscuous and seductive facebook...

Garden report: Justin made great croquettes last night with squash, beets, onions, garlic, garbanzo flour, egg. Wish I could say the eggs were from our chickens, but we don't have the chicken area set up yet, alas.

Crookneck squash, green beans, spaghetti squash (some of which we've been harvesting young and eating raw), beets (pretty much done now, until the ones I just planted are ready), a few very delicious sungold cherry tomatoes. The rest of the tomato plants (and there are a lot of them!) are laden with various shapes and sizes of heirloom tomatoes, all still green, but looking ready to change color at any minute. We ate our first pears yesterday, and I just ate a wee but ripe apple! Cactus pads (nopales) are always available, and there are a few flowers now, and I'm looking forward to some tuna (prickly pears; beles in Tigrinya).

Roses are blooming, and coreopsis, and some mallow and sweet peas and mexican primrose and yarrow. Sunflowers getting close, and some other things which I won't be able to identify until they bloom. Some flowers that were coming up all over the place (in and outside of beds) that I had left because I thought they were calendulas have finally bloomed, and although they are yellow and pretty enough, they don't look like calendulas unless they're a different variety than I've ever seen.

I radically pruned 4 camellia bushes in front, in hopes that they will grow back with a more open and natural shape (as opposed to rectangles with dense surfaces). We'll see how that works out! Here's a picture of the pruning in process.