it's august already? really?

Wow, how did that happen? Seems like one day you're welcoming the end of school and summer's start and then you blink your eyes and the school clothes & supplies are nearly sold out.

My kids actually have about a month of freedom left. Summer school is finished and we have a couple of weeks "to kill" until the end of August when we will enjoy two weeks of very welcome R&R.  So until those vacation weeks creep up on us, we'll busy ourselves with school shopping and then trying to soak in some fun from the lazy hours when we're not.

Fun at a family bbq

We had notice from Southern California Edison that tomorrow is finally "the day" - they will be coming into the neighborhood to replace old equipment and the power may be out as long as 10 hours. Sure hope that is a "worse case scenario" time frame and that it doesn't really take all day.

Formerly a garden path, now zucchini extension

I'm also hoping the contractors don't trample the garden too much. When I placed it way back in the corner by the phone/power pole I thought that I was leaving plenty of room for access to the pole. But being the newbie gardener that I am, I didn't anticipate how much the plants would overflow their beds and how much bulging they would do into the walkways. The zucchini in particular has completely overtaken one of the paths (the one, in fact, that is the direct route to the pole). Hopefully the workers will tread lightly, or navigate up the other (open) path. But I'm not counting on it. Sigh. Well, at least the zucchini was already showing signs of slowing down. That makes me feel less bad about it taken a possible beating.

Speaking of the garden (I don't need much invitation to launch into that topic), July was an awesome month. Finally after weeks of carefully tending and waiting on my plants, they were finally rewarding me with goodness to cook & eat. I haven't had to buy tomatoes in a full month. And my tomatoes are oh so yummy - often (tho not always) better than what I can buy at the market. I've had beans and cucumbers and eggplant and peppers and herbs. I couldn't be happier.

Slim pickings!

I'm wiser this side of my gardening venture, too. I learned that for the joy of a wider variety of plants, I sacrificed volume. So, my little harvests are actually a little funny if you see them on a daily basis. They might consist of a couple of tomatoes, a handful green beans, and a cucumber or two. Never enough to be considered a "bounty". That's also due in part to my small beds. I've got two 4' x 4' beds and one 18" x 6' bed. After I finished setting up my garden I read that a small garden should include about one 4' x 4' bed per person in the family. So, mine is actually less than "small" I guess. It was a good way to find out what was manageable for me, however.

Sunflowers!

An exciting garden development in the past week include the blooming of all my sunflower plants. I find it so amazing that these towering giants started as small seeds a relatively few weeks ago. Wow.

Cornstalk tassels!

I'm also excited to see tassels on my corn stalks. Corn was an afterthought and I planted it kind of late in the season. The oh-so-sunny spot I picked in spring has become very shady as the surrounding plants have filled out (especially the heirloom tomatoes and the adjacent orange tree). Perhaps the corn is suffering from lack of sun. Some stalks are stunted and overall the corn has been very slow to grow. At this point I'm not too hopeful for abundance and will settle for a sweet delicious ear or two.

The sound of the gal working on the chain gang

My summer garden has at any rate given me the confidence (despite my war with the aphids and the battle against powdery mildew) to expand it a little bit. I'm working on clearing a very nasty patch of thatchy weeds posing as grass near my trashcan and compost service area near my garage. I posted on Facebook that I feel like I'm on a chain gang or working for a quarry because this patch is  embedded with large stones that seem to be everywhere! Just when I think I've removed the last one, I find more. They're not too easy to get out of the ground. Years of sitting there untouched has allowed them to sink very stubbornly into the clay like soil and the thatchy weedy grass growing over them hasn't helped either. I'm not sure how many hours of hard physical labor I'll have to put into this patch before it is suitable for planting. Hopefully, my little squash seedlings can stay alive until I'm done.

Mystery bulbs

The last to post about is mystery bulbs. I just planted lots of them into pots after finding several different types in the oddest places in our yard. I think I know what most of them are (paperwhites and lilies), but not 100% sure. So now they're in pots and I'm hoping I can keep them in good shape until it is time for them to bloom. Once I'm sure of what is what, I can put them into permanent homes around the yard. I like what one of my friends posted on my Facebook wall: "Mysteries are often the best thing! Once I found a bulb in my yard, in a house we bought that only bloomed now and then. What a treat when it did!" I'm looking forward to my mystery bulb treat.

lazy days of summer

After lots of uncharacteristically cool summer days, our real summer finally hit town this past week -- with a vengeance. The weather reports on the nightly news warned of monsoon effect and hot, hot days but I'm not sure any amount of words could have prepared me for what was on our way. Muggy, muggy, muggy. And hot.

And as if the sudden blast of extreme heat with no buildup wasn't enough, we had an extreme power outage on Friday. Yeah, well the power grid can only take so much, I guess. This is the part that makes me scratch my head... we were doing our part to keep the utility usage low. Trying to get by w/o any a/c and using just a couple of electric fans. Come to find out that one of the neighbors had gone out of town and left the central air on for the dog. Well, in the end we all suffered like dogs. Power was out for eight hours. We finally escaped the miserable sauna usually known as our house at around 5pm (up until then I was held captive with a flat tire). When DH got home we hopped in the car and took off for places well-cooled.

When we got home after 10pm, power was still off (it ended up being off for about 8 hrs --came back on after 1am). We brushed teeth by candlelight, opened all the windows, threw all the covers off the beds, and tried to get some shut-eye.

Things are a little cooler today. We're in the high 90s and feeling comfortable.

the unofficial start of summer

Well, school is nearly out here where we live. The kids have less than two weeks to go until the glorious start of summer vacation.

There is something so invigorating about the change of seasons. I'm already excited about our summer plans which will include a couple of mini "real" vacations (ie time away from home), but also other events that make summer what it is (Hollywood Bowl, the beach, etc.).

One of the things I'm really looking forward to is seeing my first real vegetable garden grow and mature. (That was what the change from winter to spring did to me - inspired the start of a garden!) Today my square foot garden is a month old.

I've grown a few vegetables in the past, mostly herbs and peppers in pots, and of course the obligatory tomatoes. I've done a large floral cutting garden and tended fruit trees, but raised bed vegetables is a totally new adventure. It's been a lot of work, but totally worth the time and effort. So far, we've enjoyed sprouts from thinned salad greens & radishes, a few herbs, and then baby greens and then some radishes. I think the next thing that'll make it to the table will the tomatoes. We've got a few beauties that are just getting bigger and more enticing with every passing week. The zuchini, yellow squash and eggplants all have had blossoms on them so hoping to see some fruit growing on those plants soon too.

Here is a little week-by-week peek at how the garden goes and grows over the first month...

Spot chosen, raised bed kit ready to be assembled

Week 1
The site I chose was a mostly bare spot in the northwest corner of the yard. Last fall, we had removed some "pretend" trees (they were those volunteer/suckers that come up without rhyme or reason, but these had been let go long enough that they'd grown into something of a forest). What I like best about this spot is that it is a pretty sunny spot, and there was very little grass to be removed. The bonus: a garden would help disguise that eyesore of a phone pole. I decided to use the two existing orange trees as my boundary markers.

 Beds in place, grass removed

Building the kits was a snap - no sweat! That was because I handed the job off to the fellas. They even made some noise about removing the grass in my little plot too. In fact, DH made a half-hearted start at the job, but after he lost interest in the project, I took over. It wasn't much grass, but oy! That was a lot of physical labor for an out-of-shape gal like me. (See the piles of grass to the right of the sprinkler - not much, but it felt like a mountain when I was done!)

Plants in beds - hooray!

Next came the dirt and getting the poor little plants into the beds. I had made the (mostly bad) decision to buy small plants before the beds were completed thinking it would motivate us all to get it done. It took real effort to keep those little babies alive while they waited for their new home, but I guess they did do their job of keeping me busy at getting the beds done. By the time I took the pic above I'd placed most of the tomatoes (heirlooms in big pots at back, Romas & Beefsteak in bed at left). I'd also transplanted the peppers (hot ones in bed at left, sweet ones in bed at right) and the squash and a honeydew (bed at right).

The garden is a week old!

Week 2
Not much changed in the first week, except that I added some marigolds after learning that they help with bug control. Oh, and a trellis for the melons to grow up. At this point, I'd sowed some salad greens, radishes, beans, green onions, carrots, and watermelon from seed directly into the bed, as well as starting some seeds into a seed "nursery". Even though I knew the seeds in this bed would sprout in time and the other seedlings from the "nursery" would need to be transplanted to these beds, it was very difficult to resist the urge to go out and buy more plants to make my little beds look more ... gardenish. I'll be the first to admit it - I'm not a very patient girl. I was really eager to see my garden in a more flourishing state. But it took all my self-discipline to not give in to the urge and instead I directed my energies to other things that needed doing, like getting the other pots & planters filled and finishing the mulch walkway.

The seed "nursery"

Here are some of the plants I started from seed. Using an egg carton to start seeds in was a *BIG* mistake. Not only was it next to impossible to keep moist, it was a bear to get the plants out of. The little cells are just too short and are an awkward shape. Plus some of the seedlings had embedded their roots right into the fiber of the carton. I was so worried I was killing the delicate little plants as I pulled them out.

 Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers (mine aren't)

This is about 2 weeks after the beds went in - finally, some gratification! (You can see the little pepper blossom getting ready to enter the world, can't you?) And below the first of the tomatoes.

Heirloom tomato twins - can't wait to have a taste

These are from a plants found at Costco. They were in a three-pack and were reasonably priced and all of them larger than any of the other tomato plants I'd picked up at Home Dept. Plus they were HEIRLOOMS - how could I pass them up? Wish, I'd done more research on these 'maters before planting them, though. As far as I can tell, I planted the most vigorous grower of the group in the smallest of my three big pots.

 The garden at 2 weeks old

Week 3
Another week passes and week 3 begins. The seed-sown-directly-in-beds has emerged. The surfaces of the beds look a bit greener, don't they? By this time, I'd gotten a little further on my mulching too. My hubby has added some of that plastic lawn edging to keep the lawn out of the beds. Hopefully between, that and the mulch I won't have much to yank from the ground. We ran out of edging and mulch around the same time, so that was a work-in-progress.

 The garden is 3 weeks old now

Week 4
By the start of week 4, I've nearly finished the mulch walkways (still waiting on hubby to finish the last of the edging.). The walkways are covered in rubber mulch and I just LOOoooove the way they feel under my shoes - nice and cooshey. Very comfortable to walk and work on.  I've also picked up a couple of arched trellises (or is that trelli? or is it trololo?) When I drew up my garden plan, I'd always planned to do flower beds against the two block walls. My first plan was to just plant directly into the ground with some bender board to separate the "beds" from the walkways. But I changed my mind (woman's prerogative, ya know), and decided on raised beds. There aren't kits for the sizes I wanted so it was time to put the boys to work again. (Phase I: convincing them to help!)

During the interval between these last two pics, I'd also picked up a dwarf lime tree (so I now have two fruit trees waiting to be transplanted since I'd also picked up a dwarf pear at Costco when I got those tomatoes). Also, I've added the last of the tomato plants to some planters. I put cherry tomatoes in one of the red planters and "Early Girl" in the other. The wooden planter has two "Better Boys" with some basil. Oh, and I transplanted herbs and started some more salad greens in plastic planters.

The garden is a month old! Look how big the heirlooms are

Week 5
This is the most recent pic of the garden. Notice the new beds along the block walls? They are taller than my veggie beds and thank goodness because I had forgotten how deeply one needs to plant gladiola bulbs. I had just enough room. The guys did an awesome job on my new beds - I love them!

Also, I didn't go with all flowers. My friend Allison started a garden recently too, and after seeing what all she'd planted, I decided to devote one of the new beds to corn. I have to admit I was a little afraid of growing corn and it wasn't even something I'd considered early on. (I wanted to start with easy stuff that I could be sure to succeed with.) But why not be a little adventurous? What's the worse that can happen? I'm out a few seeds (not even a dollar's worth) and the cost of water and I come out wiser (hopefully) on the other side. Today, I noticed that lots of the corn is peeking up through the soil so that's a good start, I guess.

Here are some close ups of the month old garden space:

Hangin' with my gnomie

The start of a honeydew (I hope)

Ichiban eggplant blossom

Long flower bed for hollyhocks, coneflower, cosmos & glads

Small flowerbed for fragrant flowers & cosmos

 

 Corn, beans, cucumbers & squash - 3 sisters and a stepsister

 Looking out from the inside

Well, in the words of the immortal Porky Pig, that's all folks. Hope ya'll have a great summer! (that last part is all me.)

viva las vegas

The landscape is always changing here in Vegas

Here we are again having another Vegas vacation. See, the thing is DH has to come anyway since this is part of his sales territory. He's usually here for 2-3 days every month. And well... we just can't resist tagging along during summer. Something we just can't resist about a stay in a nice hotel with maid service, a/c, cable, a spectacular pool, etc. etc.

We're at the MGM Signature Suites again and would you believe we are in the same exact room as last year? This place is a trio of towers each with over 30 floors and who knows how many rooms on each floor so what are the odds we'd end up in the exact room we occupied last August? (I'm inclined to believe they put us here intentionally.) Anyway, it has made us feel quite "at home".

DH is working today, so the kids and I are kicking back until it gets cool enough to go down to the pool. Might go see a movie today too if there is anything appealing. Yesterday we made our obligatory trek to the Peppermill Restaurant (it's a must-stop for us --we might even have to go again once more before we leave). We kicked around town for awhile before coming back to float around the MGM's lazy river.

Summertime and the living is easy!

not gonna do it

I'm not very good at taking self-portraits

I was debating about whether I should do one of those long rambly "catch-up" posts that seem to be my m.o. lately, but decided against it. Instead, I'll just post a bunch of photos and give you this short & sweet "readers digest" condensed edition of the past month. One unplanned thing that happened is that our family got hit pretty hard by a flu bug. My daughter missed the whole last week of school and had to be picked up early from her Knott's Berry Farm field trip. How sad was that? Missing all the fun stuff that you wait for all school year!

Being sick also meant that we missed two days of our annual district convention. This was especially disappointing because it was an international convention with delegates coming in from other countries. But, thankfully we were able to make it for Friday & Saturday of the program.

So on to the month in photos (I got a new camera right after our day at Knott's so I've been having fun trying to learn to use it)...

My nephew's promotion ceremony - he's a middle schooler now!

Knotts Berry Farm

My sweetie was so sick - had to leave Knott's early

Me and my sis

Our boys

The Long Beach Arena - get a look at that beautiful blue sky!

Love having the big screen for a better view

My little sweetie feeling much better

A great crowd

Banners in the lobby for each language group

A pair of lovelies

During the lunch break

Me still sick w/bronchitis, but it doesn't show in the pics

A couple of little Korean cuties

The stage in the Japanese convention hall

Loved seeing all the beautiful kimonos

Love the contrast of the beautiful Korean dresses in the middle of this shot

Breakfast at Millie's

Me & Tiffany at the Table

Our squaky new lorakeet neighbors

A bubbies fish

They tried to hide, but there is no escaping my camera!

Surprise!

Grillmeister Steve

Uncle T

Max

Cath

Cari

John

He's not driving yet, but it's looming on the horizon for sure

Group pic

Max & Tim

Totem pole at the San Dimas Nature Center

Woodpecker hanging around San Dimas Canyon Park

Finished this embarrassingly late, but here's my Friendship Soup sample

Lunch with Kris (she's moving to CO - sniff)

Some of my fave pics from the VVDC dress rehearsal on 7/9 (more pics here)
this is Celina warming up for "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friends"

Another shot from Diamonds

Love this pic of the boys - album cover style

Another fun pic from the boys' performance

... and one more - they make me think of ska bands of the 80s here

Well, that's all for now. Just a bunch of pics to remind me what I did over my summer vacation -lol.