apple of my eye

the peas have been hit the hardest out of everything in the garden. they're getting yellow and dry around the base, and something has been eating a lot of holes in the leaves.

but two little flowers have popped out in the last day or two. i gave them one more round of bug spray, so we'll see how it goes.

i have a job! a summer job. but it meets all qualifications: more like play than work. makes a difference in peoples' lives. doesn't involve a desk. paves the way for future employment.

it's at a leadership/college preparedness camp for middle & high schoolers, and i'm going to be the one teaching leadership courses. should be a lot of fun. training starts at the end of may and i'll be done august 2nd.

did it ever get you far

today was a minchy day. all of the little things just added up. i went to bed feeling a little sick, woke up feeling a little more sick. nothing tasted good, the book i started reading was boring/not written well, my hair kept blowing in my face no matter how i pinned it up, these little teeny orange bugs kept biting me, ripley wasn't happy being in or out.

then we had artichokes for dinner which have always been a special treat in our house, and even they didn't taste as good as they should have since i've just felt kind of feverish and nauseous all day. [don't get me wrong though, they were delicious.]
i think it's also a touch of the quarter life crisis. it is crazy how accurate that article is.

anyway, hoping for a better day tomorrow!

with a big smile on my face

the hospital jeff and i were born in gives you a hand-painted baby shoe with all of your stats on it. what a nice thing.

today i drove by the downtown round rock public library and i had nothing to do this afternoon so i decided to go inside and get a library card. i never read books more than once, and i've wanted to read the audacity of hope for a long time.
so i walk to the front desk, there's a man with a bolo tie and a cowboy hat sitting there. [if you're not from texas, let me mention that this is not normal attire for austin, or even most towns with a population over 1,000 people in this state].

megan: hi, i'd like a library card

man: ok, i need proof of residency.. so a water/telephone/utility bill or something with your address on it

me: hmm i might have to come back..

man: let's see if you're in the city limits or if you'd need to pay extra.

so i give him my address in round rock, he looks it up and sees that yes i am in the city limits

me: oh wait, i have my car insurance paper in my car

so i come back with it and hand it to him.

me: they mistyped the zip code, so it says i live in lockhart, but you can see it's the same street address as what you just looked up

guy: sorry, it needs to have 'round rock' printed on the paper

me: you just looked it up on the computer

guy: i'm going to need to call my supervisor

supervisor: what's going on? let me see the paper

me: you can see how they just missed a number.. i'm really not trying to swindle you out of a library card.. but i'd be happy to come back with a water bill or something

the guy looks me up and down, he's in his 30s, kinda nerdy. i bat my eyelashes.

supervisor: i guuuuess i can believe you're not traveling across texas trying to fake us out of library cards, so i'll give it to you

guy: i just thought it needed 'round rock' printed on it.

it was kind of silly. but now i have 3 library books! if you love food, you should read ruth reichl. she is so entertaining. she was the food critic for the NYT for a long time.

tomato chronicles

look what appeared this week! i need to read the tag again on the picture below to see what kind it is.

these are early girl
these are cherry tomatoes
noww i need to find out how to keep bugs off of them. we have 1 casualty so far.

any ideas what these are? i also have a whooole lot of aphids. i'm off to home depot for ladybugs, insecticidal soap and Bt.

BVZ

my great grandma bertie v, who was my mom's dad's mom, is kind of a legend in our family. there are all sorts of stories about her marching to her own drum and how she used to pal around with agnes. in my mind, it's all very ya ya sisterhood. all i remember was how she smelled and that she always seemed to be wearing long silky dressing gowns in bright colors. and her wooden parrot earrings.

every year on her birthday (which is today), my mom and my two aunts wear the jewelry she left them. my mom has her engagement ring. it has a little speck of dirt right in the middle a couple millimeters down.

i was joking that one day i'll tell my fiancé to ask for the family ring when they ask my parents for permission. but i think i will wear it on her birthday. and maybe mine and majjy's too.

garden at 4 weeks

now that we've reached the four week mark with the garden, i have a confession to make. i've tried to grow things before. i've brought home those begonias from HEB and an orchid or two.. and all of them have instantly died. within days of entering my house, they've dropped all of their leaves and wilted.

i didn't want to jinx the garden, so i didn't mention it at the beginning, but i think i might have found my green thumb! except for the week i was in SD, this garden has been solely under my care.. and things are actually growing and i would even use the word thriving.
those are little baby yellow squash!

the tomatoes are getting close. they're all flowering now, so fingers crossed.
the squash is exciting because it's so big/flowery/squashy.. but the peas are getting higher on my list. every day you can see the progress their little tendrils are making as they start to attach to the fence.

still waiting on the zucchini to flower, but it's getting close.

liiiittle baby cucumber. it's an inch or so right now.

we used basil in the pasta salad today!

a la derecha

becca's bridal shower was today in austin for all of the ladies who won't be able to make it to the wedding. lots of moms of friends and teachers from high school were there. it's always fun to see them, but odd to realize it's been 7 years since we were in high school. it often feels like we were just having pool parties and picnic lunches and going to football/soccer/baseball games in giant groups.

i am an amazon, apparently.

this week i made becca's ring pillow and noww i can show the general public since i gave it to her this morning. i think every wedding needs some handmade touches, and becca and i have always been crafty together, so it feels like "us." she sends a handmade valentine every year.

i hadn't embroidered anything since i took a sewing class when i was in 5th grade, so i was a liiiittle nervous to stitch everything, but it turned out fine.

tonight we went to an international music/dance festival thing that benefited a local nonprofit. there were these amaaazing dancers who hoisted themselves 15 or so feet into the air, holding onto two draping pieces of fabric hanging from the ceiling. then they did choreographed dances and sometimes they'd be hanging by their feet or they'd be holding on with one hand and their body was in this graceful pose. it was unreal. and it lasted half an hour. it was a fun night.

p.s. i knoooww the ring pillow has no way to attach the rings at the moment. i experimented with ribbon but it makes it look really country or something so i'm brainstorming. i'm thinking maybe a leaf with a hidden snap or something. it's kind of tricky now that i've sealed/stuffed it.. anyway, if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

three little things

!

andd..
giada had a recipe for squash blossoms today, but they're too pretty and i don't have any goat cheese. :)

then jeff gets home and i go out to tell him to try the quiche i made.. we're chatting..

megan: are you wearing mom's jammie top inside out?

jeff: it isn't inside out, but it is mom's shirt

me: i thought it looked weird. it has a scoop neck!

jeff: i was at tapadero getting something and my shirt was kind of gross so i found this in the laundry room, and it was soft, so i put it on.. but i was in the car driving to school and saw the flowers but i was like 'whatever, i'll rock some flowers today.'

mom: you can't even tell. it just looks like a blue shirt.

jeff: no, it's definitely a feminine shirt. it's kind of delicate looking.

jeff: so i'm standing outside waiting for class and this girl is looking at me funny so i just said to her 'yeah, it's my mom's shirt.' and she said she really liked it, and she wanted to trade shirts. but her shirt was too small. then she wanted to trade pants, but she was wearing really short shorts.

that is my family. you can't make this stuff up.

just something

ow much do we love a good drop cap?! I'm working on a top secret project, but I've been looking at typefaces for the last couple of minutes and stumbled upon a typeface designer who is giving away free drop caps. She's going to make 12 alphabets of them. One letter every [working] day. As Candice Olsen would say, how divine.

headin' for the city lights

we have squash blossoms! they grew overnight. pretty exciting.

i also took gram's advice and tied the peas to the fence. we have no string or twisty ties or anything, so i just used a little bit of ribbon.. which looks pretty silly in pictures but it is ridiculous in person. hopefully they'll take the hint soon and i can cut them free.
i got much needed highlights today. it's hard to tell in this picture, but it seems more blonde overall which is what i was going for. it always takes a couple weeks to settle in. it boggles my mind how stylists are able to remember so many details about their clients. audrey and i always pick up where we left off. she's really nice.
this is before..
voila! once i start feeling reaaallly summery, i'll cut the bottom 4 inches off and it'll seem lighter too.
well the car people called today and told me that my accelerator drum and rod (and something about linkage.. which is apparently bone shaped) need to be replaced. the guys kept calling me 'Miss Megan' because of my email address. maybe i was just in a better mood today, but it didn't bug me as much as yesterday. at least they're going to fix my car.
strawberry freezer jam for breakfast. i don't have the patience to wait for the english muffin to toast so i've just been eating it once it gets warm :X i am so lucky i don't weigh as much as i should based on how much i love food.

you might say hi

what is it about stereotypes? i met an english guy tonight and i couldn't help but ask him about all of my favorite englishy things. this coming from a girl who gets a liiiiittle teeny bit annoyed when someone finds out something about my past and asks the 5 standard questions that always follow.

today was not good. i was driving along one of the very busy highways in austin when i pushed the gas and nothing happened. no acceleration. the pedal went straight to the floor like it wasn't attached to anything. luckily, there was a shoulder, so i kind of coasted over and stopped. i was towed 45 minutes later by the sweetest tow truck man and taken to this place that doesn't have good ratings when you look them up on google. they made fun of me for being a longhorn and then talked to maj and i like we were idiot women.

i understand that women in general don't know a lot about cars. i don't. mom doesn't. but it is so insulting when they say anything along the lines of 'why don't you talk to your dad/husband and get back to us.' i am not incapable of understanding things about cars! i may need a little explanation, but come on.

aside from that, today was lovely. it's patrick's birthday and a bunch of people came out to see him. the bartender at dog and duck knows me by name now and pours my beer while i'm way at the end of the line so i get to skip ahead. that made up for my car woes. good day overall.

hope you like jammin' too

made gram's strawberry freezer jam today. for something you'd imagine to be very complicated, it was surprisingly easy.

strawberry freezer jam is one of the things i always look forward to when visiting gram and spanky. and lately, nothing makes me happier than adding to the compost bucket. we've turned the gaping hole in the garden into a "compost hole." this involves throwing all vegetable matter and lawn clippings into the hole. dad added a bucket of worms. what could possibly go wrong?

the creepiest part of jam actually seeing the amount of sugar that goes into it. 2 cups of berries, 4 cups of sugar. the bowl was filled to the brim.

the english muffins are just waiting on the counter. too bad it won't be done until late afternoon tomorrow.

i just followed the directions on the paper that came with the sure gel.

pour boiling water over all canning pieces and let sit

rinse and mash a quart of berries with a potato masher or food processor

add 4 cups of sugar and let sit 10min

boil 3/4 c of water and add 1 package of sure gel. boil 1 minute

add gel to berries, stir until sugar has completely dissolved

pour into dried off jars

let sit 24 hours at room temp

3 week garden

wooo 3 weeks! it goes clockwise

tomatoes

yellow squash
cucumber
cilantro/basil
the garden!
the yellow squash is starting to get flowers in the middle of it

the peas.. which still don't want to climb. gram said to tie a string to them and train them up the fence. that's on the to-do list this week.
the eggplant needs to be transplanted before it's taken over by the tomatoes
we might compost the cauliflower..
and the basil. the pepper/soap spray didn't do anything.

but yay! we're moving toward vegetables!