wide world

i feel like i should have more to say about what went on between thursday and today.. but the delicious pesto jeff and i made with basil from the garden really overshadows everything else. 

we generally followed ina's recipe.. but really we just kept adding basil and olive oil until it looked normal. a handful of parmesan, some toasted pine nuts, a few cloves of garlic. so yum.

this is me trying to keep it away from the flies while we took pictures.

this week i'm watching zach and jill's 3 month old, cate, again. we have some big goals. 1. get out of the house 2. cook an actual meal 3. take a walk every day. i'll keep you posted. 

garden update

do you see what i seee?!

there are one million flowers on the cucumbers right now, but no baby cucumbers in sight.

the cucumbers have made their way up the fence and are now making their way down to the ground on the other side.

so far, knock on wood, no one has taken even one tiny bite out of any of my tomatoes.

the jalapenos have started growing. i think there are 4, but lots of little buds.

same cherry tomato as the top. i aaaaallmost ate him. but last year, we cut our first vegetable (a pea) into sections and split it. so we should probably do that with the tomato.

ten points to whoever knows what causes these trails. is it caterpillars? based on the number of trails vs the absence of caterpillars, i don't really know if it's them or not. i've only picked off 3 so far. maybe it's time to get out the flashlight.

middle of the night research has lead me to a diagnosis of leaf miners of some kind. 

weekend

behold the first yellow crookneck squash from the garden. he was 6 inches long or so. i sauteed and added him to pasta sauce tonight, and it was delicious.

and i know i haven't been super fantastic about uploading garden pictures, but it is still chugging right along. this picture is week 1 and the rest are every 2 weeks or so.

the cat is sleeping on my bed right now and wheezing with every breath. still haven't decided if he can stay. he has a bad habit of waking up in the middle of the night wanting to go outside.

today was interesting. i took a friend to the airport at 4:30AM, came home and slept for a few hours, went back downtown for a dentist appointment, had coffee and a jalapeno and cheddar croissant (not a good idea) with john for half an hour and went straight to yoga. i arrived at 11:58 for the noon class, popped in the studio to unfurl my mat, jogged to the bathroom to change, flinging clothing everywhere. we have a 2 day cold front moving through austin right now which meant more layers than usual this morning.

then i'm in class trying to get situated and calm down as i can feel the cafe au lait i had just downed pounding in my usually decaffeinated veins. as i'm raising and lowering my arms as we get warmed up, i can't get comfortable for some reason. and then i realize that my tank top is on backwards. i fought the giggles as i just grinned like a crazy person for 5 minutes.

so what was a girl to do? i was in the middle of the middle row, directly in front of the instructor. i ended up just ignoring it and hoped no one noticed, but it was just one of those mornings.

it ended up being a very nice day. busy start to a busy couple of weeks coming up.

easter weekend

what a difference a month makes!

i think i mentioned that we tried to dye easter eggs at preschool last week, but we didn't have any vinegar so the only colors that took were pink and purple. so today we're going to do that again as a fam. i love dying eggs.

and last night i went to fogo de chao for a friend's birthday party. a meat extravaganza. and today our fam is also having a meat extravaganza.

happy easter!

ready to run

this was week 2..

and this is 3 weeks (or so) later! yellow squash is against the back wall, tomatoes in the back corner, cucumbers along the fence, herbs in front of that and a tomato plant right by where i was standing. everything is doing well and i've only seen and destroyed oneee caterpillar!

we've been trying to use more herbs out of the garden, so tonight jeff and i tackled ina garten's pesto (more or less). we did as much as we could fit in the mini chopper since someoneeee (it may or may not have been me) talked maj into getting rid of the food processor. whoops. that was before i knew about ina.

we eat salmon during the week while faj is gone because he isn't a big sammy fan.. and it was deeeelicious. so yummy. usually we just do olive oil, salt and pepper, but we decided this is even better. you really need to cook it a little bit though because the garlic is reaaaally intense. we used 3 cloves and you could barely eat it before we added a whole bunch of romano and then let it mellow out on the fish while it was still grilling.

and p.s. congratulations to the o'sullivans on their pregnancy! they started a baby blog if you'd like to follow along. they're still in taiwan.

highway out of town

yippee! new key.

majjy admiring her car while sorting the mail on the day it arrived.

and the first (three.. see the teeny ones under the big one?) tomatoes!

we went to the lake today in the new car. perfect day to be on a jet ski. the water is still pretty chilly though in the 60s. 

garden week 2

 the garden is growing! the squash and cucumbers have grown the most. their big leaves came out.

 i'm just proud that i can tell the difference between a squash plant and a cucumber plant now!

 the soaker hose has had positive and negative consequences. it's nice not to have to stand out there with the hose.. but i wasn't feeling as emotionally attached as i was when i individually watered them. majjy suggested inspecting all of the plants while they're being watered, so i did that today.

 the basil is the only plant so far with any issues. see how the leaves are kind of browning?

 and the squash was getting a little bit wilty.. but it's back to normal after i cut a few more holes in the hose. so far, so good!

garden 2011 part 1

faj and i went to home depot this evening to pick out vegetables for the garden. it was a questionable idea to go without majjy (she was busy and not at home), but i think we did pretty well. we bought mostly the same things as last year, plus a few tomatoes, minus the things that immediately died (coughcauliflowercough). 

 basil is so pretty.

last year was more fun to plant because all of us were helping (that was march 28, by the way.)

tonight jeff took 10 pictures and went somewhere. dad went inside to watch the rest of a basketball game. to be fair, we only had one pair of gardening gloves, and faj has very delicate hands.

the sun went down and we laid the soaker hose out, gave everything a drink and said goodnight to the garden. i'll post pictures tomorrow so we can watch everything grow and grow!