garlic braids

I've been wanting to try my hand at braiding garlic for some time now. I finally got around to doing that tonight. It was pretty easy and looks cool so I think I'm going to do that with all of the garlic from my garden (and the onions, too).

My garden is doing pretty well this year. The potato plants look better than they ever have in past years. I'm hoping that means I'm going to get a good harvest. I'm trying a few new things this year, watermelon being one of them. I have a couple of tiny watermelons growing. I hope they turn into something.

The only negatives to note are the eggplant and carrots. Something is eating the eggplant leaves--I do not think the plants are going to survive. As for the carrots, every year I have to plant carrots twice. They never seem to come up the first time. This year, I got them in the ground late. By the time I decided that the seeds were not going to sprout, it was too late to reseed. I'm going to be disappointed in the fall--picking carrots is one of the fun things about gardening. I guess there are a couple of them growing out there, but it's not going to be the same as picking 10 pounds of carrots.

The cucumbers are doing especially well, too. I think we're going to have a bumper crop this year. Coincidentally, Brian and I have started canning this summer, so pickles are on the upcoming schedule. I'll have more on canning in a future blog post...

salt

We drank Margaritas while watching Salt, coincidentally enough. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a fan of Angelina Jolie action movies. This movie wasn't as bad as Wanted, but I could have thought of a better way to spend 90+ minutes.

drizzle in the valley

The weather was not ideal for this year's Thunder in the Valley, but we managed to go downtown a couple of times (albeit without the bikes). Thursday night, we caught half of a set from the Eric Tessmer Band. I could have listened to them all night. The band was great, but the guitarist was phenomenal.

We took Friday off, as is our custom and we went downtown in the afternoon and walked around for a bit. Saturday, having seen all there was to see, we simply went for a ride on our bikes. Next year, I think we need to branch out and check out Windber Rumbles.

poor alice

Alice had to have some lumps removed (5 to be exact). Poor dog. She's doing well. Though, she's not allowed to go on walks or anything for two weeks.

Prior to her surgery, the vet did some routine bloodwork. Everything was good except her triglycerides. They were 1,500. They're supposed to be in the 70-100 range. So, I guess you could say they are a little elevated. Sigh. The first thing we need to do is put her on low fat dog food. Of course the prescription stuff from the vet has the lowest fat in it, so I'm going to buy a bag of that to start. I'm hoping I can find something at Petco that is comparable. Beyond that, I'm not sure what can be done. I'm assuming there's probably a pill for this, but it's not like she needs to be on any more pills.

While she was out, the vet also cleaned her teeth. I noticed that she cut her toenails too (that one was a freebie). I think this particular visit may have wrapped up the financing for the Law wing of Richland Veterinary Hospital.

fushing feefs

So, I was all excited the other week because my fruit trees were bearing fruit. I went to the trouble of ordering nylon footies to put on each piece of fruit so that they would not get eaten by bugs. One day recently, I noticed one of the nylon footies in the driveway. I assumed it must have blown off the tree. Another day, I noticed one in the yard. By this point I was pretty curious, so I took a look at the trees to find that almost all of the fruit is GONE. There's maybe one peach and one apple left. I have to assume the birds stole all of my fruit, but the jury is still out on that one. My neighbor informed me that a gang of chipmunks has been hanging around my garden during the day, so they are suspects as well.

predator

This was a novel by Patricia Cornwell. I've read some of her stuff in the past and it was ok, but I just could not get into this book. I was trying to slog through it because I got the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel for Mother's Day and was anxious to start reading it. Still, it took me over a month to read. But, I finally finished it yesterday. By the time I got to the end, I didn't even know what was going on. I'm sure I'm not going to have any of these issues with the book I'm reading now.

black swan

Cripes. I've been so busy I haven't had time to blog about this movie, which we watched last Friday. Saturday we had a wedding and Sunday Jake had a belated birthday pool party with his friends at my in-laws' pool. Beyond that, we have been spending time at the office (painting the exterior) and doing some odds and ends at a rental house we bought two weeks ago. So, it's not like I have been busy or anything...

Anyway, I found this movie to be a disappointment. It sounded like it would be right up my alley, so I was careful to not pay attention to all of the hype surrounding it. However, for a thriller, it was not thrilling enough. I guess the overall premise was clever, but I just wasn't into it. Interestingly enough, Brian managed to stay awake through the entire movie (and I'm sure that didn't have anything to do with the gratuitous lesbian sex scene that was part of the film). He liked the movie, by the way.

real birthday

My birthday started off on a bad note. I was outside doing a few things and I got stung by a wasp. But, thanks to Jake's quick fingers, we found a couple of remedies to try and one of them worked. We tried onion, baking soda paste, ice, and Tylenol. I'm putting my money on the ice and Tylenol, but who knows?

After that, things improved. Brian grilled up some food and we had lunch outside on the patio. It was a pretty nice day. For presents, I received more canning stuff (namely a canning cookbook and a pressure canner). I spent a good chunk of time that evening going through the cookbook and picking out recipes. We even ran to the hardware store to pick up some canning jars. Hopefully we'll get to can something in the next couple of weeks--I can't wait to try it!

megamind

This was a pretty good film, for a cartoon. Will Ferrell did the voice for the title role and he was totally excellent. All three of us enjoyed it. Sadly, Brian fell asleep halfway through (I don't remember the last time he made it through a movie, though).

fruit

I planted some fruit trees last year (apple, peach, and cherry). I didn't get any fruit from them last year, but this year, there are little fruitlings on all of the trees. The peach and apple have a decent amount of fruit on them, but there are like three cherries on the cherry tree. I guess I won't be making cherry pie.