Let's start with the garden. This is what it looked like before vacation.
And two weeks later this is what it looks like.
Today I am going to plant wax beans and some more spinach seed and bush bean seeds. A couple days ago Kyle planted a variety of tomatoes, we'll see how those do. My third summer into the Northwest and I've given up most hope of growing them here.
While taking the first photos of the garden I noticed that Orson was playing with something -- almost definitely a mouse or rat. But as I got closer to him I saw that he actually had caught (and killed) a little yellow bird, perhaps a finch? I'm not familiar enough with the birds here.
Handsome devil.
At the end of May Joel and I went down to California for some vacation time. We visited family and some of Joel's friends from college. On our way down we hiked through the Coastal Redwoods because Joel had never seen them. They're amazing even when you have seen them several times, wow! We saw four banana slugs, a mass migration of bugs that looked like inch-long pill bugs, a Steller Jay, and a dead black mole, among many other amazing things.
That night we stayed at a bed and breakfast outside of Humboldt. Joel didn't tell me where we were going to stay, his words were "Do you trust me to find a hotel and not tell you about it?" I was a little apprehensive with that kind of a precursorial statement but he did a splendid job, what a surprise! It was a farm-stay bed and breakfast and the owners were kind and very interesting. We talked about cows a lot and they know the lady who started Cypress Grove Goat Cheeses. These were some of their animals.
Their B&B was located in this valley (and let me tell you, nothing looks better in this light, but I see why people move to California).
Before we got to the farm we stopped in Eureka for a bite to eat at Lost Coast Brewery and these were things we saw on our way through town.
Then we went down to Stockton and saw my family. On our way there the terrain switched from a temperate rainforest to an arid oak savannah.
My parents and brother came up to my grandma's house and the following night we celebrated their 25th anniversary, congratulations guys!
My grandma lives on a lake that has ducks and turtles.
Then Joel and I went to San Francisco and met up with his friend Jake and his girlfriend Danni. The following morning Danni went to work and Jake, Joel and I walked around San Francisco. We went to a bakery and got a delicious sticky, one that rivals no other store-bought sticky bun for greatness. Truly an amazing sticky bun. We did a lot of park sitting and walked a good 6.25 miles around northwestern SF. We also enjoyed some good tourist watching, wherein Joel and I were asked to take photos for some people.
Oh ya, and this is Danielle Steele's house.
And we saw a guerilla park wedding.
All in all it was a good trip and we had a lot of fun. It was nice to see all the wonderful faces we don't get to see nearly enough. Later this month we have the joy of getting to see Joel's parents and some friends in Seattle, hurray! I will also try to continue to upload photos of the garden. Good thing we're growing things that like cool weather, oh summer, I do miss you.
