Gardening, Camping and Visiting

Lots has been happening lately but I'll start with the garden. Everything has started to come up really nicely in the lat week. I went away on a camping trip and everything popped open and up! The most impressive is the potato plants.

From:



To:



And our beans went from:



To (not a good representation since its not the same group of plants, these were planted a week later):



And our cucurbits went from these mini things:



To these giants (okay, they're still miniature):



And these are the rest of the vegetables:









Two weeks ago Clara, Kevin and Kelly (Clara's coworker) and I went to Forest Park to look for food. It was a nice really slow hike because we were all looking at the vegetation very closely. I was mostly looking for fiddleheads but we were on the end of the fiddlehead boom (sorry no pictures). Kevin was looking for plants that were related to his thesis. And Kelly and Clara were just looking.

Kevin found a millipede. It smelled like almond extract because millipedes are full of cyanide. Interesting.



We also found a couple of banana slugs.




And some mushrooms that may or may not have been edible but we didn't pick them because we didn't know. I think we totally could have eaten the white ones though.




Lovely honeysuckle.



Then we had to say goodbye to Kellam. He had planned to leave a week before he was finally able to and had to fix up his truck cause the one he was planning on buying ended up having to take a month to fix.

Clara, Kellam and Kevin






Then Alissa and Marie came and visited from Baltimore. Alissa was moving back home in California and they made a road trip out of it and visited us. Then they convinced me to go camping with them so I went with them for two days and then I stopped in at my grandma's and had dinner with her, my Uncle Paul and my cousin Courtney. Then they dropped me off at the train station and then rode until the next afternoon up to Portland. It was a good trip but it was the first time Joel and I have been apart since we've been married (almost 7 months!) and so I missed him a lot but it was a good time.





Then we went to the Hoyt Arboretum and hiked around a bit.










Then we went home and Joel made a delicious chicken! Joel is definitely the master chicken cooker at our house.






Camping trip! We met Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox.





Lovely flowers at our campsite. We stayed at McKericher State Park 3 miles north of Ft. Bragg, CA.







The ride to the campground. I was sitting in the back of the truck so there are some weird glares in some of the pictures.






Then we set up camp and made some delicious hamburgers.






The next day we walked to Ft. Bragg along the ocean. It was beautiful. Alissa and I, both from California originally, were astounded by the clear blue glass of the sea -- it's never that clear or blue! And Marie had never been to the Pacific Ocean so she went swimming in it even though it was *really* cold.










Deer hooves on the beach?




Other things not at the ocean.










And baby harbor seals!