Misc Photos

This morning I stopped by the lake and took a few quick shots right after sunrise. The geese were annoyed, so all the pictures show is their rear end swimming away. But it was beautiful and peaceful. And really early.

And Merlin has a girlfriend now. They are inseparable and so sweet together. Seeing them sleeping with one arm over each other is so commonplace that I rarely take pictures. That, and by the time I find my camera, they've changed position or gotten up to help me look for it. I guess... I don't know what they are doing half of the time. But what I do know is that they've FINALLY calmed their little butts down. I guess adding a lady to the mix settled them. Plus the main culprit is at the end of his cute-yet-terribly-annoying kitten stage and now spends most of his time sleeping like a good little partner.

Oh they still make a couple laps around the room here and there, but it's not the crazed incessant chasing it used to be. Plus (and this is a BIG plus), neutering Merlin somehow redirected his bathroom habits to the place they should have been all along. Thank. God.

So it turns out adding one more actually turned the world right-side up again. The kittens we were surprised with also all found homes, as well as the rest of the original pack outside (Merlin's two sisters). A friend of ours was looking for cats to bring to his farm to help control his mouse population, so we loaded up our little pack of hunters last night and delivered them to their new home. A happy ending all around.

In non-feline news, the boys collected some of their allowance money they've been saving and made a trip to the store this morning to purchase the new Lego Harry Potter Wii game. And I can't say they haven't earned every bit of it. They've been great little helpers lately - drying dishes, pulling weeds, picking up sticks out of the yard. We've all been pulling together to help keep things going while I've been working this extra job. This morning was my last day, so even though the horizon is shaping up to be pretty crazy, for now we all get a well deserved reprieve.

I have to hurry. The next game of Uno is about to start.

Lately the cool thing about the aging progression of the children is that we get to watch better movies together (not that I don't still miss the simplicity of Thomas at times), do more dangerous things, and even play real board games. So, instead of sitting through a rambling, incoherent, cheating version of Chutes and Ladders, our latest conquest has been Monopoly.

Oh, there's still cheating, but at least I'm getting better at hiding it.

We're currently about 5 hours into a game of Pokemon Monopoly. Which, yes it has to do with kids cartoons, but the board and the game are standard, if you can overlook that the 'properties' are different mystical Japanese fighting creatures. It works to my favor though, since they make trades based on how cool the character is.

This is the first time I'm making them play by all the Monopoly rules, taking the opportunity to practice counting money. We'll play an hour in the evening, then put our respective pieces, money and properties into baggies so we can pick up the next day.

Today though, we're working on our Star Trek Uno skills. Alex has played it before with his grandma, so we have to be patient whenever Brent loudly scoffs and snickers as he lays his blue Draw 2 card on a red 3. He can put down the right card 10 times in a row, then seems to reverse his strategy and de-evolve where the rules are concerned. Mostly because he loves to make us draw extra cards.

At the end of the last game (I won, by the way!) Alex asked if we wanted to play the dangerous round. Brent seemed on board with it, so I asked what that entailed. Evidently, if I heard it right over the squeals of excitement, the Dangerous Round is where you have to play quickly, so that your hands don't get burned by lava when you reach for a card. Also, piranhas jump up and take the cards out of your hand, then spit back out a new card. I'm not sure how all that fits into the rules, but it sounds way too intense for a game of Uno.

Wish me luck...I have a unnatural fear of piranhas already.

Yes, I do more than gardening. But it's easier to photograph than the boys since the subject sits still.

And, though I probably won't post pictures of every harvested food item, I did want to document, mostly for me, how much healthier and stronger the garden is this year.

This is an overall view of the main garden

I decided for an experiment to let the sunflowers grow where they popped up. Though I did transplant a couple (whose fate remains to be seen, as they didn't like it too much). I figure they'll provide a little shade in the afternoon for some of the tomatoes.

Plums

Pear

Zucchini

Deformed looking pepper (Thanks, moles...)

Blackberries

Blueberries (now devoid of a blue one once Brent saw it)

Grapes

Spinach

Peas

Lettuce

Believe it or not, these are CHERRY tomatoes

Beans

Purple sage

Mint

Chamomile

Basil