I'm in the shower this morning. I hear the bathroom door open.
"Mama! Another guy is coming to shower with youuuuu!" calls out a little sing-sing voice, with full expectation that this will delight me to no end.
And an already-naked little Silas pulls back the shower curtain and jumps right in to play.
We did not have an abundance of lettuce this year in the patio planters, but we had enough to harvest a few times. The last salad ended being a bunch of tomatoes topped with chopped lettuce instead of vice versa:
I went to a cooking demo at Whole Foods and the instructor gave us a recipe for a DELICIOUS salad dressing that is also super healthy. Just combine the following in a blender and whirl away (the following amounts lightly dress a salad for 4 adults; play with the proportions to suit your taste):
- citrus juice (I use about 5 T of whatever I have on hand)
- balsamic vinegar (I use about 5 T)
- salt (I use a pinch)
- avocado (half of a Florida - if you use a Haas, increase the other liquids a bit)
A five inch baby pineapple is growing up in the pineapple plant in a patio contaner. And I bought a ceramic container decorated with birds from Home Depot and added portulacas that were on sale for 50 cents each (which are actually native to Uruguay, Argentina, and southern Brazil) (also called purslane and moss rose). Silas transplanted those and they are thriving on the front porch where they receive the morning sun, but are shaded from the dreadful afternoon sun that kills everything in its path during the summer.
I planted another of those 50 cent annuals (dahlberg daisy) in one of my terrariums...
... but it died shortly thereafter. Needed more direct sun, I suppose. The coral we found at the beach last year - looks pretty cool in the terrarium - but still searching for plants that do well in there.
In the last couple of months, we've transplanted a couple of the lychee trees from a planter (where they have been growing from seed for nearly a year - they are the slowest growing plants ever) into the backyard. So now we have two mango trees (one has tripled in size over the last two years since we bought/planted it and the other has grown twice as much as that) and two lychees (both still a foot tall, but hanging in there).
foreground: lychee background: 2 mangos
NOTE: As you can see, I'm changing up my blog a bit... in the process, I've come across a few posts that were written as drafts, but never published. Here's one, from when Jonah was two:
For well over a year – ever since Jonah started to walk in and out of elevators by himself – Jonah has not been a big fan of The Closing Door. Having the mass of a small rodent, Jonah doesn’t register on the elevator’s safety radar – he’s nearly been smooshed a few times (in his mind anyway). In fact, one of his first complete sentences was, “The door was trying to close on me!”
Closing in on three years of age, it was time for Jonah to confront the Closing Door Phobia once and for all. We did some assertiveness training – boldly holding up his arm toward the elevator door so it would retreat and he could pass. Shrieks of fear time and time again.
But I made him do it a couple of times each elevator trip for a few days. About a week later he began proactively jumping in front of everyone when the door opened, holding it with both hands and full body weight until everyone was in and out. He takes it very seriously.
A few months later, he still does.
I just made a nice little Turkish coffee.
No sugar.
But needs a little milk.
