The Bountiful Garden

The garden really exploded this year--perhaps because this was the best summer any of us can remember? Plenty of sunny, warm days and the warmest nights I've ever experienced in Seattle. It really was remarkable. We also doubled the size and number of garden beds, and had fantastic crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, squash, chard, kale, beans, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, spinach, peas, and hops. We had our best pepper crop ever (but still only about 10 peppers) but the broccoli, corn, basil, and other herbs were just mediocre. We definitely have more to learn in that department!

Best of all, the garden produced heavily all the way into early October.

Lochlan's 1st Day of Preschool

Lochlan is attending Fremont Community School again this year and he seemed much more confident and happy on the first day this time around. It's a great place for him and he's made several new friends. Unfortunately, he had a pretty serious crash at school last week and knocked out one of his front teeth! We took him to the pediatric dentist immediately, but they were not able to save it. So the microman will have a little Alfred E. Neuman vibe going on for the next, oh, 3 years or so. Sigh.

Liam is Six

Yes, Liam's birthday was about a month and a half ago--but it's been a busy time! Here are some shots from the party. He chose Woodland Park as the setting, invited a bunch of his buddies from school and the neighborhood (unfortunately a lot of them were out of town), and chose 'boggarts' as the theme for his party. A boggart is a mythical creature that can assume the form of any creature, object, vehicle--pretty much any noun. We weren't really sure how to work that theme, but Amy did some research and came up with some great ideas: masks for all the kids to impersonate various animals, and boggart charades--we worked together to come up with a list of fun nouns for the kids to impersonate. Since most of the kids can't read yet, we made photo cards for each object, each kid picked a card, pretended to be what he/she saw, and the other kids had to guess.

We also had a pinata (shaped like a parrot, of course), played duck-duck-goose, and the party favors were all magic tricks, in keeping with the mischievous nature of boggarts. The Wolverine cake and ice cream were delicious, and a good time was had by all.

Hard to believe Mr. Little Guy is growing up so fast!

Hops!

Last year I planted two Cascade hops plants in our backyard, and this spring I planted rhizomes for 3 more Cascades, 1 Chinook and 1 Centennial. The vines grew well, particularly the two oldest, but we also got substantial production from two of this season's Cascade vines. In total, I think I harvested about 6.5 pounds of hops (this total is approximate because although I was fairly meticulous about weighing towards the beginning of the harvest, other pressing matters prohibited me from weighing every bag that came through the door). We borrowed a food dehydrator from one of the Seattle Farm Co-op members, I dried the hops, and froze them. Last week I brewed my first batch of beer with the dried hops, the results should be testable within about 3 weeks.

On the Importance of Swimming

I realized the other day how misrepresentative of our daily lives our photo collection is. We tend to photograph the unusual, infrequent, exotic, and celebratory, while neglecting the events, hobbies and pasttimes that consume most of our lives (how many people take pictures of themselves washing dishes, or folding laundry?) This got me thinking about swimming. Since Amy taught me how to swim properly--as opposed to the I'm-not-really-going-to-drown style of swimming I excelled at previously--it has been an absolutely critical part of my life. I swim 2-3 times a week, and it provides exercise, meditation, and a remarkable transformation of my state of mind. Above all, it is where I solve problems and puzzle through personal conundrums, but not by thinking about them overtly. The solutions tend to come in a state of consciousness I think of as "swim thoughts" a sort of thinking-without-thinking. It's hard to describe to non-swimmers; but I've heard runners refer to something called"the zone" which I think is quite similar.

In any event, today I actaully brought the camera and took a picture of the pool I swim in so frequently. One of these days I will get someone to take a picture of me swimming in the pool, but today I felt like it would be kind of weird and imposing to ask my fellow swimmers. In any event, here is where I spend a lot of quality time--my lane is the farthest on the right.

Liam's 1st Day at Kindergarten

Liam had his first day of kindergarten today! Here are some photos from the momentous occasion. Each 'K Kid' was assigned one or two 2nd or 1st graders to be their buddies for the day. The K Kids were met at the gate by their buddies, holding signs with the K Kids' names on them. The photo of Liam and Lochlan together (which is a bit blurry) was taken right after Loki spontaneously gave his bro a huge hug--unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to capture that--and you can see Liam nervously clasping his hands. In the 'Liam heading in' photo, the woman in white is his teacher, and the girl to Liam's left in the stripey shirt is one of his buddies. Liam actually had two buddies, both girls, and he entered the school with one on each arm. It was very cute. He had a fantastic day, and really seems to love the school.

Dinner from the Garden

Dinner from the garden tonight. Chard, kale, spuds, green beans, & tomatoes--Yum!

Sailing

I've been fascinated with sailing for years, and we even signed up for a keelboat sailing class last year--which was unfortunately canceled. So this year, Amy bought me a sailboat for Father's Day. Since then I've been fortunate enough to get out on the water on the Stars & Stripes on San Diego Bay, Neptune's Car on Elliott Bay for our 10th anniversary, and our little day sailor Serendipity at Shilshole (unfortunately we both forgot to bring a camera when we took our boat out, so we had to use the low-res camera on my phone).

Here are some photos from those outings.

Michigan

Two weeks ago I traveled to Michigan with my family to meet up with my parents, my brother, and his fiance. The purpose of the trip was threefold: my cousin Beth's marriage, my uncle Tom and Aunt Esther's 50th wedding anniversary, and my Uncle James' 70th birthday.

We stayed at a cottage on Williams Lake, about a mile from the house where I spent the first 5 years of my life. It was really wonderful to stay together and have so much time at the lake--we played in the sand with the boys, chased after fish, went swimming, and cruised around on my aunt Jane and uncle Jim's pontoon boat (they live on the other side of the lake).

The wedding was huge--about 340 people! The anniversary party was the following day at my Aunt Sally and Uncle Tony's place on Maceday Lake, and it was a blast. All twelve of the siblings from my Dad's family were there with their spouses, and there were dozens and dozens of cousins for our boys to play with. There's a lot of musical talent in my family, and as usual a stage with numerous instruments was set up and everyone took turns performing (I've played bass for over 20 years and would have jammed a bit, but didn't think there was any overlap between repertoires--the more conservative members of my family probably wouldn't appreicate hearing "The Goatriders' Horde" or "Toxic Garbage Island.")

This part of Michigan is absolutely covered with lakes, so we took the boys out one morning to one of the undeveloped lakes in a nearby protected areas and caught a bunch of frogs. We only caught spring peepers but saw many northern leopard frogs, who were far too quick for us.

We had a great time and would have enjoyed staying longer. Hopefully we'll make it back to Michigan soon.

Garden Update

Our garden is really starting to take off! I had my first salad from the garden last week, strawberries are really coming on, and we'll have chard and peas in a couple of weeks. The beans, cukes, and squash are all off to a good start, and all but one of my new hop hills are thriving. For some reason, one of my vines is just getting hammered by aphids. I grabbed a handful of ladybugs from throughout the garden and placed them on the vine, but it may be too late. Hopefully the rhizome will be healthy enough to grow again next year.

Our potatoes are also doing phenomenally well (so far) and I cannot wait for fresh tomatoes, peppers and basil. Yum!

Midnight Visitor

Last week I was cleaning up the kitchen when I heard a hollow thumping noise coming from the general vicinity of our chicken coop. I stuck my head out the back door and saw a dark form scurrying off the roof. I grabbed a flashlight and a camera and found this fellow staring back at me from the neighbor's oak tree. Thankfully, it would appear that our coop is in fact coon-proof. No chicken dinner for you, buddy!

South Whidbey State Park

Two weekends ago we had a fantastic camping experience on Whidbey Island. Ordinarily, Seattle experiences the "June Gloom" all month, which (as the name suggests) is an entire month of pretty cloudy days with the occasional rain shower thrown in for good measure. It reminds of an old joke: "How can you tell when it's summer in Seattle? The rain feels warmer!" Har har. In any case, the June Gloom has been remarkably absent this year, and we benefitted greatly during our three day trip to the island.

South Whidbey is a great park--surrounded by magnificent second growth forest, with the last patch of true old growth, and easy access to a beautiful stretch of beach. I took the boys for a long hike through the big trees our first morning so Amy could sleep in, then we all spent the rest of the day at the beach, flying kites, tide pooling, reading, and doing beach stuff.

On our way back to Seattle we stopped at Fort Ebey State Park, about 15 minutes north, and the boys got to check out the WW II era gun emplacement that guarded Admiralty Inlet and the entrance to Puget Sound. It's remarkable; this fortification clearly suggest that we were very worried about a full-blown naval invasion from Japan. Now, the building is fun for young boys to explore and let their imaginations run wild.