TreasuresInTerraCotta

The sunflowers have grown out of the picture and the flower has started to form. I hope to have some sweet sunflower pictures soon. The first of the Lemon Boy tomatoes is ready. Like a healing bruise it has transitioned through many strange color stages. I finally decided to bring it in before the birds got to it. We will slice it and put salt on it tonight for dinner. Nothing beats fresh basil. I like to wander through the vegetable aisles at Target and Lowe's rubbing my hands over the basil just to smell its sweet smell. We harvested our first Mystery Squash. Like most people who've grown squash can attest, one day I knew that all the squash were about fist-size and the next morning I went out and found this! Not knowing what to do with it I put it into our favorite squash dish Calabacitas. 1 Mystery Squash, cut into 1" pieces (leaving the skin on) 1 yellow squash, cut into 1" pieces (also from our garden) 1 yellow onion diced 1 can corn 1 can diced tomatoes ...

The garden is really filling in and perhaps getting a little messy. In the past, this is when I usually let the garden go. I would get bored with it or get tired of fighting the birds for every tomato or I myself would grow wilty from the heat. This year, however, I feel like we are still going strong. The weather has been beautiful and sunny without being blazing hot yet. Andrew and I have a nice morning routine watering together we first get up. And we have eaten more than the birds so far. I'll give you a little garden tour of my 4'x8' patch. The two tall plants in the back are sunflowers. They have been badly eaten by bugs, but they grew up all on their own. Volunteers! They are the best! On the left is a mystery squash. It has huge varigated silvery leaves and the flowers are huge as well. The fruit is round with greenish-yellowish stripes. They are still small, but I have no idea how to know when they are ready, so I'm not sure how big they will end up ...

You Capture: Yellow The You Capture photo project is in the back of my mind almost every week but I rarely take the pictures for the challenge or post them. This week's "topic" was Yellow. Life seems full of yellow right now so I took advantage of photo opportunities. Yellow: In The Garden Yellow: In The Desert Yellow: At Home Every time I see a photo of crayons I love it! This is a totally staged picture, but I loved the multiple yellows and I really liked all the yellow words! Ironically enough this shipment of books arrived just this week! Six out of seven books fit with the yellow theme. I see a trend here . I promise I did not pick the books based on the binding color! A couple books are for Book Club this summer. A couple were on super sale. And a couple were from favorite authors of mine.

Return Calvin, Andrew and I flew home last weekend. Tyler ended up needing to stay longer and I didn't see how it was possible for us to stay as well. It was impossible to make the right decision and I cried and cried but we are home none-the-less. Traveling, both the transportation part and the being in a new location part, are hard with an 18 month old and a 4 1/2 year old. Perhaps that is more a reflection of me as a mom and as a traveler than it is of traveling with children in general. By mid-week I was exhausted and seriously doubting whether making the trip in the first place was a good idea. At one point I told Tyler that I knew how the Israelites must have felt eating the Passover supper. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover. That was me. Sitting at a meal. Poised on the edge of my seat. Ready to flee or grab a spilled drink or ...

Favorites Half of my pictures are on another computer, but here are a couple of my favorite pictures and favorite places. I saw the sign for Lappert's Ice Cream in Hanapepe and I recognized it from some travel web sites. I loved the quaint porch along the front. I can just envision the parking lot filled with oldie cars and the porch filled with people of all ages wearing flip flops and Hawaiian shirts on a Saturday night. I also loved the Kauai Pie ice cream in a waffle cone! Yum Andrew's footprints The island is full of chickens and roosters. The story we heard repeatedly is that when Hurricane Iniki hit Kauai in 1992 the chicken farms and pens were destroyed releasing them into the wild. Without any natural predators they increased in population despite a foiled attempt to bring mongooses to the island to kill them. Now the chickens and roosters are protected by law. I found them charming. The boys loved the cock-a-doodle-doo. And people seemed to get a kick out ...

The Beach Andrew loves his swimming suit. And he seems to love the ocean because in his 18-month-old-way he gets very excited every time we see the water, whether we are eating breakfast or walking along the beach path or driving the car or looking from our room. He does not, however, like the sand! He doesn't want to touch it or have it on his hands or walk in it. Which, ironically, didn't keep him from experimenting eating it (once!). This was a rare moment when he was not glued in the crook of my left arm. I also think he is, rightly so, scared of the crashing waves, at least from his 2 1/2 foot vantage point. We finally ventured out into the surf so we could be out in the swell, jumping the waves before they crashed. That made everyone happy. Calvin could spend all day chasing the waves in and out. If you know him well, you will not be surprised to learn that he studied the waves rolling in and ran to meet them accordingly. I think he was totally thrilled and total...

Flower I was surprised to learn that over 95% of all that grows in Hawaii is not native. Here are some plants I think of as traditionally Hawaiian. Hibiscus Lilly Pads Anthurium What I didn't expect to see were so many plants that I grow at home in Arizona including lantana, bouganvillia and mother-in-laws tongue. And I really didn't expect to see cactus! The Moir succulent and cactus garden is a famous garden at the Kiahuana Plantation, a former sugar plantation. In the 1930's Sandie Moir started her now-famous garden. In a part of the island that "only" receives 45" of rain a year she discovered that most tropical plants would not survive without additional water. Her garden includes cactus and succulents from around the world. This is what happens when you grow cactus in the tropics... Notice Calvin in the picture. Mahalo

At 9 PM on Friday when my husband was summoned to Hawaii for work we decided to keep him company. On Sunday we all got on an airplane and here we are. We are on the island of Kauai, The Garden Island. It is everything you expect of Hawaii...beautiful and lush and laid back. We've been here two days and we've done a lot already. With a 4 1/2 year old and an 18 month old you have to change scenery a lot. Yesterday we ate breakfast, watched the birds steal dropped cheerios in the open-air dining area, played in the ocean, colored and took naps, had a pizza lunch, ate ice cream on a boardwalk, bought groceries, saw Spouting Horn, chased the island's chicken and roosters, played in the ocean some more, ate some fish (well, I was the only one who ate fish) and drank a lot of pineapple juice. It's a good thing we've been having fun because I have exactly one picture to show for our adventures. Here are the boys in the hotel courtyard on the day we arrived. It was rai...