Friday night car show

Why can't modern cars be fuel efficient, beautiful, AND fun???? Dang it, I'll say it again: I was born in the wrong era.

Father's Day 2009

Afternoon at the zoo:

we ran into Snick & her dad's side of the family a few times.



How far can you jump?




from the moment we enter the ape section, they pester to get to the drums




cute & unusual oinkers


wagons ho!




Let's pretend this is our house...


so difficult to get a good shot of the carousel in action


dontcha love the Elvis glasses? (actually, I think they're "Hannah Montana; but they scream Elvis to me)


peek-a-boo


makes me want to drive to Mount Evans, etc, to see them in a natural setting


cool door handle to the lion habitat


and finally dinner at GB's Fish & Chips...only the best in Denver...indeed probably the next best to being in Ireland

in case you thought I was kidding about the hail damage

This is what the hostas looked like when we got back from Spain. Initially, I thought we must have had some kind of snail or other garden pest munching on the leaves -until I found out about the storm that blew through.


This is what they looked like after the 2nd hail storm. Yes, you're looking through a leaf.


As you can imagine, my rhubarb is in an equally sad state. The beans weren't quite out of the ground for the first storm; they faired well enough through the 2nd storm. Now you see why I said I'm glad I hadn't planted lettuce yet. The poor hostas & rhubarb, I'm cutting them back today just because they look like they're in pain (or rather, b/c they're so painful to look at?)

The storms this summer have been hard & heavy & pass pretty quickly. But for Colorado, it's been a ton of rain -at least as of lately. I suppose it's cyclical, as I remember when I moved here 13 years ago, the first 2 summers were fairly wet at the outset. Is it indicative of our snowfall this coming winter? If I recall correctly, those 1st few winters were heavy snowfall years. Then the drought -summer & winter. I suppose only time will tell if it is indeed cyclical.

The hail isn't large -so no autobody damage. But boy it came down like bullets on the broad leaves. And that last picture is about 4 inches deep outside the laundry room door, hence the laundry room flood. Area rug & every towel in the house soaked up the mess; the usual arid Colorado climate took care of the residual dampness over the next few days.

homemade goodness on a Sunday

Maddie woke up in a cooking kind of mood & made these scrummy pretzels...from scratch. Yes, she did. The girl does like to cook. She's in the kitchen nearly every other day preparing something. Usually she's successful; sometimes her experiments go slightly awry. She's learning -kind of- to read the whole way through the recipe first -to make sure she has all the ingredients so she doesn't have to improvise (usually those are the concoctions that don't get eaten). And yesterday she learned the very valuable lesson of not placing anything on the back burner when the oven is turned on (trip to Bed Bath & Beyond is necessary for a new flour container thing...oops) This recipe is from a kid's cookbook my mom sent to her. The book has a not so attractive cover, but you know the old adage about judging a book by it's cover; it's become one of Maddie's go-to cookbooks when she wants to prepare something without adult help. Lately she's been using this book, written by the host of You Are What You Eat(one of our faves on BBC America.) And then there's this, the first cookbook I bought for her exclusive use. She's used it a few times, but the Betty Crocker is for sure her favorite right now.


half sweet, half salty



I was in a cooking mood too & spent most part of the afternoon preparing our "Sunday is dessert day" treat. From the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, Apricot-Cherry Upside Down Cake. I had to make almond paste first, though, b/c it's not something that I readily have on hand. Thanks to Sunflower Market, I had an abundance of apricots (67 cents/lb!) and cherries. Although it was a bit time consuming, it was well worth the effort. Not the usual brown sugar & pineapple upside down cake. I had to double the ingredients b/c the recipe called for an 8"x3" round cake pan, which I didn't have. Couldn't fit all the batter in the 9"x13" pan, so it was a little flat. Delish, nevertheless!

the largest nightcrawler I've ever seen, year 2

The largest nightcrawler continues to grow fatter & longer on our compost.

And why is it that my previous post about said nightcrawler under the title "the largest nightcrawler I've ever seen" gets more hits from Google than regular visitors to my blog? Folks from all over the world must be really interested in finding sizable nightcrawler pictures online, no?

He (are worms male or female or nonsexual or what? I'll say "he" for the sake of the phallic nature of worms) was about 12" when I found him stretched out crawling on the ground. (Wait, worms don't "crawl". Inching? Worming? What is it called, how they get around?) Of course when I tried to pick him up he was all "retreat retreat!" & shrank up for protection (see, phallic, right?). So these shots don't really do him justice. Just how big will he be next year? Do worms have definite lifespans? How old can they live? Just curious. FYI, I hold my breath when I turn the compost, hoping I don't spear the little guy with the pitchfork. That would be tragic & I think I'd be a little sad. Hmmm, except don't worms regenerate when cut in half? (or is that an urban legend?)


Last year


this year




he's a fast little bugger for a worm