Thanks a lot, sweetie

An email from Brian, who is on a business trip:

"Forgot to bring Digi cam. But here is view from my hotel room. Guess it pays to show up before they have many rooms cleaned."

My response: "Dude. You suck. :-)"

I knew to keep an eye on the zucchini, but...

I'm pretty sure my snow peas are violating the law of conservation of mass. How else could such quantities of biomass result from water, a little dirt, and a seed?

I've just had to make my first foray into freezing produce, in a desperate attempt to keep up with the tidal wave of peas coming out of my three little rows (one each of English, sugar snap and snow peas). The English and sugar snap peas are producing respectable yet modest amounts; it's the snow peas that seem to have no concept of restraint. Them and the strawberries, profligate floozies that they are.

Reason I love where I live, #14

Fireworks.

Growing up in Oregon, there were heavy restrictions on the kinds of fireworks the public could legally purchase and use, and those restrictions pretty much reduced us to sparklers, ground blooms and fountains. Washington, it turns out, has no such restrictions.

A few weeks ago, our neighbors two houses down mentioned that they were going to be having a "big fireworks show" out of their backyard on the 4th of July. It turns out that "big fireworks show" means a $3000, 45 minute long barrage that was literally bigger and better than most of the city-sponsored fireworks shows I went to growing up. Mom, seriously, this thing went on longer and was showier than McMinnville's shows were back in the day. We set up our camp chairs out on our driveway and had as good as front row seats. I'm still a little bit blown away.