I've had the time of my life

Abe and I have been married for four years today. I'm finding it hard to write about our life together without using cheesy cliches. I'll just say that I'm every bit as happy with my choice of partner as I was the day I picked him.

photo by Ben Depp

"May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

-Ray Bradbury

growing seeds from grocery store peppers

Homegrown peppers - second generation from Trader Joe's.
Also, I'm bringing back The Doily.

Everyone who sees these peppers thinks they're spicy. They're not - they're more like tiny sweet bell peppers. These were actually started from seeds harvested from Trader Joe's peppers - those cute mini tricolor pepper-ettes.

It's a bit of a risk trying to grow from commercial seeds (and illegal if the seeds are from Monsanto):  most commercial vegetables are hybridized so that they may not produce, and if they do, the vegetables will be a different variety. But since we'd already bought the peppers, we took a chance, planting a few of seeds from each color pepper (yellow, orange, and red).

Apparently when mini bell peppers are grown commercially, each color is grown separately - they're three distinct seeds with similar size, flavor and shape. As you can see, we got none of the lovely colors from any of the seeds, but we were lucky to get peppers at all, since it turns out store-bought bell pepper seeds are usually infertile.

Have you ever grown anything from the grocery store? A few gardening forums I checked out seemed to indicate decent success growing hot peppers (red chili, habaneros), since heirloom varieties are sold more commonly.

on becoming a morning person (with gratuitous baby animal pictures)

Look at this ferocious snuggling beast.  If you had a tiny animal this soft and sweet in your bed sleeping, you wouldn't want to get up, either.

But the truth is, I was an anti-morning person long before there were any cats in my bed. I hate to wake up so I only do it in a bad mood. (Can I blame lycanthropy? The grumpiness wears off by noon, and I'm generally a peach the rest of the time.) Abe has to set his cell phone alarm for both of us, because mine doesn't dare go off.

So you know that reputation farmers have for being up before dawn? I am not that farmer.

But I'm trying. Today I let Abe drag my sleepy behind to the gym at 6 am. I wasted 15 minutes rolling around on the bed whining struggled through 30 minutes on a recumbent bike, but most importantly I Abe survived, because I didn't kill him.
It wasn't that bad. I might try it again tomorrow. And then, who knows? Maybe before I know it, I'll be a morning person.

farm earnings year-to-date: one Peso

When I walked in the door after work Saturday night, Abe was waiting. "I've got a surprise," he said. Surprise indeed.

Abe found this scrappy little fleabag (now a.k.a. Peso*) walking in the street in the middle of the night. He was starving and incredibly friendly. His purr rivals the noise of a mac truck, and I'm not sure he's stopped using it since Abe brought him home. No kitty has ever been so happy to find a family.
With the aid of some friends who were staying over, google and graphic images of male vs. female kitten butts, early Sunday morning we came to the conclusion that Peso is a boy. That was confirmed yesterday by the vet, who found he's 6 weeks old. (He seems big for six weeks, so I'm hoping it turns out he's a baby puma. Please, let me dream.) Since then he's been:

• dewormed
• eating everything in the house
• flea-dipped
• thoroughly licked all over by Franc and Cash
• litter trained (we really really hope!).

I went digging around in my old blog in preparation for this post, because I was hoping I'd already written something about our monetary theme for naming animals.* I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find sobering advice about taking in pets. (Also sobering? My old blog was much more hilarious than this one. I think the last two years I've had osteoporosis of the funny bone. Now I really need health insurance.)
*we have one.

We're back!

I missed you. It's been hectic!  I've been busy:

celebrating birthdays (this mad farmer's 29!)

growing a sweet 'stache

refinishing a vintage picnic table

 & enjoying our deck. It was totally worth the heat exhaustion from sanding & staining on the hottest day of the year. Our deck is beautiful and you should definitely come have a drink on it.



gettin' it done

Congratulations, y'all.  We've officially halfway survived 2012.