Nigel’s Busy Day

It’s fun to be home during the day and see what the cats do. Here’s a synopsis of Nigel’s day. Yesterday he spent the whole day hiding as there were several guests over including two babies!

See what’s happening outside – preferably through an open window

Gradually move up the stairs throughout the morning. The time now is 3 step o’clock.

Keep a close eye on Ravel.

Top step o’clock – time for a nap

Explore

Ask to go outside… repeatedly

Cautiously observe until a human whispers 6 doors away and then run inside like there’s a monster in the yard.

Return to the scene of the tree-climbing fiasco of 2013 (1st time ever today)

Sit quietly on or near a human

One is Enough

Here is the current state of our garage-side garden. One Zucchini plant, 1 Roma tomato plant, some edamame (Japanese edible soybeans) and some sunflowers.

This plant is not really out of control. It just looks that way. I’m going to offer the garden to our new neighbors when we’re gone next week.

Every couple days, I check to see what is growing and I almost always find a nearly full grown zucchini that I didn’t know even existed…..

Around AND In the zucchini plant are some edamame plants. These are Japanese soybeans. They are usually lightly boiled, salted and then eaten. They taste best with beer.

And… Just for fun, here is a video of the cats doing “Hunting Practice” https://youtu.be/j0sgw4dT_Zc

Lazy Days of Summer

It’s the lazy days of summer for the cats and me. Doug is still hard at work! I am messing with yet another way to get pictures on the blog. We’ll see if this is less time consuming.

I’ve been utlizing the new kitchen a lot and have baked some pretty tasty things. There have been plenty of zucchini based foods and this blueberry cake was a big hit with Doug’s pastor intern committee.

We went to Obento-ya in Minneapolis yesterday for a Japaniversary lunch. It’s hard to believe our Japan days started 20 years ago!!

It was delicious!

Speaking of delicious, the cats have enjoyed a few minutes of outside time now and then. They like to eat grass (no throwing up thankfully) and Ravel went a few feet up a tree after a squirrel. I don’t know if his nerves or his nails gave out but I’m glad I didn’t have to chase him!

Tomorrow…. Garden pictures!

Carolina Highlights

Here are a few highlights from our trip to South Carolina with a little bit of North Carolina thrown in for fun! They are in no particular order because the blog is not cooperative. We may have to find a new blog site….

There were a lot of options for fried chicken. We determined that fried chicken is go-to food in the Carolinas. BoJangle’s is a fast food restaurant that we visited a couple times and noticed at many, many exits along the drive.

Rainbow Row in Charleston. There were lots of beautiful historic houses.

This is Sullivan’s Beach outside of Charleston. It looks cold and wind-swept in the picture but it was just wind-swept. There was plenty of heat to go around. We went back to a different beach the next day and had a more beachy experience.

We were both surprised at how wooded South Carolina was. Substitute pine trees for palm trees and we could have been in northern Minnesota.

From a restaurant in Columbia… yes, please…

Hiking at Congaree National Park. For some of the hike, there were these great raised walkways. For part of the hike, we were more in the forest. I was happy to not see any snakes.

We had some good beer on this trip. South Carolina is exploding with micro-breweries so a “beer flight” is the way to try little bits of several beers. This was in Greenville.

Beautiful downtown Greenville.

This hike started at an elevation of just under 1100 feet. We went up to this point in about 2 hours. It was a strenuous but not particularly dangerous hike.

The summit!

This is an overlook at/near the summit. Those young guys seemed to be awfully close to the edge. We chose to admire the view from here.

The “Sully Sullenberg” airplane that landed in the Hudson River a few years ago. This was the main attraction at the Aviation Museum of the Carolinas in Charlotte.

The Ravenel Bridge in Charleston. Our hotel was on one side of the bridge and “town” was on the other. There were strict instructions to “keep your eyes on the road” as we crossed. It is much higher than it looks here.

USS Yorktown in Charleston – a WWII aircraft carrier turned museum

From the flight deck of the USS Yorktown

We took a great tour of the nicely, air-conditioned state capitol building in Columbia.

Particularly in Columbia, there were lots of references to the Civil War (and a few somewhat uncomfortable Confederate relics). These are markers on the state capitol building to mark where Union bombs hit the building during the Civil War.

Don’t we look refreshed and not at all sweaty? That’s because you can drive to about 100 feet below this point – the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. It was also 20 degrees colder here than when we started up the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Beautiful views from the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a lovely drive!  More to come later….

The Blog’s Alive and So Are The Flowers

After a long hiatus, the blog is alive again. I can say there are two main reasons. The first is that it takes an extra step to download and then upload pictures. The second is that we really haven’t done anything interesting lately. But now that summer is starting, perhaps we’ll do more interesting things and have time to write blog entries.

We had a warm spring so I planted a week or so earlier than usual. This was followed by an unusually long stretch of rain so everything grew nicely without much effort on my part. The dahlias are in their usual place along the front steps and the extra (there are always extras) are in the garage planter.

I planted one zucchini plant. I’m hoping not to repeat the Pumpkin Debacle of 2016 where I planted an entire package of pumpkin seeds. They took over everything including a bit of the neighbor’s driveway and produced exactly one very small pumpkin. Hopefully we’ll be in Zoodle heaven this summer.

I also planted exactly one tomato plant and picked an early-producing variety. It seems like we get lots of tomatoes just as I’m going back to work in the fall. The first one has already popped out.

Someone gave me a Gerten’s gift card and I managed to spend it, only going over by $3 with this Mandevilla. I’m going to try to get it to climb.

It’s 90 degrees here today. It seems too early to turn on the A/C but the cats are protesting a bit. They seem to be melting in the heat and cooling themselves however they can.