Since my last post there has been knitting and gardening and traveling… but I know that most of you are here for Raley. So here’s her take on most of those things.
Gardening:
Gad-zukes! (sorry, couldn’t resist)
From our 4 zucchini plants, these were the first 5 harvested. I didn’t really realize that you can actually pick them at any time - I was kind of waiting for them to fall off. So yeah, they’re big. For perspective, at her last dr appointment, Raley was 31.5″ tall (75th percentile), and a wee 19 lbs, 14.5 oz (5th percentile). Yep, still riding in her backwards facing carseat - poor thing. Anyway, she’s a little on the small side, but those are still some big zucchini! We’re still working out quite how to use them all - so far we’ve had lots of pasta dishes and veggie casseroles. If you have any recipes, send them my way!
In addition to the zukes, we’ve harvested 2 cucumbers and at least 40 cherry tomatoes. We also have 5 eggplant plants (with a few tiny little purple eggplants just starting), 2 heirloom tomato plants that have some greens and 2 bell pepper plants that were late additions to the garden (filling in spaces where others died).
I’m very excited by my garden bounty - in our Maryland house we just didn’t have enough sun for anything to grow (8 full oak trees will do that to you - great for shading the house, bad for garden!).
Whale watching:
This past weekend we went whale watching in Santa Barbara. We put Raley in the Ergo carrier so that whoever was carrying her (wound up being Dan) could have both hands free for the boat - definitely worth it. Luckily for us, Raley took very well to the boat and didn’t have any problems with seasickness (our friends’ 2-year-old wasn’t so lucky - poor thing; there’s really nothing you can give them at this age and she just had to sleep it off). Raley did fall asleep for part of the trip, which is to be expected given the Ergo and the soothing motion of the boat and drone of the engines (half of the passengers on the boat were sacked out about halfway through), but she did see the whales (she pointed and said “DA!):
Thar she blows!
We saw both humpbacks (above), including 2 breaches, and several blue whales (always impressive!). And we had some fun times with common dolphins:
Did you see the dolphins? Raley did!
Such a fun trip.
Happy boat family
On our way up to Santa Barbara we stopped at the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center (in Ventura) where we had fun looking at their displays. Raley and I rode a dolphin (the closest we’ll ever come to riding a real dolphin!):
Dolphin!
And Raley was really impressed by the elephant seal - a model of a full-grown bull (male).
Wowee! Look at that!
I’ll save our trip to Indiana for the next post. I’m away from home at a conference, which might bode well for my blogging efforts - we’ll see.
P.S. Yep, I got a haircut - what do you think?
7 Comments
Good to see you guys!! Raley towers over Meli for sure. The haircut is super cute!
Haha… yeah, zukes are best picked tiny, lest you get monster zucchinis. Maybe shred and freeze for zucchini bread in winter?
Love the hair and the video. And have FUN with all those “zukes”! LOL
what conference are you at?
Hooray! Being at a conference means more blog posts!! Yeah, we’re picking our zucchinis when they’re pretty little (at least by your standards). We’ve sauteed some with butter and onion (yummy), put some in our spaghetti sauce and I’m next planning to break out my food processor and shred them to freeze them for future zucch bread. Yummy!
Oh, and I think the hair is cute, though very wind blown
Can’t wait to see it in person!
yeahh!!! posts!!!! Please post video of Raley stomping.
Slice them like fried potatos. We dip them in egg and then flour and fry them, salt and pepper to taste. Like the haircut.
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