i just opened iphoto and realized that there is a bunch of stuff i never got around to posting. here is some of it:

jon and laurie came to visit. among other things, we threw a picnic (sadly, no pics), picked strawberries:

(i have a picture of laurie from many, many years ago picking strawberries, that i seem to remember looks just like this one. i should dig it out.)

went to the bookmill:

and rested:

a week or so later, we took a co-worker’s extra tickets to see james taylor off her hands. or, at least, we think we saw james taylor…from our seats it could very well have just been a big-screen broadcast of a recorded james taylor concert:

either way, we found out just how awesome it is to hang out at tanglewood.

***we will now take a moment for a doggie intermission***

***feel free to get some snacks before the next portion of the catching-up begins***

ok, what else does iphoto say we have done?

we visited with good friends, and their amazing twin girls, who were staying in a nearby town. (again, sadly, no pics.)

tom’s parents came for a visit. among other things, we took a boat ride on the Connecticut river:

and went to a bunch of flea markets. we came home with many goodies including, a salt grinder that looks like a bunny, though i don’t think that’s intentional:

and two display heads:

don’t the heads look like they would fit perfectly into a dr. who episode?

finally, these amazing flowers are growing in our garden:


we rescued these from the community garden compost pile at the end of last season. at the time, they were only a root and stem and we weren’t sure if they were even going to grow, let alone what they would look like. they seem to be pretty happy to be in our plot now.

phew! that was a lot of stuff. thanks for hanging in there. now i think i am back up to date!

tom has been gathering parts and working to put together an indoor ebb and flow hydroponic setup for growing lettuce and herbs through the winter.

want a tour? i thought so.

first, the seeds of the plants that grew the tastiest stuff this summer get planted and nurtured under a little light on a warming mat, so they can grow some roots:

each little plant grows in a small cup with slots for the roots to grow and hang down through.

then they get transferred into the system:

the water is pumped up from the container on the floor, flows into each of the three black blocks, tickles the plant roots and then flows out the other side of the blocks back into the container on the floor. all the while the leaves bask in the glow of the big white light above. the whole system will be run by timers and the light can be raised and lowered. fancy, no?

everything in the system was obtained either at yard sales for a few dollars, for free (like the ginormous light) or from the hardware store. no off-the-shelf hydroponics for us!

and no more store-bought lettuce, hopefully.

the visual evidence of bear activity during the last snow, combined with the advice of locals, served to convince us that we should not compost food scraps in our backyard. we don’t need to invite the bears in.

however, our kitchen garbage is stinky and we don’t like that. we had grown accustomed to composting in our new jersey backyard which keeps the garbage can less stinky, makes for less going to the dump, and creates good stuff for the garden.

so, after debating our options for almost a year, we finally decided to go for “vermicomposting,” the indoor worm composting system. we’ll see how it goes!

hopefully it will keep a bunch of worms warm and happy, and will keep our garbage from being so gross.

oh, and i just started playing around with imovie on my computer, so you get this little treat (there’s even sound!):

youtube made it a little grainy, i’ll have to see about that…

went to the garden this weekend, and found:

raspberries!
this spring we took a few raspberry plants from a gardener who was thinning her crop, and were told not to expect any berries until next summer. but we got a late-season surprise. they were delish.

there are probably still a few more weeks of growing season left, but we decided to get the garden ready for winter now, especially since it had grown a little bit out of control.

we rescued a few plants from the compost pile and put them in the adopted garden plot, which, next summer will hopefully be the flower plot:

and tom put the garlic from the garlic festival in the ground:

before:

after:

see you in spring, garden!

jeffy and eileen came up from nj to visit us this weekend!
they arrived late friday night so that we would have plenty of time on saturday for the 3 county fair:

a fair covering not one, not two, but three counties is bound to fill up an entire day, especially when it costs $10 per person to get in, right? apparently not so much. sure, we saw some cute animals:

and some award winning vegetables, both pickled:

and anthropomorphic:

but, in under an hour we had seen all there was to see and headed out of the fair gates, disappointed, to make a new plan for the rest of the day:

we wandered around the shops in town, had dinner and stopped by our garden:

to harvest tomatoes:

the day ended around a makeshift fire pit in the back yard:

each of us fighting over who would get to snuggle with the pups for warmth:

we picked some goodies from the garden friday, including our first tomato harvest!

look how cute these little (fully grown) ones are:

the lemon cucumbers are on their way to being a second attempt at pickles:

the last batch was way too sweet and vinegar-y, so we are going with a simpler recipe:

a shiny, virtual penny goes to anyone who knows what sour salt really is. without google’s help. i had no idea until i had to purchase some. am i the only one?

and tonight many of the tomatoes (the one’s we didn’t snack on raw, that is) went into six, small, very yummy, non-dairy quiches:

ok, tom put a bit of cheese in his, but they were delish without as well!