Summer vacation

It's been about a week and a half since we returned from our summer vacation in Michigan, which means it is overdue we posted about it on the blog! I currently only have access to a few pictures from our time with the Wombles since Patrick is out of town with the computer and one camera that contain a lot of the photos. But I'll give you the highlights of our two weeks in the homeland, and show some of what I do have.

As always, the trip went by too fast and we felt jipped on time, but we managed to cram a lot into it: Me and a pal from high school planned an impromptu bachelorette party for one of our best friends; Patrick scheduled a bittersweet last appointment with a Doctor-turned-family-friend he had been seeing since he was in 5th grade; my family had a BBQ to celebrate a few birthdays and Independence Day; fireworks; catching up with a few friends over lunch; and that doesn't even include our time at a rental home in Traverse City!

For the 3rd year in a row, Patrick's family rented a house (different each time) in semi-Northern MI for a week to offer the space and entertainment for everyone visiting from around the globe. This year, badminton was a main feature, played at least 1-5 times per day!

Grandma took the helm at the grill- MMM! Among traditional delectables like BBQ chicken, I found out I'm a big fan of grilled turnips!

Grandpa Denny taugh John a new trick with the Redi-whip!

As you'll see from the rest of the photos, the water was integral to everybody's time at the lake house! Here, Patrick, Mark, Calum & Isaac's canoe are towing Daisy and Jackie after they underestimated how far they'd paddled and how much work it'd be to get back!

Sally enjoying a cup of coffee on a sunny morning pontoon boat ride.

Daisy waving at us from her place on the paddle board as we're swept away on the boat.

The wind is fair, captain!

Calum had loads of fun and was on his way to being a pro with the paddle boards.

I loved being on the boat, but Isaac does a much better/cuter job of showing his enthusiasm!

Aunt Jackie left the beach chair for a more scenic reading location.

Life is good!

Here was a particularly interesting site on the lake: This balloon gradually lowered its elevation, and at this point we were pretty sure it was about to crash! Everyone on the lake's gaze was locked! But the pilot was either super lucky or super precise, as he recovered his height and never touched the water (although he was just about a foot away from it).

We had an awesome time in Michigan and already miss our loved ones and look forward to our next visit! I'm going back at the end of this month just for a weekend to be the matron of honor in my long-time friend's wedding, but otherwise our return probably won't be until Christmas. In the meantime, we'll keep you updated!

A few random updates

This week I started my new job at UC Merced, and already I am slightly overwhelmed! Basically there is a large hodgepodge of people I've met and tasks I will be responsible for that is requiring all my attention and memory to try to learn. Simple things like scheduling a meeting, sending an email, and using the printer/copier have taken larger amounts of time than they should as I reread things five times and ask about details that may or may not be relevant to make sure I don't leave something out or there isn't a tip/trick to it I need to know. But, I think I will eventually get the hang of it and the woman who previously held my position is still around and been a major help integrating and training me.

Outside of the office, we need to get used to managing our time and being more disciplined since I'm not home all day to clean and do the grocery shopping anymore. We've grown accustomed to taking it easy every evening, and let things slip. So next week the goal is to stay on top of chores and get a couple nights of exercise in after work.


Garden wise, survivors from the Slug Wars are starting to take off, and while we wait for them to mature, we've enjoyed seeing the plants that were already here upon move-in show off their blooms. You may recognize this flower from the last blog, but since then the plant sprouted a ton of these, as you can see from just this one side.


The tree indeed produced apples! They are smaller than we hoped, and keep falling off before they mature. It is disappointing they aren't ideal for eating fresh or on their own, however, we gathered the best ones from the ground and decided to make apple pie rather than let them go to waste!

We are not experienced pastry chefs. My mom's famous crust fell apart in my hands as I tried to move it onto the pie, so after major "skin surgery" and crust transplanting, it looked like this when we put it in theoven. Not as pretty as my mom's, but it still tasted good!

Steamholes in the shapes of our initials, and vanilla ice cream on the side. This dessert followed homemade pizza and a cold IPA. I started whistling "Proud to be an American" while we were cooking- lol.

This doesn't have to do with much of anything, but it was so weird I had to share it. While hard-boiling this egg, it started oozing out a crack. But mutant eggs still make tasty salad sandwiches.

On the health front, Patrick has been doing physical therapy to heal and strengthen the tendon along his right knee & hip and I've been wearing a brace for a month on my right wrist/thumb to finally heal inflammation I started experiencing last fall. Patrick is noticing a gradual improvement, and I'm scheduled for a cortisone shot to try to move things along. Wish these sorts of things healed faster as we're itching to do some hiking/climbing/kayaking, and even just knitting in my case!

I imagine we'll have slightly more exciting things to post and more pictures of ourselves soon (as opposed to disfigured food) since we'll be having visitors from MI next weekend, and a trip to the homeland ourselves in a couple weeks!

Pursuing backyard bliss

The weather has been nearly perfect lately, averaging a high of mid 70s to 80, with sunny blue skies and a sumptuous breeze. We're lacking backyard recreation equipment such as a grill, fire pit or gazebo, but we're making due with what we've got in the meantime to enjoy the outdoors.

Sipping on margaritas near the fence since it offered the only shade from the sun, which can get pretty hot beating on ya.

A pleasant surprise was the decorative grass bush things in our yard have sprung a bunch of lovely flowers. Two of the bushes have these flowers, and two have the ones below. They remind me of a hybrid between a lily and an orchid.

The downside of these plants is they seem to be a habitat for the slugs and snails. The battle with the invertebrates has been brutal- they ate/killed all of our black beans and green beans which were really starting to take off- but after a heavy assault and some replanting, we are hoping we've bested them for the rest of the season.

One variety of hops has broke the ground surface- hooray! Crossing our fingers the other type will too....

One day we'll get some patio furniture, but for now, flopping out on the ground with a red vine is one way to sunbathe. Later Patrick used his flip flops for a pillow. How very resourceful. :-D

Speaking of our outdoor wish list though, we may be able to purchase some of the items on it in the not too distant future since I was offered a job Friday afternoon! As the Assistant to the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Business and Financial Services, I will be offering office support in UC Merced's downtown building (not the main campus location that Patrick works at unfortunately, so we'll have to rethink transportation). I will receive the official start date and offer letter on Tuesday, but most likely it'll be June 1st or June 6th that we can start debating again which of us is "The Professional." :)

Happy Isles & Rockslide and Yosemite Falls

Saturday was our chance to see Yosemite during spring, as we had plans to meet up with some rock climbers via a mutual friend. Snowmelt and rain means the waterfalls are at their prime this time of year, hence, we were welcomed with this dazzling sight of Yosemite Falls.

Unfortunately, our meeting time and place was compromised by several factors, so after an hour of waiting and wondering, we decided to take off in the direction of a prospective climbing area to look for them before setting off to wander on our own.

The weather was gorgeous, and this area of the park was not frequented, so even though we didn't run into our friends, we continued to hike along the climbers' path. We stopped on the edge of an old rockslide for lunch.

To be adventurous, we decided to scramble up the rockslide in hopes for a good observation point. The view wasn't much better than at our lunch location, and we realized on our way up that not all the rocks were as secure as we'd have liked. But even though we wouldn't recommend it to others, it was still nice to venture somewhere new, and we noticed we were even higher than the rock climbers adjacent to us too!

Patches of wildflowers growing haphazardly among the rocks showed a gentler side to the landscape. Taking a snapshot gave my knees a moment to recover from the tedious and slow descent.

We found a pathway connecting us to an easy, popular trail we believed would lead us to Vernal Falls. On the way, we saw the rough terrain we had just been on, farther off in the distance (the gray rockpile making a small dome behind the pine tree in the center). I'm sure some of the people on this trail had to have seen me up there with my bright pink shirt!

Notice in the last photo I have tape wrapped around my wrist. A large rock came loose and started to tumble down the hill so I grabbed it to stop the movement. It was a little heavier than I anticipated so I instead tried to control and decelerate its fall. But as it slid from my hand, it sliced across my wrist. It doesn't look too bad here (taken the next day), but I was dripping blood on rocks until I could climb up to Patrick and have him bandage me up. We had to rip it all off and put on new gauze & tape by the time we got back down again too. It made me respect the risks a bit more and take more caution!

This sign was a little further along the easy pathway, so it was neat to find out more about the rockslide we had just hiked on, and give us more perspective.

We thought the path lead to falls because we heard loud water and saw a lot of people on a bridge from our perch on the rockslide. Turns out it was just the swollen river! (It will take you to Vernal Falls too, but it was a farther hike along the path than we decided to go.)

The above video, taken from the bridge, should give you a better idea of how fast the water is running behind Patrick. It is beginning to isolate a few patches of boulders/land, gradually creating tiny islands (hence the name, Happy Isles).

We took a shuttle to Curry Village, before heading out to a different path, thinking it would be a last and unlikely attempt to find our friends. When we saw them from the window, we couldn't believe it, and I ran to catch up after disembarking. By that point Patrick and I were a little worn out for climbing and the wind had picked up quite a bit, so our group decided to get a closer look at Yosemite Falls via a more leisurely walk. In the above and below picture, you can see both the upper and lower falls together.

Below: At the bottom of the falls, mist flooded the air!

The day didn't follow our original agenda, but you simply cannot go to Yosemite and not enjoy what you do see & experience, regardless if it was different from what you planned. Even after our fifth visit there is still so much to see, and we look forward to next time, whether its for climbing, more hiking- or whatever!

Garden Makeover: After

Here is some of the aftermath of our yard work the last few weekends, as highlighted in the last entry:

Voila! Weeds gone. Not that it looks very impressive (don't really want to put a lot of money into beautifying a rental) but at least it doesn't look condemned! :)

Those bees are doing their jobs- baby limes are growing!

And adolescent mystery fruit too! A friend of ours said she thinks it might be an apple tree, which would be pretty awesome.

Three lettuce varieties are coming up well, particularly the Californian mix in the front row (imagine that). ;) Thanks for the seeds, Mark & Daisy!

Tomatoes are in transitory pots before planting in the ground, and the green & red peppers are still in pods since their germination took longer. A couple basil plants that are still shrimpy are in the pods too. Unfortunately a wind storm blew the pods around the yard so a few seedlings died and our peppers are all mixed up. No biggie, I guess- we'll make do with what we've got!

The zucchini started off very well, but about half have died off in the last week or two and a row of watermelon to the right of these are almost extinct despite being quite healthy during and post-transplant. :( A few days of 90-96 degree weather this week might have been a bit harsh for them and we're still experimenting with our soil/watering schedule. Might be they just don't do well here too- it's a learning process, but in the meantime we're rooting for these survivors!

Hooray for the onions! Oh yeah- notice the drip system/sprinklers. Patrick did a lot of work around the yard hooking up & customizing that for our garden prep and maintenance too.

Gold star for the green bean bushes. Two of the plants were bent over by the wind storm, but one repaired itself by depositing a band of nutrients or some sort of plant stem material around the busted part and is standing up again. The little one on the back left is a black bean bush- we've got a few but they didn't take off as well so we're still a little anxious about them.

Other members of the garden include one jalapeno plant (our last surviving plant from the Missouri move) and even more exciting- 2 varieties of hops! The problem with those is they can take up to 2 months to emerge from the soil, so it'll be a while before we know if there's any chances of success.

Also worth mentioning even though it's not a garden item, is Patrick built a work bench to store some of our tools and so we have a table to work on in the garage. Good work, hun!

Unfortunately those pesky weeds and creatures threatening our harvest will make it impossible to simply take it easy now, but the worst is over, thank goodness!

Garden Makeover: Before

Last blog left off with us in Europe, and while we may wish we were still there all this time, we've been back to the everyday grind. Lately that has included work in our yard, as we hope to harvest some veggies over the summer, but April showers bring lots of weeds alongside May flowers. Below is what we've been working with all the past weekends since our return to the States, and tomorrow we'll have a sequel post to show some of the results.

Weeds had completely taken over the front, including around the corner leading up to the portico. The yard is also being overrun by clover and creeping plants.

Again, tons of weeds along both sides of the backyard too.

This extends all along the sides of the house, as well.

I got a major thigh workout pulling up all those nasty plants, and my allergies were absolutely wicked. We are going to spray the lawn with a weed killer, but we've done a ton of work by hand since we didn't want to compromise the growth of our veggies with any residual chemical killing agents in the soil where we were planting the garden.

We started all our seeds inside with peat pods- it was very satisfying when they sprouted! While we waited for them to get big enough for planting, Patrick tilled the ground with a shovel, removed some of the clay and mixed in manure & sand for better draining and more nutrients.

On the opposite side of the yard of the lime tree is another tree we haven't identified for sure yet. So when it bloomed, we got even more excited for these clues as to what its future fruit will be!

It was very beautiful all abloom! Our lime tree since bloomed also, but a wind storm knocked off most the petals before we got a picture.

Under the blooming trees, it smelled soooo sweet! The bees were frequent visitors and we saw a hummingbird once too. Go pollination- give us fruit!

Our work in the yard has also involved taking up the role of exterminator, as the slugs and snails are frequent around here. We've hunted and infiltrated hiding places, and we seem to finally be winning the battle as sightings have minimized. Ant baits are scattered around the yard also, and we covered a wooden trough with poultry wire after we realized the darn birds ate most of our poppy seeds planted inside. Nature is giving us a fight, but as you'll see in the next post, we're still having some success. Crossing our fingers for more!