Monday, July 31, 2006

wilesev

weekend with the severwiles!

we dragged them out in the sweltering heat to the garden (of all places) to dig up the potatoes:


i can only assume this is a bushel. i don't know how big a bushel is, but i like to imagine that we harvested one.

and we found an alphabetic potato!


after de-scruffing, we headed to dinner...


the well-behaved severin brother...


the ill-behaved severin brother...

i swear (okay, i admit) he does not act this way... without...

my...

poor...

influence on him...


or this way.

well, we're in trouble with the parents who tried to impart such good manners on us. but i swear it worked... we'd never do anything like this... in front of you! (or bosses... coworkers... teachers... presidents...) Just understanding siblings, i swear!


next... where are we and why is this life-like clown sitting on a hammer???

because that's the kind of things the toys do at ella's deli...


where we went for dessert... (don't worry, i did not photograph the strawberry sally sundae)...

we brought a board game with us... cause we do things like that

... and christy-tina and i had a fun time beating the severins...



Saturday, July 29, 2006

thoughts, gardens, houses, people treats

what do you do when husband tells you to go to a coffee shop while he cleans the apartment?

you take the request seriously and do as he says.



woohoo! so now i can finally update my sorely neglected blog. poor veralouie. you have had to subsist on poorly drawn cartoons for nearly two weeks. why, you ask? work. it has drawn me in to the world of its demands and i've complied. on a great work note though, i officially, or unofficially "won" during my first court appearance. yippee! (that is not what i said in court when the "win" became clear... but it was what i was thinking).

okay, so let's get on with this posting!

purple, yellow, and green beans...
(ummm... ignore the cat in the background... we do not allow our cats to have such blatant control over our attempts at a cat-free table)

beatrices...
we have been getting some crazy rain and crazy sunny hot days. so our garden looks like an overgrown mess... in a good way? this picture doesn't do justice to the amount of growth that has occurred recently... which... i am sort of sad about. i mean, about 3 weeks ago, the garden was perfect. everything was in its place... you could walk down the rows without being swallowed up by overgrown cilantro and tomato plants, you could see the outlines of the beatrices... and now, it's difficult to walk through and it just looks messy... now i know that if i were a wise human being i would see this change in a good way... the continuing evolution of the plants... some sort of continuous circular life-cycle...but i'm not wise, so instead i see the garden in the shape of wave. it reached its prettiness peak and now it's just breaking.

i'm sure my satisfaction level will change when our tomatoes start turning red.



anywho, does anyone know what this plant is in front of the yellow painted tongues???

here is one of its leaves close-up. they all had these black markings on them.
i say had because greg finally pulled it out. i could have sworn it was something i'd planted, but he was convinced it was a weed. maybe i planted a weed? who knows?

this is not our corn. we didn't plant any corn, but i have to admit, although i've spent extensive time in illinois, ohio, indiana, michigan, and wisconsin, i don't think i've ever actually been this close to corn (aside from at the grocery store and the kitchen table)... i honestly couldn't have told you that this is how it grew... i mean i obviously know what corn fields look like, but i just sort of figured the corn grew up out of the top of the plant... and there are multiple ears on each plant! i would've told you there was one ear per plant. i was that ignorant!

these are not our tomatoes, but aren't they so fun?!

this is our tomato. eeek! has greg been sprinkling radiation on the plants when i'm not looking???

at least this potato doesn't have horns...
today we are recruiting these crazy people to help us dig up the rest.


moral dilemma... when a rabbit is in your great neighbors' plot... and the rabbit is just a cute little kid rabbit whose chompers are surely not large enough to do that much damage... do you tell him to go away? or do simply you watch him trollop about and enjoy himself?
guess what we chose?



here are a couple of photos from the troy gardens prairie area...


i don't think i'll complain about this being adjacent to our new condo...




and the fact that we can pick beautiful flowers whenever we choose from the farm...


and create art now and again!
this mosaic (a la this blog's authors) will be one side of a fencepost for the children's garden.

these are not our flowers... if anyone knows what they are called, please feel free to chime in in the comments section or an email...


if you would like to see the new condo (not ours, but a look-alike) scroll down... (it is obviously a ways from being complete, but it is getting there)

a view of the basement window. greg thought that with a system of mirrors we could make it appear as though one is looking out from ground level.

a huge spider on one a wall near the ceiling!

more basement. it looks kind of scary. hopefully ours won't look this scary.

living room...

a bedroom...

laundry room (with storage ledges)...


i will leave you with this enigma i spotted at... not a pet store... nor a petting zoo... but the grocery store...

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

weekend close-ups

weekend fun!

where did we go?

here...

well, not the speedway... but the city...


on the way, i'd say a few miles outside of bloomington, il, we decided it would be a good idea to order pizza in champaign and pick it up when we got there and eat it in the car. you know... because pizza's a real easy thing to eat in the car.

so, that's what we did!

driving on trusty old green street...

past the alma mater...

and with the pizza now securely on my lap...

i bet you're thinking there was some messy pizza mishap... but there wasn't.


indianapplesauce:



at grandma and grandpa's house, where even the yard critters are happy...



canopied backyard...

jungly backyard...

so, the purpose of the visit was a wedding. a beautiful wedding in fact, with wonderful food... a beautiful wedding... with wonderful food... which was not captured on camera... my camera at least. how i could possibly forget my camera for such an event? there's simply no good reason... except that it was a morning wedding so i was inevitably running around like a crazy lady trying not to be late. i guess that could have been why. fortunately, leighnard allowed me use of hers. unfortunately, her camera cord (had she actually brought it) would not have fit in my laptop... so the pictures remain with her.

fortunately though i did remember to bring my camera to the event the night before the wedding... a minor league game.


on the way to the game...
a little bit city...

a little bit... not city??


the stadium...

the fare...



the field...

at the game...

there were antics on...





and off the field...

cousins


cousins


cousins


cousins



the groom...
he just looks tough.


the little brother...

the mom...

the little seester...

the husband...

*i apologize to all those whose close-ups i did not get... i know you wish i had... and you're welcome to all those whose close-ups i did get... i know you'd like to thank me for publishing them on the internet...please don't disown me!

"my parents are just driving me up the wall. 9 o'clock bedtime?! come on! the sun's out until 11!" "i know exactly what you mean. it's unconscionable."


hey look! we're famous!



as the night wore on, with no good picture of the 2 sisters, we tried our best to come up with something frameable, but just couldn't seem to find one another tolerable at the same time...


ah well... next visit.


the field sometime around the 9th inning...


because the teams didn't realize we had an a.m. wedding the next day, they decided not to stop at 9...
i have to say, i was okay with them ending it after 13 innings. i heard that the record for a AAA game was around 31.


next morning (alright... these were taken after the fact... like i said... crazy lady... no camera)...

what is great about having a beautician as a grandmother?


you get to do your hair in her beauty parlor...


with access to all of the fun hair products you could ever want...

you can even dry your hair in the hair-drying chair...
but i didn't. that probably would have gotten me there in time for the brunch reception.

hey! what's this?!
the little booster seat i used to sit on when i'd get my perms and haircuts as a kid. ah, memories.



okay... back to madison... and the lovely garden plot.

guess what we came home to?!!

real and true green beans!


but not only that... are you ready to find out what the purple mystery beans are?



they're purple beans!
that is, purple green beans! who knew?! not us.

and look... soybeans!
these little guys aren't quite ready yet.


we have lately been worried about our potato plants. you may remember them as healthy, green, busy, all that stuff... despite the potato beetles... but lately they are lethargic and thinning. is it blight? is it boredom? we were pretty worried until we discovered this:
a potato peeking out from under the soil. woohoo!

unfortunately i cannot say wonderful things about the garlic. when we got back, the... scapes... if you will, although they were hardly scapes... were completely wilted. brown and slumped over. so... with heavy hearts, we dug up the remains... which... ended up being a pretty fun scavenger hunt to find what they'd left us...


here is what we found...


were we happy to find all of those little garlic bulbs?

of course!


and i just have to end this post with our own future audrey hepburn...