Happy 15th months!

Whoops, so we neglected the blog here for a few (many) months. Sorry about that! Life just got in the way and we were busy playing and singing and running around like maniacs. But, blogging is back!


Today is the little girl's 15th month birthday. I can't believe how big she is! Check it out!

It seems like just the other day she was nestled in her little plastic box at the hospital.

Not only does she have a smile and an evily little grin, but she also has a rapidly expanding vocabulary. She can say "more" [mo], "mama" [mama] and "dada" [dada'], "no" [no] (which is often nononono in rapid succession). She also uses "whoof" [w^f] for dogs. Her passive vocabulary is vast (by this I mean that she clearly comprehends much more than she produces). When we get her from school each night, we ask her to sit down outside her classroom door so that we can change her shoes. She happily* follows directions and will go find her boots and try mightily to get them on her feet. 

The chickadee also has 6 (6!) teeth now. The first four are fully through but the last two on the top are still struggling to fully descend.**

She got to jump in puddles for the first time last week as we had a spell of weather in the 50s and 60s so the ice and snow melted. Apparently puddle jumping is an innate behavior because she just knew exactly what to do when confronted with a puddle! Splash! She's also been begging for rides in the stroller. When she sees it she starts trying to climb up in it to go out! I think she's has cabin fever too. She's also a fan of dancing and will nod her head (a headbanger in training?) and do cute little gyrations to the music. She just started spinning in circles too - so maybe she's a fan of hippie dance?

Things have been a bit better for Cole recently as well. The pinching and other painful behavior is mostly gone. Now she tries to hug him (which, granted, does often end up in a body slam to the floor, but, well, she tries) and kiss him. She likes to rest her head on his belly which he tolerates for much longer than one would expect. She still worships him and we can't get over how excited she is by his existence. 

We have some adventures coming up soon. We head to southern CA in 10 days for a quick vacation/wedding of a friend. We're hoping to take Froglette to  the ocean and the zoo. And then it's spring break (we're staying here but hoping to play hooky a bit and go have fun as a family) and then we're heading to Chicago so I can present at a conference. Busy busy!

*Okay, so not so happily recently. We seem to be having a grouchy streak. Sigh.

** We think that these teeth may be the cause of some of the grouchiness. We hope. Or maybe it's other new teeth?

Sculpture or Architecture?

Although we live in Anytown USA, the fact that there is a University here means that interesting and cool things occassionally make their into town. This is one of them.



For my last architecture project I was designing a pavilion for Wiccans to use (don't ask). As part of it, I was researching ways to make my building more 'natural,' or how to bring the outdoors in. My studio professor pointed me to a local park, where last semester a visiting artist installed a large scale sculpture.


As you can see, this isn't just a sculpture, but a physical structure that you can walk through, in, and around. It is constructed by weaving cut reeds with existing trees and living reeds. The structure is actually quite solid and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It is also intended to 'bloom' in the springtime when the trees start shooting off leaves and such. Its actually pretty cool.

The day I was out there it was close to dusk, and actually pretty cold. I'm hoping to go back out there in the spring, when the weather is more bearable, to see if the structure is actually blooming.

Brrrrrrrrr

It was -22 when we woke up this morning.


-22

That is a completely unreasonable temperature. It's warmed up to -15, which is so much better. Sigh.

Voting

I voted in a polling place for the first time in my life on Thursday. The folks who aren't from our Rose State may not realize that Oregon adopted an entirely absentee ballot system a while back. When I first started voting, I registered in my home town and had mom mail me my ballot each year. Then, the state shifted over to the mail in ballot system. I didn't fully appreciate how great mail in voting is until this week.

Square State allows early voting in polling places during a few weeks before election day (they also have an absentee ballot system, but I didn't do that early enough to get it in the mail). They're predicting a huge turnout for election day, so I figured I vote now rather than wait (check out the byline on this story). On Tuesday, I wandered over to the student union to mail a few letters and cast my ballot. The line was so long (more than 30 people and it didn't move the entire time I waited for my stamps) that I got discouraged and decided to wait until later in the week. It's pretty cool that they're having the early voting scattered across campus, so I figured I'd find another time to vote. Today the voting was at the school library. So after I finished teaching, I packed up my stuff and stopped by the library on my way home. I found this line.

I waited to vote for over an hour. The line had DOUBLED by the time I got to the front. I let a few girls go ahead of me as they were trying to vote before running to class (see what a nice teacher I am?!). Anyone who claims that university students don't care this time around are sorely mistaken. I was surrounded by kids who had never voted in an election before. I had a few freshman around me talking about how they were in 9th or 10th grade when Bush got elected the second time. On the one hand, I was so excited to see the turn out. On the other, I'm truly afraid that the local election staff have completely underestimated potential turnout and are unprepared for the crush that will happen. If you remember our posts about voting in the primaries... we completely exceeded anyone's expectations for turnout. These kids were waiting in a line for more than an hour to vote.That's right, 19 year olds were waiting to vote.

Which brings me really to my point when I started this post: voting in a polling place is stupid. I didn't really understand how dumb until today. For our readers who aren't familiar with the Rose State system, let me describe it briefly. Your ballot arrives in the mail along with the state funded voting guide which has the language of all ballot measures, the bios of the candidates, and then paid statements by candidates and supporters/opposition. The League of Women Voters and other groups generally send things out as well. You sit around and read the guide, the newpaper endorsements and figure out who you like. I generally took a few days to vote - voting on measures one day, people another. You had all your materials in front of you while making your decisions. Once you finished, you could either add a stamp and mail your ballot or drop it off at a large number of public ballor boxes (carefully guarded of course). When the state moved to this system, voter turnout increased.

Here, I just had my ballot in my little booth (with no curtain by the way). With all of the news coverage of the presidential election, I had heard no discussion of our local, county, and state choices. I hadn't even heard many of the names. Before I opened my ballot, I didn't even know who/what was up for election here. If I had the ballot at home, I could have done some online investigations, read up about candidates for the hospital board (!), judges, and other random seats. As it was, I didn't vote for any of the candidates. What was I going to do, pick the name I thought sounded "coolest"?

I'll be requesting an absentee ballot from now on, although I need to find out the state's policies on when they count those ballots first I guess.

Voting used to be so easy.

Is this Heaven...?

No, It's the Iowa State Fair.

It was that time of the year again...time to pack the kids into the giant pick-up truck, grow out the mullet, put on the beer stained wife beater, and head on down to the Iowa State Fair (We only did one of those things; most other people at the Fair do all those things. I kid...Kind of).

U Gotta Love It!!!

I do, in fact, love it. (Did you know that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a play set at the Iowa State Fair, and that it was made into a movie? Don't believe me? Well, IMDb doesn't lie. It even won an Oscar for Best Score)

If you'll recall, one of the first things the wife and I did upon arriving in Iowa last year was attend the Iowa State Fair. We were overwhelmed with the selection and quality of deep-fried food on a stick. And the heat/humidity was oppressive. This year, we had a game plan: we eat nothing that doesn't come on a stick.

Generally, the month of August here is hot and humid - people often refer to this as 'Fair Weather' - last year we experienced this, and it was dreadful. Fortunately, this year, the summer has been relatively cool and dry, so we were able to spend 7 hours at the fair, instead of getting tired out after 4 like last year.

The day got off to a great start immediately, on the bus from our parking lot to the Fairgrounds. We got on early, so had seats, but a family of Iowans (or at least Midwesterners) got on towards the end and had to stand and hold on to the straps. They all had on matching shirts and sandals with white socks. Here was their exchange (I'm paraphrasing):

Mom: I feel like I'm in New York City. Except it doesn't smell as bad.
Son: I rode the subway in New York. It was confusing and scary.
Mom: Ya, it's the same way in Boston. I don't know what it is about those subways, but they're terrible.

[Non-Fair related tangent: I was annoyed. First of all, I had on a shirt that said MASSACHUSETTS on it, meaning there's a good chance I resided close to Boston at some point in my life; you probably want to look around before besmirching other people's hometown. Second, nice sandals and white socks; that's a good combo. Third, I've rode the subways in both Boston (often) and New York (once); both were easy to ride, simple to navigate, well-lit, and not scary. Granted, there's usually little or no air-conditioning on those cars in the summer, so there's some smell, but let me tell you this: I'll take that smell over the smell of factory-farm pig stench on a stagnant, humid summer day every time. Fourth: nice matching shirts.

I find this to be one of the more amazing things about people from the middle. A lot of them complain that they are fly-over country, that everyone from the coasts, especially NYC, think they're a bunch of rubes with no culture and live in manure. And they rightly are offended by this. But to then turn around and believe/spread/create rumors about city-folk yourselves is terribly hypocritical. Cities aren't really that scary. The Middle isn't really that backwards. Sometimes, people are stupid. Check that: Most of the time, people are stupid. Back to the Fair.]

Of course, the first thing we did at the Fair was get something to eat: it was 1030 am and we had our game plan to stick to. We headed over to the Iowa Pork Producers and got a Pork Chop on a Stick. In most parts of the world, a pork chop is about 1/2 - 1" thick - a nice size to grill or broil. Here in Iowa, they have a special cut, conveniently called an Iowa Chop, which is usually 2 -3 " inches thick. The stick in this case is nothing more than the bone, but that qualifies to me.

From there, we headed to the Agriculture building to peruse the prettiest vegetable winners,

see the champion pumpkin (another State Fair record),
and of course, the Butter Cow, who this year was accompanied by a Butter Shawn Johnson (and Olympic Gold-medalist) and some other painter guy.

We then stopped for a smoked turkey leg. These things are straight out of the Flintstones. This, along with the cheese curds, pork tenderloin sandwiches, and corn dogs, are one of the staples of the Fair. We weren't impressed: the turkey tasted like ham, which is just weird, and it was really salty. We ate about 1/3 of it and threw out the rest. For us, the giant Turkey leg was 7/8ths hype, 1/8th taste.

On to the Prepared Foods building, where all the canning and cooking competitions were held. We weren't planning on eating anything, but they were giving away free ice cream bars on a stick so we had some of those - a palate cleanser if you will.

Unfortunately, we were somewhat disappointed with the canning displays. I'm not sure if the 500-year flooding event Iowa had earlier this year limited the number of entries, but we were unimpressed. Well, not unimpressed, because there was some pretty stuff, especially the white/green striped canned beans, but underwhelmed. Oh well.

We then circled around to the livestock barns, where we watched a sheep judging competition (kind of boring since they all look alike, although the one woman who was coaxing her sheep along by sticking her hand way far up its butt was pretty interesting), walked down the 'Avenue of Breeds,' where they show off all types of horses, cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, and chicken breeds, and visited with the Biggest Boar (once again, enormously large testicles) winner and his runner-up (in case the winner can't perform his duties). These Boar are so big I don't think they can stand up - two years we've seen them now, and not once has any of them even moved while we were there.

After that, some more deep fried wonderfulness. This time, we went simple and decided on fried, battered cheese curds. Honestly, these may be the best food ever invented. I could eat 10 million of them and never get bored. (Technically, the cheese curds aren't on a stick, but it doesn't matter, we made an exception. Trust me, if you ever have tried a deep fried, battered cheese curd, you understand what I'm talking about)

We then went to something new: the 'This is how a Real Farm Works' Building. In this building, they had arranged for various animals to give birth every day of the Fair. Since we went towards the end of the Fair, most stuff had already been born, like the piglets, cows, and goats (baby goats are very adorable, and pretty funny looking). There were also chickens hatching and baby ostriches, as well as ostrich eggs still incubating. And just for fun, while we were there, they were spaying a dog in front of a live audience; I thought this would be kind of gross and cool to watch, but it was terribly boring.

This building may have been our favorite part of the Fair this year. This entire building was basically saying: "Hey City /Suburban folk. The food you eat, it starts out really cute. Then we kill it and eat it. Deal with it. Its the Circle of Life." We weren't able to witness a live-birth, but we got the point.

As were leaving this awesome new building, we ran into some friends. We sat with them as they snacked on some cheese curds, a deep fried Milky Way, and deep fried pineapple; we also had deep fried pineapple, which of course comes on a stick (after re-reading that last sentence, I think we qualify as Iowans. We saw people we knew at the State Fair and shared fried food on a stick with them. Sounds like Iowa to me)

After that, the day took a bit of a turn for the weird. First, we took part in a popcorn poll, where you got a kernel of corn and put it in a jar for the Presidential candidate you were supporting. As we were going through the line, the guy behind us said '10 out of 10 terrorists support Obama.' We were pretty upset by this comment, and said something to the fine gentleman who said it. I don't really care who you vote for (well, I actually do - Barack the Vote!), but that kind of comment, based on rumor-mongering, really has no place in a real discussion on the merits of our future President. It made us sad.

We then entered the Varied Industries building. Back in the day, this was the place where farmers could check out the newest products for both the farm and home. Now, it's filled with sauna salesmen and political booths. It's pretty weird. There was an Anti-Evolution booth; I'm sure these people mean well, but to argue that humans co-existed with dinosaurs (and possibly even rode them like horses) is a pretty funny concept. I think we actually laughed out loud when we saw this booth. After passing a few anti-abortion booths, we decided it was time to go. It was starting to get hot, and we were tired.

On the way out, Kimberly stopped to get the gigantic-ist ice cream cone I've ever seen from the Iowa Dairy Association; she asked for a double scoop, but somehow ended up with 4 scoops. It was pretty insane.

I took a little detour to see the 'Super Bull,' in this case an albino looking thing, also with gigantic testicles. When I walked in, it was lying on its side. After a few seconds, it stood up with a speed that was very impressive for an animal of its size - me and the kid next to me jumped backwards as he turned towards us, despite the fact he was behind a fence. He also had a nose piercing (a bull ring, if you will), which made him look super scary.
I would not want to be the guy at Hawkeye Breeders that does this job:

And after that, another year at the Fair was over. While we ate a good amount of food, we skipped the pork tenderloin sandwich, which are supposed to be fantastic. And the Beef Sundae (like an ice cream sundae, but not at all like an ice cream sundae). And a Fried Twinkie on a Stick. And, sadly, the corn dogs. but we need to save something new to try for next year.

As for next year, we'll be even more prepared, and we're hoping to become more active participants in the Fair Experience. We're planning on entering Miles into the 'Best House Cat' competition (again, not joking); not to put too much pressure on the little feline, but I'm pretty sure he's going to win. I'm also hoping to submit some sunflower heads into the 'Largest Sunflower Head' competition; after sizing up this year's winners in person, I'm pretty sure we could compete. There's also a handful of 'Prettiest' vegetable competitions I think we could compete and place highly in, it just kind of depends on how early we can get our crops in the ground and get some fruit to ripen.

If I were you, I'd start planning my vacation for the 2009 Iowa State Fair right now. Just hope that we don't have Fair Weather.

[Check out all the pics on Flickr]

One down, three (?) to go

So today's the day. Today marks our one year anniversary of rolling into Iowa.

Maybe you remember our first month, me complaining about the weather, Peter looking for work, the State Fair.... It's been an adventure ever since.

Now, we are enjoying our last two weeks of quiet relaxation before new adventures begin. What's in store for us? Well, this year, I'll be helping Peter go off to school for the first time in 8 years. I'm sure you'll get to read lots of posts detailing "those undergrads", "people in the Middle are crazy", "food on a stick", "the weather", and updates from Miles. Although, as I reread that list, that's what you got last year too. I'm sure it will be as funny, enlightening, and wacky as ever.

Thanks for following along with us. The Middle isn't half bad.

Hot

It's currently 95 degrees out, but the heat index is 111. I'm not actually sure I've been this hot before. There's a heat warning until dusk. Don't worry about us, Miles and I are staying inside.

Can you imagine living here without AC? How did the pioneers do it?

"Too much is never enough"

This, I believe, is my husband's motto in life. Perhaps his farming ancestors are part of this but Peter firmly believes that one must always have more rather than just enough. He already has a family story about him. You see, while Dad was in the hospital during one of his operations, Peter kindly offered to bring us all dinner. He picked up some Chinese food and brought it to the weary group at the hospital. You could smell the Chinese food wafting down the hallway as Peter got off the elevator, and we were all blown away by the number of boxes that he unpacked. They just kept coming and coming. Kung pao and General Tso's mixed with some Happy Family and several boxes of potstickers with rice and veggies and more and more. All to feed three stressed out and scared women and one cancer patient. We took most of those boxes home.

I tell you this story to stress that Peter is WELL known for this behavior. But, it still came as a surprise to me when I showed up at THE GARDEN Tuesday morning. He told me it was big. He described the number and variety of plants. But, somehow, the true scale of the garden was lost on me.

We are so screwed.

The garden is really huge. Like crazy. There are at least 60 squash/cuke/melon mounds without an exaggeration and each mound has two or three plants. We'll be sneaking around the neighborhood and leaving squash presents on people's doorsteps in a month or two.
The white marks on the lower right aren't fungus, rather it's a melon variety called Moon and Stars. The Fruit are also supposed to have green with yellow dots.

There are 20 or so tomatoes putting out fruit. You can see them here tied to stakes.

You can start to see the scale of the garden in this picture. The lettuce, radish, carrots, basil, and weeds are in the foreground. Tomatoes and beans are in the middle and the squash are there in the back. We still have at least 100 radishes to pull, and I have two bunches in the fridge. The beans are going to go crazy any minute and the zukes are putting out babies fast. There's an entire "field" of basil. We harvested three zukes already as well a few different types of peppers. Our farming companions took home the few peas that managed to grow (it was past their season when they went in the ground). The beans have tiny beans growing (just thicker than a pencil lead) but by next weekend I'm sure they'll be huge. I'm hoping we get enough to can!

The farm project is intense and crazy, but incredibly enjoyable. Of the garden gang, I'm the only one with actual growing knowledge and it's great fun to watch them learn about plants and figure out who needs what. (Although they all need to learn to harden their hearts and THIN seedlings. By the time I got home it was too late and we have so many little two headed radishes).

And we're rather well known now. On Wednesday I went in to campus to lesson plan a bit and say hi to various profs. German prof asked how Peter was doing since his garden had flooded. I explained that he had a new garden project going and that it was a little ambitious. We talked for a while and then I mentioned that it was near PEter's old job. German Prof's jaw hit the ground as he exclaimed, "You mean that's YOUR garden?" He and his kids apparently have walked by regularly. We also get visitors from the gym and the restaurant and people drop off gifts as well (farming tools, hay etc).

I never would have wanted or planned a garden on this scale... but it sure is fun!

Back from Mexico

We are back home in Ames. We arrived last night, after a fairly lengthy flight for Kimberly [she was routed through Washington DC and Chicago because she used frequent flier miles to buy her ticket], and a mad dash through Chicago-O'Hare by me [I landed in the International terminal at 705, was able to get through the passport check and customs without any hassle (shocking in its own right), take a train to the opposite side of O-Hare, go through security again, and run down the domestic terminal to get on Kimberly's flight at 805 - I didn't have any checked bags, so that helped].

Miles is pretty damn happy to see Kimberly. He greeted us with a series of vomitting and hacking up of hairballs throughout the night.

We were also greeted by these cool sights:

In the ten days I was gone, some of the sunflowers in the front of the house have opened to reveal big heads

and some have gotten about 8 feet tall

In the back of the house, we apparently have an army of volunteer sunflowers from our birdfeeder seed. These have grown from 'unnoticeable' to 'sunflower' in the ten days I was gone.

And our front patio pepper plant is in full fruit production.

As we get settled over the next couple of days, we'll have updates on the mega garden (apparently, they've been harvesting radishes while we were away) and stories of Mexico, including lost Mayan cities (just like Indiana Jones!), the mega-lopolis that is Mexico City, and of course, the food (because, really, isn't this blog just an excuse to talk about food?).

Welcome back, us.

Devastation

First of all, thank you all for the wonderful comments in the original garden post. I appreciate them.

Second, remember how mentioned I would keep you updated on said garden? Well, this may be the last post in that thread.

So, I mentioned that it was raining and we were having thunderstorms, right? Well, I awoke this morning to a co-worker who also has a plot near us: 'The rain gods are fickle.' I know he's trying to plant his plot, so I thought there was too much water still and he was sad.

I was so wrong.

When I walked down to the garden plot, I noticed an unusually large number of cars coming through the complex. Then, as I got close to the plot, I saw this:

You're looking at a soccer field. And that's water. A lot of water. More water than there should be. Like, say, a flood.

And this is where our garden plot is/was/should be:
There is a river that runs a couple hundred feet to the south of our plot, and apparently it crested overnight (I heard someone say it crested 5 feet, which sounds really bad):
Now the river is like 10 times as wide as it was before. And flowing really fast.

And if it looks deep, it is. See these basketball hoops, they're 10 feet tall. Keep in mind that the original height of the river was at least 5 feet BELOW our garden plot.
There's also a golf course across the street, which is along the river. Guess what happened to that:
I think that hole now has a water hazard.

It's supposed to thunderstorm pretty much non-stop until next Wednesday, so I think the water might continue to rise. We're fairly high up, so I think we'll be ok, but I think the units down near the filed are in trouble.

I don't know what happened to the fence and plantings at our plot, but I'm going to go ahead and assume they're all gone, based on how fast the water was flowing.

Here's the schematic of our plot now:

I'm not sure what it will look like once the water falls, so I'm not sure if I'll replant. right now, I'm a little shocked.

Goodbye dear garden, we barely knew ye.

[More pictures of the devastation on Flickr]

We'll Always Have Sunflowers

When I was a young lad, I attended catholic school. I was never rapped on the knuckles by any of the nuns. In fact, I never had the honor of being taught by a nun, like my brother (although I did have one teacher named Ms Love, who in retrospect, was definitely a 'christian hippie' who lived on an island commune in Vermont when she was younger).

[Here's a fun tangent: the school and church parish I attended, and also where I was baptized (I think) and first communion-ed, was one of the parishes closed and sold by the Massachusetts Catholic Diocese as part of the settlement in all those child abuse scandals a few years back. They sold the complex to the local Greek Orthodox church, who needed to move out of their beautiful 'National Register of Historic Places' church into a larger space. A guy I hung out with and his family was big into the Greek church and they were enlisted to help renovate the new church to make it more Greek Orthodox-like. As part of the renovation, they removed the catholic alter, which was made of solid marble. They were just going to throw it away, so my buddy took it home. It now resides in his home as a beautiful bar. I don't know if this is awesome or sacrilegious, but at the least, it is a fine example of re-using old materials.]

Before the school closed and I was forced to enter the hell that is the public education system (joking, where else could I have learned to swear like a pirate?), my brother and I used to walk to school everyday. I remember this one house always had sunflowers along the sidewalk. And not little sunflowers, but the gigantic ones that get like 10 feet tall with heads bigger than human torso. I always thought they were cool, thinking it must have been a huge undertaking to grow such massive cool things.

When I moved to Portland permanently, Kimberly and I found a nice little bungalow with a very supportive (read: easily convinced) landlord who let us do whatever we wanted with the yards. We decided we would grow some veggies, including tomatoes, tomatillos, and various types of peppers (one of which we were able to successfully keep alive over 3 winters and we subsequently gave away when we left: if you are the person who we gave the plant to (and I honestly don't remember who has it) and you happen to read this, let us know how it's doing. I miss those little hot peppers).

We also decided to grow sunflowers.

Now, at this point, let me explain: I'm a city boy. I had a grandfather who had a great garden, and a long line of family that were farmers in Italy and my mother, grandmother and uncle have amazing green thumbs (green hands really), but I grew up in a suburb. I was never involved in the planting of anything, nor was I particularly interested. So when we bought the sunflower seeds, I was convinced that there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that giant sunflowers were going to grow out of these little sunflowers seeds, which looked like the ones I used to chew and spit when I was in Little League. Boy, was I wrong.

That year, we had sunflowers that got to about 8-9 feet. The heads had to be at least 18 inches across. They were gigantic. We salted and roasted the seeds and had enough for the whole winter (actually, my friend/workmate Eugene ate them all while sitting in a cold room doing filing, but that's another story for another day). People walking with their kids would stop and walk up next to the plants, admiring them. It was like a mini-community center, where people would gather to talk about their day.

It was fun. So I decided we needed to do it again.

We bought seeds a few weeks back at our super-great local nursery. And again, I was not sure that these were the right seeds. How could a 8-10 foot plant grow out of these tiny things. Impossible.

Despite the terrible weather we are still having (apparently, we moved to the Middle just in time for the worst winter in memory) I decided that if there was any chance of getting 10 foot sunflowers, I needed to start the seeds. But not outside. Not until July, apparently.

About a week ago, I planted about 13 seeds in pots, and placed them in front of the window with the rest of our young plants. Then I sat down, sad that I needed to wait 5-15 days for them to sprout.

But the package was wrong. Only a couple days later, the sprouts, well, sprouted. And they won't stop growing. A couple have to be 2-3 inches already. I worry they will fall over, since they grow towards the light and are sometimes almost horizontal. When I rotate them, they straighten up and lean the other way within hours. It's amazing. If they keep growing at this rate, they'll be 10 feet tall by June.

But now I'm worried that the plants are going to get too big for their pots before the weather takes a permanent turn for the better. What do I do then? The root structure was pretty large before, so I don't think larger pots is the answer, unless I only want to do one or two.

Please, please, please weather, get better. Please. I mean really, it's almost Tax Day, we shouldn't be having snow storm warnings anymore. Please get nice.

Having a gigantic plant grow out of a seed that is about 1/4 inch big in only a few short months has to be one of the most satisfying things you can possibly do as a garden/plant activity. If/when we ever have kids, I am growing them every year, just to reinforce to them how cool plants are. I will grow them with my niece 1900 some time.

Anyways, here's a couple pictures of the sprouts in various states of growth.

Come on weather, help us out.

Not more winter....

It appears I spoke too soon. We woke up a few times in the night to the sound of rocks bouncing off the roof, and eventually I concluded that it was hail. Then, it turned to snow. It's still snowing now. We're predicted to end up with 3-5 inches.

On Sunday it was so warm that we decided to begin our spring planting!

This is the view outside my window now:
Will it ever end?

Happy Spring!!!

(note that this post was originally composed on Monday 3/24, see the post above this one for an update)

Although we still have forecasts of more snow in our future spring has arrived. The robins are out in force, pulling worms and antagonizing the little "chickadees" (I'm not sure exactly what the little ones are). As I went to bed last night, it was gently snowing and this morning we woke to a white Easter Sunday. But even so, the grass is beginning to turn green and there's a promise of spring everywhere.

Mom came to visit over part of this last week (my spring break) and got to see some sunshine mixed with her snow. By the time she left, she was tired of hearing me describe the weather as "balmy"! It was in the high 40s and 50s most days.

While Mom was here, we took a road trip out east and explored a new part of the state. Note that the more of you who visit, the more excuses I'll have to leave my desk and see something new! I'll let Mom speak for herself, but I thought it was a very interesting and pleasant road trip.

We drove out to the Mississippi River and wound our way up the Old River Road. We were both quite surprised to see icebergs floating in the river in Davenport. Slightly north, in the quaint town of Le Claire, we tried to go view one of the locks. Evidently, many (most?) of the locks are now closed to visitors (perhaps a result of 9-11) but we entertained ourselves watching the river and the ice.
That is, until we noticed the GIANT bald eagle perched right above our heads. Seriously folks- this bird was enormous! We then explored a little path and found more evidence of the giant birds- these little fish were scattered all over- even in the trees.

Apparently, we had happened upon a huge bald eagle migratory area, albeit 2 months late. One of these years I'm definitely bundling up and heading out in January to see hundreds of bald eagles.

We wandered our way north even more, driving through small towns, visiting antique stores (but not buying anything!), and talking all the way. We decided Saturday morning that we were going to go as far as Dubuque and made a reservation in a B&B for the night. The proprietress encouraged us to arrive by 5 as to not miss the main event: the St. Patrick's Day parade down Main Street.

The B&B was in a lovely old mansion built by a lead baron (or was it lumber?). The town of Dubuque is very historic and used to lay claim to the highest number of millionaires per capita in the nation. It's also a very scenic viewpoint of the Mississippi River. We got in at 4:30, enough time to get the tour of the B&B, enjoy a glass of wine, and wander out onto the wraparound deck before the parade started. And what a parade it was! It is the epitome of the small town parade, with a few cars, the vans for the local radio stations, some people throwing candy, and a group of people and their dogs all walking in it. Everyone had on green, of course. And there were two St Pats on rollerblades!

After the parade, drained from the excitement, we had to contemplate dinner. We discussed going to this place- due to the family connection.

However, we decided that modern Iowan food was more our style and ended up in a lovely little bistro. We even shared warm bread pudding for dessert. Yum!

I must confess here that the prime reason for picking this B&B was the fact that it had two house cats on the premises. In fact, we even requested one of the cat's favorite rooms. Well, little Cindy did indeed decide to spend part of the night with us, curled up beneath the comforter at the foot of the bed.

She was quite happy there until my phone rang at almost 2am to warn me of a gunman on campus (several hundred miles away). This turned out to be okay. Mom and I slept fitfully after that harsh awakening. We were rewarded in the morning with unbelievable omelettes: brie and pears. It sounded beyond weird to me, but turned out to be fantastic.

We spent the morning exploring the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium . It's an amazing place that even has a touching pool! Woo hoo! We were amazed by the fact that that the Mississippi River is frozen over .
In fact, there were even fish frozen into the water . I wonder why they couldn't escape to deeper waters.

So, all in all, we had an exciting fantastic trip though Eastern Iowa. Come visit and we'll take you somewhere cool too!

Some News

I got accepted. Which is kind of mind blowing.

Kimberly had the letter all day and just gave it to me a few minutes ago. She's mean.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll add details later, when I figure things out.

I think this calls for the the Badgers.

Presents!

Today was a very good day. Today involved a lot of presents!

My favoritest sister sent me these:

Now, while YOU may think, "seriously? She's excited by that?" the truth is, I have been dreaming of these since we moved to Farm State. PEter and I have a large collection of mason jars and store lots of cooking stuff in them. I've been looking for these everywhere and they are not here.


Then, after that, Cool Accent Prof took me to the Italian Grocery in the big city. I came home with proscuitto, oil cured olives (the black wrinkly ones), sopresatta (a spicy salami type), and a jar of spicy mixed pickled veggies. This little store was great fun! PEter visited it a while back and wrote a post about his trip here.

So now, I'm enjoying olives and cured meats and grading and writing papers. Woo hoo, what a Friday night!