Crystal Madrilejos

We’re officially at the halfway mark of the pregnancy. This past Monday was our 20-week appointment/ultrasound and the baby is healthy and happy. We’re not finding out whether it’s boy or a girl, though Andrew and I both have our suspicions. In another 20 weeks we’ll see who’s right. I’ve been feeling the little one move a lot, but Andrew still has yet to feel anything. I suppose he’ll be able to feel something soon because the movements are definitely getting stronger.

–c.

UPDATE: Andrew felt the baby for the first time this morning (10/11/09)! They were the strongest kicks I’ve felt yet!

Life has been busy and full of new things to share. Summer is almost over and fall is creeping up faster than expected (I think living in a valley speeds along the process too). Fall is my favorite time of the year and some days the air smells so much like autumn that I can hardly stand the wait. It seems the waiting and anticipation are half the fun when the end goal is something so amazing.

With that said, Andrew and I have some big news to share. We are expecting a little one at the end of February! We are very excited and very busy with getting our lives in order to welcome a new person into the world. This is our first baby and we are equally happy, nervous, and mystified by the whole thing! I think the shock has finally worn off and we are now in the planning-and-slightly-overwhelmed phase with a “to-do” list that is as ambitious as it is long. I have to say that I prefer it to the sick-as-a-dog-exhausted-beyond-comprehension phase, which has for the most part passed.

I will post again soon with all the things we’ve been working on the past few months!

-c.

As you saw in our last post, deer have been snacking on our hard work. So far we know they like peppers (or at least their leaves), strawberries (the whole plant), swiss chard, green bean leaves, and they like the foliage of our beets but not the actual beet, which is kind of annoying because in the process of eating the leaves – harvest-ready or not – they pull out the beet. Their path has been obvious.

Swiss chard chomping:

Green bean binge:

The deer are looking past the pastures of fresh, organic grass and honing in on our more “exotic” offerings. This is a problem we anticipated but now that we’re faced with it we’re scrambling for solutions. As expected, our fence isn’t tall enough. The wind chimes we bought are so heavy they hang stoic in gale force winds. The liquid fence, although very potent (imagine the worst smells your body has ever produced all mixed together and combined with the liquid that has pooled at the bottom of a dumpster in August), keeps getting washed away by the rain. Our next thoughts of prevention are radios, motion lights, strategically strung fishing line, borrowing a dog, and me dressed as a bear. If you have any suggestions let us know.

-a.

The fact that matter cannot be created or destroyed has always boggled my mind and our garden has added to that bogglement. We put seeds in the ground – some the size of pinheads – and they grew so, so big that I simply cannot understand how that “matter” was not created. The energy potential in a seed has to be on par with an A-bomb. Our garden exploded.

Zucchini a few weeks ago:

Zucchini now:

Our trellis is finally getting some relief as the peas are starting to die. For a second there I was worried it would buckle under the strangulation of hundreds of tiny little nooses (vines).

Here are some overviews:

If deer weren’t so damn cute I’d have their carcasses strung up from every tree in our backyard. This is one of our healthy strawberry plants:

This one’s not so healthy. I hope it tasted good, Ms. deer.

-a.

I’ve never seen this happen but every time I approach an intersection with a 4-way stop I hope for one of the following scenarios to play out:

1.) At the exact same time, all four vehicles turn right.

2.) At the exact same time, two vehicles turn right while the other two pass each other and turn left. (This scenario is more unlikely as the physical size of the intersection needs to be quite large. But, it is possible.)

Rest assured, I’ll keep everyone posted and if either of these happen you’ll be the first to know.

-a.

Does anyone like licorice anymore?

Personally, I love it. But the finding brethren in this tasty pastime proves to be very difficult. We are an elusive group apparently. I inherited the palate from my mother, who in turn received it from her father.

This was my grandfather’s choice (Läkerol has a number of licorice varieties and I can’t remember if this was the flavor he used to like, I just remember it being quite potent.):

Growing up I remember my mother opting for a more conventional choice:

And this is my latest licorice craving:

So if you like licorice, let me know. I feel like I’m carrying the torch all by myself.

-a.

PS – And don’t even talk to me about “red licorice.” Blasphemy!

[Image via Le Bouton]

My dream would be to dress like this every single day. Every piece of clothing on this site is perfect.

–c.

There seems to be a void in the world of tissue box design. For whatever reason, the patterns that adorn boxes of facial tissue are inevitably horrible. And this isn’t a new revelation. Grandmothers across the globe have been crocheting tissue box covers for years now and others have come up with even more impressive solutions. For example, one of my favorite remedies does away with the box altogether:

Since Crystal and I battle the occasional allergen and we have boxes of tissues throughout the house I wanted to try and ease our eyes from the patterned hell. I focused on our bedroom where end table space is limited and access can be a problem. Here was my “solution”:

-a.

The below picture was on Yahoo!’s homepage a few days ago. Michael ‘s face and the word “Bad” both seem to be brightened a bit as compared to the original album cover so some photo retoucher was hard at work, it’s just unfortunate that they forgot to clean up that crackhead’s thumb nail.

And yes, it is ironic that even after all of Michael’s real life facial “touch-ups” the media still feels the need to do their own tinkering. The lesson here? “You’re gonna be the only you that there is or was, so be you, please oh please, be yourself.” -TG

-a.

As we’ve mentioned many times before, this is our first dip into the gardening pool. We’ve learned a lot thus far and have been surprised by many things but nothing prepared us for the vigor of the small, dirty starch balls we call potatoes. They grow like mad! Our garden rows are packed and our build-as-they-go container is even more so. We literally could not dig up enough dirt to keep up with them. We had to give up and just let them go. This is the picture we posted before of the container right when the taters started to sprout:

And this is how far we got in building up the sides of the container before the potatoes got out of control:

Some of the plants are blooming which means there are potatoes down below. We got a little shovel-happy and decided to dig up one of our Yukon Gold plants, below was the yield:

Needless to say, they were so, so good. For the rest of potato plants we’re going to let them bloom and start to die a little before we harvest them so the potatoes can continue to grow and it’ll allow some time for their skin to toughen up a bit as well.

-a.