Counting my CF Blessings in the Summertime

Summertime is a great time to remind me and my DH of why we are so blessed to be CF. Makes me count my blessings:

1. The passel of kids that get dropped off every day next door to their grands' house and who spend all day shrieking around the pool. Using profanity. "Barking" till all the surrounding dogs get into a tizzy. Wow, they're a fabulous form of birth control for us. We just exchange a knowing glance on the patio.

2. We sleep in every weekend. On Sundays we spend hours on the patio reading every word of the NYT. Love it.

3. We love local craft beer and trying new microbrews. There's nothing better than an Oberon savored together in our tiny but beautiful backyard. Or two. Ahhh.

4. We love gardening and have a big garden and herbs in pots all over the yard, none of which are ripped up by kids. Fresh dill, cilantro, and basil sprinkled over buttered and parmesan-ed pasta--divine!

5. We love to spend hot evenings quietly reading till the house cools down. What could be better than reading something good with one's sweetie nearby? Eh, nothing.

Yep. I guess you could say we have a quiet life--it is--but we both love it. We wouldn't trade any of it for anything, much less a kid. Nope. Hurrah for a CF summer!

Love this!!

Add:
6. Indulging in my very own dreamsicle/fudgesicle/popsicle without some kind of toddler screaming "MINE! MINE! MINE!" and making a grab for it.

- - - - - - - -
"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

Big WORD to the gardening bit -- I have been absolutely loving my garden this year, and I probably spend two hours out there each day. Right now all I've got are herbs ready to eat, but I can't wait for all my tomatoes to ripen, my cucumbers to grow, and my butternut squash to mature. It's a blast to get out there and fiddle with my plants.

Best thing about summer so far, aside from that? I'd have to say the absolutely luscious nights. There's nothing more awesome than sitting up on a warm night with a cool breeze, drinking iced tea and plowing through Hunter S. Thompson's books (I don't know why I waited so long to read them).

Ha! Amethyst, we sometimes stop the ice cream van cruising our neighborhood, for a choco-pop. We're both in our 40s. Meh, who cares? That pales next to the allure of choco-pop! With nut crunchies! Yum!

Sara, isn't a garden the best? We had some volunteer pumpkins erupt from nowhere (probably from compost pile, spread on garden) and pretty much take over half the garden but they're so interesting we don't mind. We also have an onion bed and a collard bed--our collards are so prolific I dried a batch in our evaporator. Collards sauteed with bacon...mmm, the best.

Clematis, that's how my butternut squash got started! My husband and I built what was meant to be a raised bed and dumped our finished compost into it. While we were waiting for a soil delivery, a bunch of butternut squash seeds that had been hanging out in the compost sprouted. I know it's got to be butternut squash -- I can't think of any other seeds we would have had in that compost patch. I gave them some soil and fish emulsion, and now we have (gulp) 46 squash seedlings growing like mad in the bed. I love the crazy things my garden does.

Sara: Ah hah, fish emulsion, I can tell you are a serious gardener! I made some fish emulsion once with some cheap fish pieces and let it bake in the sun for awhile and...well, it was better imagined than described. That's the last time I did DIY fish emulsion. But I do love Algoflash--that works well.

Volunteer plants in the garden like your butternut squash are great fun, aren't they? Our unexpected punkins are kinda taking over one whole side of the garden, but they're such interesting plants we don't care. I love how they send out a straight tendril, latch on to something, and then "coil up" the tendril into a tight coiled pattern to haul the plant against the support. It's really remarkable. To me anyways.

/garden geekery

Amen! I was talking to my boss last week about how he was going camping. I said "Ooh, I love camping!" and prattled on about reading in the sun, sleeping late, swimming, cooking on the BBQ and drinking wine until I fall over. He shot me a filthy look and told me that camping with his three kids is like being in hell.

Oops. :-)