Update on Life:

Hey all, things continue to just roll along in our lives as they tend to. I have had the opportunity to play in some nice v-ball tournaments this summer, mediocre success but good friends and some good fun. This last event was a charity tournament to raise $$ for the American Cancer Association. There was gorgeous weather, 70+ teams, and we were able to raise close to $5,000!! Not a bad day at all. The garden continues to grow well as we are now harvesting raspberries every day with quite a crop remaining. We even caught a picture of Missy trying to harvest some berries for herself!! I also have been able to pull some nice radishes while the carrots and lettuce continue to sprout up. Just for the fun of it I planted some corn, beans, and pumpkins to one side, we will have to see if anything turns out from them. Always fun to experiment with the growing stuff, we certainly have enough space to spare for a few trial plants each season. In the meantime the lilies that I planted have started to bloom and combined with my daisies gives a great contrast I think. In other news we added a new member of the family in the form of a orange tabby cat named Tony. A 3-year old male he is slowly settling into the routine at our place and him and Missy are becoming friends it appears. Nice that they can share the space together and keep each other company while we are at work. He is a little skittish as of yet but slowly improving I think, only time will tell. Janelle is rolling along in her new job as an intake person for one of the counseling programs at CCS. She is at least "OK" with the position for now and certainly helps reduce stress with us both back to having steady jobs. I am also planning to interview for a possible teaching job at the Univ. of Phoenix in the next month or so. I have seen myself doing teaching at least sometime in my life so this might well prove to be the chance to get my foot into the door on the profession. Looking forward to the opportunity regardless.

Gardening Fun

One of the passions I have found since moving into our house almost 2 years ago in Oct. was gardening. Honestly I never thought that I would enjoy the pursuit but find it to be really cathartic for me. Doing some mindless physical labor every now and then certainly seems to keep me focused on important things and allow me to get out any and all extra energy I might have on any given day. At Janelle's urging I do everything as green and organic as is possible. I compost all of our yard waste that I can, use grass cuttings and natural fertilizers/sweeteners on the lawn and basically never use chemicals in the yard at all. So far we have been rewarded with some great growing lawn, flower beds, and a small garden plot. This year I have planted tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, carrots, pumpkins, and a couple types of peppers. After last years poor crop I decided to be aggressive about the peppers and have constructed my very own mini greenhouse to help them along. Only time will tell!! Meanwhile I have some great luck with the lupine from last year that have grown to shoulder height in 3 great colors and bring in swarms of fuzzy bumblebees, great for pollinating all of my plants and creating quite the soothing background hum that just says "garden" to me. I have also had great success in transplanting several large patches or irises, last year to the front patch and this year to the side area along the driveway. TONS of flowers result for some good color to accent the house. Fun to try new stuff with now a garden patch filled with Lilly, lupines, fig and apple trees, veggies, roses, raspberry and strawberry vines, euphorbia (sp?) and even the fun "puff-ball" flowers on the chives plant. Now if only those peppers will grow this year!! If you have never tried you hand at this I would certainly recommend the experience. Start small, don't sweat a few dead plants and let yourself get buried in the pure nature of it all. ;-)