Remiss

Weekend flurry

Jon's return home from Switzerland created a flurry of activity and no time to post. I picked him up from the airport on Friday night and we immediately went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, Dos Taquitos, with our friends Holly and Adam.

Saturday, we spent 6 hours doing yardwork and then went to Falls Dam. This 'park and play' spot is created for kayakers when the Army Corps of Engineers release water from Falls Lake into the Neuse River. In this instance, all of the rain collected from Tropical Storm Alberto. We grilled out at Falls Dam with our kayaking friends and made plans to return the next day.

Sunday morning, Jon, Adam, and I rode about 15 miles on the Capital Area Greenway, while Holly baked Adam's birthday cake. To our delight, we discovered that we could ride from our house to Adam and Holly's house entirely on the greenway in 7 miles. We spent the entire ride home dreaming up ways that we could traverse the city on our bikes.

Later that day, we learned that the water release from Falls Dam was turned off due to flooding downstream. Our plans to kayak and celebrate Adam's 30th birthday were waylaid, so we quickly regrouped and decided to have an impromptu gathering at our place.

In the garden

I have been meaning to post photos of flowers in the garden. We get loads of compliments on one in particular, which is our cardoon plant. It is about 7 feet tall and looks very archaic, like this plant hasn't changed since the Mesozoic Era. To the left is a picture of a cardoon in full bloom. You might notice that it looks alot like an artichoke, which is because the two plants are related.

Below are photos of our front beds, which were inadvertly planted with varieties that attract hummingbirds, butterflies such as admirals, monarchs, skippers, and swallowtails, and honey bees.

For reference, some of these varieties include:
Butterfly Bush (Buddleja 'Black Knight')
Purple coneflower (Echinacea)
Hyssop (Agastache)
Yarrow (Achillea 'Moonshine' and 'Paprika')
Lamb's Ear (Stachys)
Whirling Butterfly (Gaura)
Russian Sage (Perovskia)
Catmint (Nepeta)
Coral Bells (Heuchera)
Foxglove (Digitalis)
Hollyhocks (Alcea)


While scrolling through the camera for photos, I laughed out loud when I found this one. What makes it particularly interesting to me is the fact that it is a self-portrait, meaning that a fair amount of effort went into creating it. I can only guess that Jon was trying to illustrate how tall our tomato plants are.

So, besides tall tomatoes, how do we know that summer has arrived? Easy. Tucker tells us.