The Garden Abounds

Rain and the warm, but not oppressively hot, weather have created near-perfect growing conditions.  That means lots of garden goodies this week.  Look forward to mustard (the hot, spicy curly leaves that look like kale), swiss chard (it is so breathtakingly beautiful that I shout to no one in particular everytime I bunch it), collard greens, arugula, etc. etc.  Luckily, it continues to be cool enough that the lettuce hasn't bolted and the beets are growing slowly but surely.  We've resisted the urge to yank them out and marvel at their ruby redness (well, not entirely true; we did yank a golden beet and it was a sunrise ripped from the soil and so sweet and strange but it made ari's throat swell up :(  no raw beets for him.).

our baby girls are getting big and jumping over the fence of their pen.  they can get out but they haven't quite mastered the getting back in despite ari's tutorials on the three-stop process (jump on the food barrel, jump on the fence, jump down into the pen).  If I can, I will absolutely try to capture this on video and sneak it on here.  The fox has not been seen recently and hopefully it stays that way.

Here's to continued good eating.  I hope to post a recipe for the amazing dinner ari made the other night.  I was out shopping for wedding rings all day and came home to an amazingly simple yet stunning dinner.  Oh, and I made foccaccia last night, too, which I will post later about because there's too much to do right now, what with a wedding to finish planning and all...

Violent Mother Nature

     So Ari, ever-dedicated disc golfer that he is, decided that despite the nasty weather and the radar indicating a storm with a pink and purple center was sweeping just north of us (Field of Dreams is just north of us) he must go disc golf.  It is league night, after all, and one other dude was also going to go, so of course.  Meanwhile, thin, cruel lightning bolts struck and dark, heavy clouds loomed as Ari shouted over the phone to another dedicated but let-us-say slightly more sensible disc golfer that "it's not even going to rain-check the radar!" as his buddy, who lives a block away (if we had blocks in rural northwest new jersey) told him that it was really quite nasty out and would not be joining him for a round.  Scoffing, Ari tugged on socks and sneakers, pulling a baseball hat low over his brow.  As a last ditch effort to keep him safe, I brought him outside to look at the black clouds which were moving fast and swirling much the way smoke from a fire does. 
     "That's a tornado cloud," he mused.  "They do that before a funnel forms.  But according to the radar, it's not going to rain," he yelled back as he hopped in his car and  drove into the dark swirling cloud.

     Not twenty minutes later, as I was safely inside but after the clouds has dissipated and the sun reemerged, I heard the crunching of rocks under car tires and stomping on the outdoor steps.  I was agape to see Ari standing in the doorway, proclaiming his drive to be the craziest he's ever taken.  Not long after leaving (less than 5-minutes-not-long) it was raining on Valley Road, and from there it just got worse.  Tree branches and leaves covered the ensuing roads, rivers overflowed onto their banks, whole trees were felled, power lines snaked through the streets.  Sounds like the tornado he was talking about.

     Anyhow, we didn't get one drop of rain, which we really could have used.  And it's a bit cooler, but no less swampy than it was before.