Thursday, August 12, 2010

Fab Five Friday

So I've seen on a few blogs people doing these things called "fab five Fridays" or whatever cutesy name you'd like to insert. Technically it's Thursday, but I will just wait to post this until tomorrow. Tricksy, eh? Yes... But R is still sick and Futurama isn't on until 10 and I have nothing else I feel like doing, so here are my five fabulous things for this Friday, not because I'm doing them but because I felt like writing about them.

1. My garden. Except for the squash.


(The above are obviously not squash, but rather tomatoes). I love my garden-this year we did raised beds, and they've done pretty well! I have 5 cobs of corn coming along (the most exciting part, in my opinion...unfortunately I'm not exactly sure when to pick them so that could raise problems), tons of maters-both small and large, cucumbers, strawberries, and watermelon (I have 3 baby melons!). So far the tomatoes have gotten the most use-the cukes have been smaller than usual, and the corn's not ready yet. Nor are the baby melons. I planted some bell peppers later in the summer and they just now seem to be blossoming, so we'll see what happens there. But the tomatoes-oh man. That's the main reason to have a summer garden in the first place! We've had caprese salad twice, blt's once, stuffed peppers (using homegrown tomato puree) once, and tonight we had a tomato on our burgers. So. Friggin. Good.

Except for the squash. For whatever reason squash hates growing for me. I can't grow it in Massachusetts. I couldn't grow it in Kentucky. I don't know why.

2. Vermont. This is a picture taken near Smuggler's Notch State Park in Vermont.


R and I went here on our staycation/New England sampler vacation. Let me say, it was awesome! The park itself was really small-only 20 campsites I think, and hiking and camping is all that particular park has. BUT...they were really low key, had firewood for 4 bucks and a fire starter (which meant we didn't have to dig around for kindling), and we had a nice site near the bathroom, which kept me from having to sneak a pee behind a tree in the middle of the night when I don't want to walk to the bathroom by myself because it's cold and I don't feel like being attacked by bears thank you very much.

Anyway the park was awesome. Ben and Jerry's was cool. Stowe was cute, though I would never ever want to go near there in the winter. I imagine it's a mad house. Smuggler's Notch itself was awesome. We hiked up a mountain to a mountain top lake, looked at said lake, and then hiked down. On the way down a group wouldn't move and I proceeded to fall and scrape the crap out of my knee, but that was the worst of it. Got some good pictures of the lake, though.

Oh and they let you have beer in Vermont State Parks. I just have to remind myself of what that place must be like in the winter to keep me from wanting to move there. I don't mind winter, when it's 2.5 months like it is in Kentucky. When it's November-Aprilish like it is in New England I tend to be a little...disenchanted. So I just kept imagining that I was hiking up that mountain in 3 feet of snow a la Lord of the Rings. That helped temper my Vermont enthusiasm a bit.

3. Beer. This will be a constant. I just thought it was a convenient time to update you all on a few things of note in my beer world:

-The Hefeweizen should be ready to drink early next week, though it will improve in taste even more in a few more weeks.

-There's a Pale Ale in the carboy just waiting to be bottled next week. That means we'll have about 100 bottles of homebrew at once. Woohoo!

-R saw a post on Facebook that I was craving a hoppy Pale Ale, and stopped to get me some despite his growing illness. I love him.

-Summer ales are disappearing for the year. WTF? It's AUGUST folks, and the middle of August at that. I realize Oktoberfest is technically in September, but do we really have to pull out the Oktoberfest beers in the middle of August? I'm still in summer mode. I only gripe about this because my local brewery is done with growler fills of their summer for this year, and has Oktoberfest. I like Oktoberfest as much as the next person, and I LOVE fall beers (Shipyard's Pumkinhead being my absolute favorite of the fall selection), but I'm not ready for that. I'm still in my cloudy-wheat-ale phase of summer. Why do I have to settle for bottles for the next month? Sigh.

4. This blog: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com You need to read it. Now.

5. Jesus. I guess he should be number one, really, seeing as he's Jesus and all. We're buds, as you can tell from this picture. Anyway, Jesus really is awesome. Not joking about that one. Seriously.


So there you have it. What's not awesome? One of my best friends is moving away to Chicago. And R is sick. Boo.

But dogs are cute, right? So we'll end on a happy note. The dog on the left is Poppie, my mom's (she's...5 now?) and the dog on the left is my nephew's, SkippyJon (named after the oh so awesome SkippyJon Jones books). My mom took this the other morning and sent it to me with the caption: BFF.



There. Don't say I never gave you anything.


2 comments:

Hilary said...

GAH! I forgot and went ahead and posted this and it's only Thursday. Tricksy Hilary=epic fail. Oh well.

Mom said...

SOOOOO jealous of your homegrown veggies - especially the maters!!!
Mike (next door) brought us some homegrown ones tonight so BLT on the menu for tomorrow night. Harvest and have a mater for me :(