Random Pics From Steven's Phone

As Kristyn noted in an earlier post, we went to the local Memorial Day air show last weekend. We forgot to bring the camera, but I was able to take some pictures. We started with a bus ride to the airport. As you probably know, Austin calls every vehicle he sees a "bus," with the exception of Jeeps, which for some reason he recognizes as different. He gets very excited when he sees an actual bus, so we figured he would be excited to ride one. Well, his initial reaction was the opposite. He didn't cry, but he was certainly scared.

Gavin, of course, is an old pro at riding the bus and enjoyed the ride.

Hugging Mommy always makes it better.

No bus ride is complete without the wind in your face from the natural air conditioning.

Eventually, Austin relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

Once we arrived, Gavin got to see the cockpit of an F-16, used by the Thunderbirds...

...and a Blackhawk helicopter used in search and rescue operations by the Navy.

Once the planes started flying, Austin really enjoyed the show. Overall, it was a great day.

Tonight, I took some photos of our raised bed gardens. We've come a long way from the empty beds of early spring. The first bed pictured contains bell and jalapeno peppers in the front, onions on the left edge (planted from seeds and not really performing like traditional onion sets), tomatoes behind the peppers, zucchini behind the tomatoes, and cucumbers in the back right with the improvised trellis behind them.

Here's a closer view of the cucumbers. You can also see that I've scattered marigold seeds throughout the garden beds, and they are coming up well. Kristyn really wants this to be an organic operation, and I'm trying to accomodate that by planting marigolds to deter pests. I'm told it works. I hope so, because picking off hundreds of squash bugs and thousands of squash bug eggs last year was no fun.

Bed #2 is shown here, and has more of the early spring plantings than the other bed. In this picture you see a row of bush beans in the forefront, with sugar snap peas and garden peas climbing the trellis behind them. On the right of this picture are the strawberries, which are really starting to put on fruit (see below).

Here's a view from another angle, with the beans and peas on the right, and red potatoes on the left. There's actually a row of carrots between the beans and peas as well, but they're not very visible in these pictures. Let's just say I'm trying to get all the produce I can out of a small space. Once the potatoes are harvested (probably by July 4th), I'll start more beans in that space.

Here are the first sugar snap peas of the season. Let's hope they start coming in larger numbers, as I've read they are best consumed right after harvest, and I need a few more than this for a meal.

I'm getting 8-10 strawberries a night out of the garden right now. Most are small to medium. These two are not the norm. The one on the right is the closest thing to perfect I've picked yet. The one on the left is just doing it's own thing.

Finally, since I know you aren't really checking this blog for pictures of produce, here are two pics I took of Austin running around the kitchen on a recent morning, wearing his big brother's bike helmet (backwards).