Tuesday, July 13, 2010

An abundance of fun and crops!

Last weekend David and I went to Westborough to visit Brian and Jane and see The Offspring (David's favorite band) in concert. We really enjoyed our visit.

Jane and I made ice cream cone cupcakes on Saturday and they turned out really well. They were beautiful AND delicious. I think I am going to make these for my next group meeting presentation. (I may also make them for David's next group meeting presentation too.)

Our visit with Jane and Brian was really nice because it was so relaxing. We mostly sat on the couch and hung out (though Jane and I did run a lot of errands while the guys brewed beer on Sunday). While we were there, David and I got hooked on a new game for my iPod/iPad called Angry Birds. It is ridiculously fun. Reason #682094 that I love my iPad and iPod touch devices.

The Offspring concert was a disappointment for the most part. Our tickets said that the concert started at 7:30, so our plan was to arrive at 7:30 because we did not really care if we saw the opening band (Pepper) or not, and we figured that 311 (the other play co-headlining the Unity Tour) might even play second. However, when we got to the Comcast Center at 7:30, we heard The Offspring playing in the background! Apparently the time of the concert changed to 7:00, Pepper played then, and The Offspring started playing right at 7:30 sharp. We missed two songs, including one of the best songs from their new album. The band sounded amazing, but they only played for one hour :( The entire concert experience just fell flat, especially since we missed a portion of their very short show. We stayed until 311 played three (awful) songs, and then we called it a night.


When we arrived back at Ithaca on Monday, we discovered that our farm had flourished in the time when we were away, most likely due to lots of rainfall in the Ithaca area over the weekend. We got an abundance of crops, as well as fantastic peas that will be ready to eat on Thursday. Shown in the picture above is a zucchini, cucumbers (that will be made into pickles tonight), mint leaves, dill (also for pickles), one pea, and a swiss chard leaf from the huge swiss chard plant that we picked. Since we only had one pea plant, we ate the peas inside to see how they turned out...and they was phenomenal. They were by far the best peas I have ever tasted :)

This week we will be giving our garden some extra love because we will be leaving it for one week while we relax / play in Walt Disney World. We leave in just 4 days! The entire Chobot family (plus Hokanbots!) will be staying in a Wilderness Lodge Villa for 7 days. I can hardly wait.

Friday, July 2, 2010

The Danger Zone - a two month progress report

We have been "farming" for two months now, and so I thought I would post pictures of all our plants to see how much they have grown since we started.

cantaloupe

cucumber

collard greens

broccoli

beans

sweet peas

swiss chard

tomatoes (from Ifat, a post-doc in David's lab)

cucumber (from Irina -another post-doc - planted after we planted our row)

zucchini

Our spice garden is growing out of control. Here are two of the herbs we have grown:

mint

sage

We are having so much fun with our garden (farm) and I can't wait to eat the rest of the yummy crops that are blooming during the months to come :)