High School Friends and a Luminaria Walk

Last night my high school friend Jennifer had a party for two other high school friends who live in or near Denver, and our high school friend Andrea, who was visiting from Albuquerque. Andrea has been my best friend since we were in kindergarten together at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Albuquerque. Jennifer made posole and tamales, and we went for a luminaria walk through her wonderful old Washington Park neighborhood. The kids had a ball running through the park and around the lake in the dark, and the houses at night all lit up for Christmas were so festive.

The kids range in age from ten to four.

Catching up with old friends.



Who knew back in high school that all these beautiful kids were in our future?






And last weekend we had a birthday party for my high school friend Tom at our house. No blessing in the world like old friends. We are all so lucky to live near each other and have our kids play together.

Basketball

When there hasn't been a blog post in awhile, I feel like I should break the spell with something that is not very dramatic.

There's a basketball court tucked away near the trail behind our house. Today we took our ball and R tried to hit the regulation-height hoop. The hoops at school are quite a bit shorter.

R is a tongue-concentrator. I used to be too.

Beautiful, bright clear November day. The temperature starts to drops as the sun moves lower in the sky. Charlie always seems to be involved in something much more interesting and high-stakes than we are.

7th Birthday Part II

On Sunday, her actual birthday, we had her small family party.


She asked for popcorn chicken with honey for dipping, sparkling pink lemonade, jello, and a Funfetti cake. She's never had jello before. She took one bite and said "This is not very good. It kind of tastes like sugar and color. Is it pretty junky?"

She asked for some furniture and Calico Critters for her dollhouse. I think she was happy.

7th Birthday

My R is 7! We had a "Fantastic Mr. Fox" party on August 28. We showed the movie in the backyard as soon as it got dark. There were cousins and school friends and neighbor friends and their siblings.


They all made up their own games and ran around in the backyard until it got too dark to see. Then we started the movie.

Friends in the sunflowers.

Banner with all the "Fantastic Mr. Fox" characters.

The favors were bags of Mrs. Bean's Famous Nutmeg Ginger Apple Snaps. If you've seen the movie, you'll know that these figure prominently.

She hates being the center of attention. But everyone is singing Happy Birthday, and it's for you! In every birthday picture since she was three, she's had some version of this I hate it/I love it expression.

Cutting the cake.


The girls.

And the boys.

Rapt attention. It was pitch-dark--these are flash photos. D built a giant movie screen from scrap wood and painted it white, and we hung a sheet over it.

Mr. Fox!

Birthday girl.

Christmas lights in the trees!

After everyone left at 10:30, we sat on the back deck and watched the stars. Charlie relaxed in the dark with a bone and a tennis ball.

We let the birthday girl fall asleep in a deck chair. When she woke up (in her own bed), she was seven.

Late Summer Garden

Back in school, birthday over. Harvesting and canning and wondering how early first frost will come this year. Lots of blog posts to catch up on. For now, some shots of the early-September garden and R's little neighbor friends playing in it.

These sweet peas are so glorious. Worth all the work of growing them from seed.

All picked this morning. These are mostly Opalka tomatoes, the oval paste ones that are best for canning. I have a lot of sauce to make! I borrowed a dehydrator and it's working right now, filled with zucchini chips and tarragon. The peppers that we don't eat in the next few days I'll cut up and freeze, or use as a little hit of color in pickles.

I sold some of these at our neighborhood farmer's market in August.

Early morning sun on the just-picked tomatoes.

Pasta salad with lots of tomato varieties. Kellog's Breakfast are the orange, then there's Green Zebra, Paul Robeson (my neighbor Julie calls them Roy Orbison, which cracks me up!), and black cherry and lollipop (yellow cherry).

Funny girls and some overgrown broccoli.

Ready for pickling.

Cosmos, bean and cucumber blossoms, and Fairy Tale eggplant.



Strange to think that there could be snow on the ground in a month.

Harvest!

July has been pretty light on blog posts. Too much weeding and watering and, to be honest, doing nothing all day at the pool with R, to be on the computer much.

We have lots of little green tomatoes. I hope that this year is better than last and they ripen before the first frost. Colorado has a frustratingly short growing season. But we've had a heat spell this week, and everything is taking off. Here's what I harvested today:

Ready for making pickles! Cucumbers, purple peppers, red pepper, eggplant, squash.

Coosa squash, Fairytale eggplant, Ronde de Nice squash, bush pickle, and purple pepper.

Sunny yellow summer squash.



And blue borage flowers. They taste like cucumbers and are lovely in a salad or an iced drink.

Peas!

Much later than I predicted, the peas are ripe. I planted the seeds around St. Patrick's Day. Late June, they finally are ripe. This picture of D I think will always remind me of the June that so many payments came due--school tuition deposits, summer pool membership, summer lessons for R--that he had to put off getting a haircut until July. He's a very good dad.

We've had several harvests, and lovely bowls of just-picked, barely-cooked, peas. The first were so good we ate them plain, the last few we added butter and salt and ribbons of fresh mint. R is mostly indifferent about the garden. She has always liked cherry tomatoes. Not much else besides flowers interests her. But she liked these peas. She liked pulling the strings and opening up the pods and she said the just-picked peas tasted "like a lollipop."

Peas and paws. See Charlie's little white socks at the top of the picture? He loves it when we're outside. He steps up his game, and it's rare to get a picture of him that's not blurry, out-of-focus motion.