Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Last weekend we headed down to the Austin/San Antonio area for a relaxing time with a few friends. We saw the bats at the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, had a few drinks on 6th St , went tubing , climbed Enchanted Rock , and had a meal on the River Walk in San Antonio . All of which I've blogged about before, so just click on the links if you want the details. Pedernales Falls deserves a mention, though. We dropped in at the state park on our way from Austin to New Braunfels, and cooled down with a dip in the Pedernales River. The Falls themselves weren't exactly falling, but were spectacular all the same. The river runs over some huge slabs of limestone, forming beautiful green pools and sculpting the rock into curvaceous features. Flash flooding is apparently a common occurence; see here for some awesome before-and-after photos. All was calm and serene while we were there though. There's not a lot of spare water around Texas in the summer. The

It's been a while, so I begin with a huge apology to all those crowds of you who have been anxiously refreshing your web browsers waiting for the next installment. What's that? Oh, well an apology to my two readers then. Anyway, for the delight and edification of these highly dedicated followers, and anyone else who occasionally clicks on the link when they have nothing better to do, I now present the touching! the death-defying! the heart-wrenching! story of a little bird named... oh wait, we never named him. How about Peep? Peep kinda fits. So, a little bird named Peep. Here we go. Now Peep was a baby barn swallow, and his parents have made previous appearances in this blog. They hadn't had an easy time of it, as their first nest had been destroyed, and they'd had to find mud and grass to build a new one. Into this mud cocoon Peep was born, featherless and tiny. Little did he know that certain humans considered his kind to be dirty and messy - a health hazard,

After a long wait and some disappointment along the way, the tomato plants are finally bearing ripe fruit! We ceremonially shared the red one in this picture, and its neighbours are now looking ready to pluck. (They're cherry tomato plants, so yes, the fruit is meant to be that small.) Unfortunately the leaves aren't doing so well, suffering from something-or-other that's making them wilt and die, one branch at a time. Tomatoes appear to suffer from a bewildering variety of pests and diseases, and I don't know what's wrong with mine this time. Sometimes I wonder if this gardening thing is worth the effort. We've hardly had an abundance of crop - though it is my first real try at growing vegetables, and in a very different climate as well. Maybe next time I should stick to prickly pears . A friend organised a jewellery-making class recently, so I went along and managed to produce something wearable. In fact the process is very easy. You find yourself s