Martha's Marvellous Munchies

We came home with tons of photos from our Virginia trip. Some of them don't really illustrate anything in particular, but are too good not to show off. Here's a selection. OK, so I know squirrels are just tree rats really, but they are cute. Especially when they're trying to eat a piece of bread as big as their head. Me in one of my favourite poses. We encountered a lot of pets on our trip. I was happy. Real birds in a fake tree. This was an art installation in Pittsburgh, and even close up it was hard to tell that the trees weren't real. The quintessential American country church. My aunt and uncle are renovating a house up in the mountains, and this newspaper, dated August 31st 1919, was pasted to one wall. Doesn't it seem incredible that the "fight for women's suffrage" happened so recently? Graham chillin' out with Mr Jefferson. Ummm... I seem to have got the Washington Monument stuck in my head......

1. Spending time with friends and family. As well as seeing my parents, grandparents and assorted other close relatives, we also visited some of my mum's brother's wife's family (got that?!) who live in an incredibly beautiful part of the world in the western Virginia mountains. John and I got to know them when we came to America by ourselves as children, and when I calculated how long it was since I'd last seen them I wished we'd planned a much longer stay. However, we were en route to see more friends whom I knew from Bristol, now residing near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We were greeted not only by the Ewings but also a couple more Bristolians, so it was a veritable reunion! I'm always touched by how warmly American families welcome you into their home, sit you down in front of a delicious meal, and offer to lend you anything and everything that might make your stay more pleasant. Thanks y'all! 2. Enjoying the James River via canoes,...

Believe it or not, we've now been married for over a year! In honour of our first wedding anniversary, John and Kristal (and Kristal's mom) very kindly arranged for us to stay in a beautiful little cottage over their wedding weekend. It was a fantastic place with everything you could possibly want, including cinnamon raisin bread in the fridge for breakfast. The large lawn just outside ran down to the Piankatank River, with a long jetty from which we spied ospreys and jellyfish. After the wedding on Saturday, we strolled along Bethel Beach, a narrow strip of sand between the Chesapeake Bay and some protected wetlands. We helped a kite surfer launch his enormous kite and were amused by the antics of some fiddler crabs. These lopsided critters have one claw bigger than the other. They sit in little holes in the sand or mud, and if you stand still for a few minutes they all start popping out to take a look around. As we drove back into Mathews we...

Once you get to a certain age, you suddenly start going to a lot of weddings. Gradually they all tend to fade into a white-dress-pretty-flowers-dancing-music-best-man's-speech kind of blur, but a few still stand out. Some for good reasons, some for bad, and some for just being an altogether lovely day. Of course, when it's your brother getting married, that automatically makes it stand out from the average, but John and Kristal's wedding definitely fell into the "altogether lovely day" category. With my grandfather officiating, they made some simple and beautiful vows under a shady tree in the garden of Kristal's honorary grandparents. The Chesapeake Bay shimmered in the background while a soft breeze kept things cooler for the guests seated on gingham-covered hay bales. After a few family photos by the cheerful photographer, John and Kristal departed for the reception venue, perched up on the back of a red convertible (don't worry, the roads ar...

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...