Look how much we've grown!

Welcome to summer. April and May are in many ways the best part of summer in Texas. By July, when the rest of the country will be experiencing the heat, humidity and garden growth that we are, it will be too hot to play naked outside.





Julian's longest friend, Ruby, came over last weekend, and they got to pick carrots out of the garden together. (Isn't it crazy how much they've grown? The photo of them as infants was on their first date, when they were both less than three months old.)


Good thing they didn't hit the flowers on the tomato plants. You can see more garden updates on Relish Austin, where I blog once a week about how my garden is growing, what produce we're eating, etc.



Work is fun right now because so much is happening. CSAs are in full swing, as are the farmers' markets. The Hill Country Wine and Food Festival was two weeks ago (which is where I got to try some really great wine, including this one from the Paso Robles region of California. Ian and I are driving the coast of California this summer, and I'm ready to pass up Napa and its swanky sisters for Paso, which is halfway between San Francisco and Santa Barbara.)

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Julian has been into drumming lately, following in the footsteps of his mommy. But I think he's already better at the drum set than me:

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A few photos from April, including more fun in the garden with Ruby, Julian eating a "miracle fruit" that I blogged about this week and one of Julian's first representational structures, a ship made out of his favorite blocks/connnector thingys.

Getting dirty in the garden

Proof of the fun we had outside today, raking and planting and generally enjoying the yard in 86 degree weather. A dirty toddler is a happy toddler.

Look for a post on Relish Austin in the next few days about our ever-growing garden. We added tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, chard (I know that on is a long shot this far in the year) and few kinds of pepper. Sunflowers found a home along the fence.

This month's Addie's Eat-Up (formerly Appetizers with Addie) was at the Dart Bowl, where we stuffed ourselves with delicious chicken fried steak and cheese enchiladas. The nicest waitstaff around (or at least ours was :)). Julian's full diaper made bowling a little more colorful. (Thanks, Marshall, for the photo!)

My kombucha-making is coming along. A strong SCOBY was growing on a smaller jar of kombucha I was brewing, so I added it (and the well-developed vinegar-tasting liquid is helped form) to the mama jar, which was still full of a liquid that was still too close to sweet tea to resemble kombucha.

Lots of fun playing at home! SXSW starts at the end of the week, so I'm glad I got all of this home-making done this weekend. The next two weekends will be jammed packed with creative stimulation (and free food. Another thing I'll be posting about this week on Relish Austin).

Catching up on baby greens and unidentified plants

Sorry I've been absent from this blog in a while. I've been mostly tending to my family and my job and occasionally tending me and a garden. I finally updated the writings section of addiebroyles.com, where you can find all of my most recent articles and columns. If you've been checking Relish Austin, you will have seen my backyard/Victory garden go from two boxes of dirt to a budding produce aisle.

I've been cooking a lot for work lately. I tried to brew kombucha, but my SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) grew a mold in the first week! I was so bummed, but I'm going to give it another try. Ian and I are going to make a shepherd's pie tonight with Loncito lamb, THE Central Texas lamb dude. (Julian and I actually met and talked with Loncito - that's his first name - at the farmers' market today. Nice guy. Passionate about meat.)

As you can see, I have plants growing out of the bottom of my compost pile. I uploaded a bunch of garden and kombucha-making pictures to flickr. If you can tell me what those plants are, I'd be very grateful. Ian says the are potatoes; he's eager to eat them.

Here are our two garden beds. One is filled with carrots, beets, onion, shallots, garlic, dividing onions, chives, purple and white onions, broccoli, spinach, kohlrabi, flowers and lettuce.



The other box has peas, flowers, onions and a "spring mix" of greens.



In the "non-gardening fun" category, we've reconnected with Tasha, the wonderful friend who introduced Ian and me. It had been about three years since we'd stopped hanging out so much, but Tasha and I kept running into each other. When we finally got together for dinner, we fell in love with her girlfriend, Camille, and remembered why we befriended Tasha in the first place. They really connected with Julian. We went out to dinner last night and they all worked together on this painting. Even Camille, who is a bona fide painter, loved Julian's nontoxic, plasticy paint.