It's been one year already!

Been in Maine for the last week. The first couple days were beautiful and sunny, but now it's been raining for three days straight. I've been getting a lot of field work done. Behold:

This picture sums up what I'm working on at the moment. My hypothesis is that the loose seaweed fragments that wash up on shore provide an important food source for, among other animals, snails. Voila! You see the snails here NOMing the seaweed. I spent the first 3 days of the trip tagging pieces of seaweed ad nauseum (see red tags; 2 tags in case 1 falls off). I will be checking up on them weekly to see how long they stick around. And the last 3 days I've been collecting, painting, and releasing snails back to my sites so I can compare growth rates. Hopefully the sites with the most seaweed fragments have the fastest snail growth rates (as I found in my preliminary measurements on the island in 2007).

In case you were wondering, nearly-year-old cake is not very good. Way dry. Adding new frosting helps, though.

Poor Jib! He got bitten by one of the strays last week and over the weekend a bite wound abscess developed. Basically a pocket of pus the size of a golf ball :( I took him to the vet today and she drained it,then rinsed it with saline. Jib was a real trooper and did this without anesthesia (but with 3 people holding him down). Now we have to pick off any scabs that form so the fluid will keep draining through the holes. Eeeew!

Today is our two year housieversary! To celebrate we're going to eat the top tier of our wedding cake. We were saving it for the one year wedding anniversary (in less than 2 weeks), but I am leaving for Maine on Thursday and won't be back for at least a month.

Note to self: transplanted watermelons, honeydews, and remaining pumpkins today.

Garden time! Click photos for larger versions.

Backyard side bed:
From front to back: mixed greens, broccoli, onions, green beans. We've had four meals of entree-sized salads already!


Backyard back bed:
Front: carrots. Back: lots and lots and lots of peas. The shelled peas (you only eat the inside) are blossoming now. Behind them are the sugar snap peas, which if last year is any indication, will be ready at the end of the month. In the back are the snow peas...mmm....stir fry!


Apple tree (and Choco):
The apple tree is as tall as me (5'8"), but didn't blossom this year.


Peach tree:
The peach tree is 5' tall and very leafy. Oh, in the back right you can see the larger of the two hazelnut trees (no close-up, sorry).


Baby peach!
The peach tree not only blossomed, but has set fruit! Here is just an example of how big they are. There are roughly two dozen! Ryan will have to build some sort of scaffolding over the summer since I don't think that itty bitty tree can support that much weight.


Front right corner of house:
In the foreground, with the white flowers, are tons of strawberries. Close up...



Front left side of house:
The pink stuff is creeping phlox. The yellow flowers are yarrow. The bushy thing toward the back with the purple flowers is the sage I started from seed last spring! The spiky thing without flowers is lavender.

Now off to salivate about tonight's upcoming Idol :P Last week did not disappoint!

Pics from Jen and Ka-Wah's wedding are here.

A small taste:

Yesterday I got back from a week in Maine. I got my first round of seaweed sampling done. And now I know what to expect for living conditions, etc.

Just popping in to suggest you watch American Idol tonight. I've been totally obsessed with it this year since one of the contestants, Adam, is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He has crazy incredible vocals...swoon! Fortunately, Adam is gay, so Ryan doesn't have to get jealous about my obsession :) Anyhow, Adam really knows how to rock and tonight's theme is classic rock. On top of that, Slash will be mentoring and has supposedly made a number of changes so that the show will rock "as hard as possible on AI." It should be epic! Make a point to watch/record the show, 8:00 on Fox.