1. Talk about major blog slacking! Oy, it's August already! I feel like there's so much to cover that I'll need to make an outline.

1. Introduction (above)
2. Garden
A. Written update
B. Pictures
3. Kitties
A. Residents
B. Ferals
4. Rachel and Don's Wedding
5. Recent purchases
A. Wii Fit
B. Laptop
6. Schoolwork
A. Slowness
B. Boringness
C. Suckiness
7. Wheeling and Dealing
A. Bragging
B. Tutorial
8. Conclusion

2. Garden
A. We've been continuing to get enough veggies to cover side dishes for dinners (and since we eat leftovers for lunch, lunches as well). It's pretty much exactly how much food we need that's been ready to harvest. I think we only bought veggies at the store 3 times during July, and mainly just because we wanted more variety. Come September/October, traditional "harvest time," I'm expecting at least a month's worth of veggies to store in the freezer/basement.

B. Onto the pictures. I didn't take pictures of everything, just highlights.
This is where the broccoli used to be. In the front are cucumbers, which are just starting to blossom, meaning cukes in a week or two. Behind them are the corn, which should be mature in early September.
Potatoes starting to sprout. They're where the snap peas used to be. Following the success of my first round of potatoes (very tasty, good yields), I planted a lot more. We'll have plenty of potatoes for late September through November, maybe even enough to store into December if we're lucky. Nice thing about potatoes is they cover a second side dish ("carbs") for meals.
Itty bitty watermelon! It's about the size of a walnut right now. Yes, watermelon, like many squash, cukes, etc, has a vining habit, so I directed it up the fence to save space. When the melon gets bigger I'll have to harness it to the fence so it doesn't rip off under its own weight. I'm really excited about it, because it's fruit instead of veggie.

The beast. It's still adding 6" per day to each of its vines. Craaaazy! A close-up of the squash (these four just happened to grow right next to each other, the rest of the plant is not nearly as prolific) is below. The plant they're on top of is sage that I started from seed in early spring.
We've had some of these with dinner a couple times. They taste just like normal yellow summer squash, even though they aren't as big and have that funny green bottom. I've nicknamed them "grenade squash" because of their size and shape.

Lastly, not only have I not managed to kill the big houseplant (I have way worse luck with houseplants versus outdoor plants), but it has its first flower! And that concludes the garden update.

3. Kitties
A. Residents. Well, Jib, Choco, and Grem are happy and cute. They spend a couple hours outside each day lounging in the shade and watching squirrels and birds. Not much new here.

B. Ferals. So, I'm now feeding six cats off the porch! And four of them are the WIDDLE KITTENS! They're super shy and skittish and will run away if they see a person (hence, no pics), but we've been able to spy on them out the window while they're eating. I'm still hoping to catch them and get them fixed, but since they're so skittish and fast runners, I'll have to devise some sort of trap. We've named them Lil' Blackie (black coat), Lil' Whitie (mostly white coat), Bitey (hogs the food and gets aggressive when its siblings try to get some), and Almost Caught (needs a new name, but I actually got my hands on this one and it managed to wriggle free). Their mom also feeds with them ("Mama Cat"), and she's got a black coat as well. She's almost as skittish as they are.

The sixth cat is Blackie, and he is the cat that I mentioned had been almost getting into fights with our cats. And it's definitely a He, he's got a big set of harbls. He and our kitties are getting along better- he still doesn't like it and starts to howl when they get too close- but they can lie down on opposite sides of the patio and coexist. I don't have to worry about them fighting if I leave them unsupervised anymore. He actually lets me get a few feet away from him when I'm refilling the food bowl, but runs away if I try to get closer. Here he is (he really likes our patio furniture):

4. Rachel and Don's Wedding
We went up to the good 'ol Hudson Valley for Rachel and Don's wedding last weekend. Jen was the only other person we knew there, so we did a lot of talking to her (hi, Jen!). The ceremony was held by a lake and was even shorter than ours, which I thought was pretty short itself:

I did think that our officiant was much sexier than theirs, though (hee hee). The reception was up the hill in a big open-air pavilion that had a nice casual feel to it. Here's me and the bride:
For fun, here's us roughly two months before:

The newlyweds.

They had the BEST Best Man speech ever. He wore a mask and tore open his shirt to reveal his "Best Man" superhero undershirt, then had a superhero theme (Don is big on superheroes). He also told about his role in getting them together, which was cute. There were a lot of funny anecdotes, too. And later he danced with his (very bulky) dog:

Ok, so this entry is taking for-freakin-ever. I will spread your enjoyment over two days and stop here, then pick up later this weekend. Ta ta.