You Better Eat Your Vegetables!

We have been so focused on coaching Audrey to crawl (getting close!) that we haven't put much effort into the blog. Yeah....that's the reason why. We thought we would throw a few pictures up to keep people from complaining.

Peas (fresh from the farmers market) and asparagus. We know Audrey's aunt Katie and great aunt Jean will approve!

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

This is our third season with a garden. (Wow, I just had a "is this really our third summer in this house?!?" moment when I wrote that.) Our first year was fairly pathetic. Last year we had a little more success, mainly due to our use of an automatic watering system. This year, with any luck, we'll do even better and Audrey will get to taste the fruits and vegetables of our labor.

We didn't get off to a great start as this was a record breaking year for snow in Salt Lake City. We broke the record for latest measurable snow at the airport, with a good blanketing on the 24th of May. We had to replace a few damaged plants, but our record cold month of May meant what did manage to survive just didn't grow. However, the sun is now out and hopefully things will start filling out soon.

So, here's the quick tour of what we have. We have two rows of bush beans on the right, two rows of carrots on the top right, two rows of Walla Walla sweet onions along the top, some zucchini and yellow squash on the left. We have early girl tomatoes in a pot on the bottom, green tomatoes on the top, and Brandywine tomatoes in the middle. The cherry tomatoes don't have a cage on them because we're not sure the plant is going to make it. There are a couple of cucumber plants in the middle of the tomatoes, a big bunch of parsley on the bottom right, and a few pepper plants thrown in randomly (one jalapeno and one red bell). The rest of the pots have rosemary, chives, thyme, and basil. A few bricks to stand on, a stump for a good aerial view, and a few weeds round out this totally random garden.

This was definitely an experimental year - just to see what will even survive. I do enjoy all of what we planted, but I normally am most excited about the herbs. As soon as we live someplace with a growing season longer than 3 months, I definitely want to plant a huge herb garden. The onions, beans, carrots, and peppers are all new to us this year, so we'll see what happens!

First Camping Trip

We took Audrey on her first big camping trip this weekend. She technically has been camping before, but she was still known as "Baby Steffen", and she didn't really get to enjoy the views.

The plan for this weekend was for our friend Dave to kayak 22 miles of the San Rafael River through the San Rafael Swell. He was to start late in the afternoon on Friday and arrive at the San Rafael Bridge Campground mid-day on Saturday, about the same time that three of our other friends were going to arrive.

The minimum flow for kayaking the river is 120 cubic feet per minute. Therefore, the 20 cubic feet per minute that the river was flowing at was not enough for our original plans to work. Instead, Dave joined us at the campground on Friday night.

Kelly and I left a little early to both make sure we would get a spot and that we could do the 3.5 hour drive and get our tent set up before Audrey's bed time. And since this was our first outing with Audrey's new gigantic tent, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time.

The tent had all the comforts of home: A good floor, a good roof, lots of toys, a crib, and her bumbo. Add an awesome view, a river to dip her feet in, lots of bugs to look at, and all the grass and dirt she could eat--Audrey was definitely enjoying herself.

If there was one thing to complain about, it was the heat. The closest forecast we could find called for temperatures in the low 80s--warm, but manageable. Instead, 96 degree heat was waiting for us which meant staying cool was priority number one. With about three gallons of baby sunscreen, we were able to venture out of the shade once in a while, the most adventurous outing being a 4+ mile hike up and down the San Rafael River.

Nighttime sleeping was fairly painless and Audrey did great in her crib. Napping was a little more difficult when the sun was beating down on us so she had to relearn how to sleep in the car. That meant the remainder of our sightseeing and napping was centered around the air conditioning in our car.

Aside from the typical Utah vistas, the area is loaded with petroglyphs (chiseled rock), and pictographs (painted rock). It is pretty amazing standing next to art created thousands and thousands of year ago.

To cap off our trip, armed with only GPS coordinates we found a dinosaur footprint in a rock bed overlooking the road. We took the obligatory hand in print picture before heading home. I couldn't help but think that we were at some prehistoric Mann's Chinese Theater and this particular dino was a famous dinosaur movie star back in the day. Maybe he was friends with Fred Flintstone.

All-in-all, it was a very successful trip. Audrey learned to sleep outdoors, she seemed to have lots of fun, and she didn't get sunburned. We're definitely confident enough to try it again, soon.