Some Say a Picture's Worth a Thousand Words...

...but for this one, I'm relatively speechless.

Oh shit.

I guess the yellow squash was just practice.

Mutant Fruit and Mystery Plants

Well, we are finally getting some fruit out of our garden with the squash plants as our winner. There are several cucumbers, but they've been a bit slow going and could use a couple more days. And then there's our first zucchini (Amber just told me we now have three). Other than that, we have flowering buds on our tomato plants and some good signs from our peppers but nothing to get too excited about.

In keeping with the Old Testament notion of giving the firstfruits, I had to come up with someone to give our first squash too (Amber thought this was extremely weird). So, I finally decided to give it to one our pastors who has his own amazing garden and is heading up our church's urban farm. In fact, the night I picked our first result (last Friday), the urban farming initiative in Pittsburgh was having a fundraiser at a local bar. So, I took my fresh squash with me and offered it to my pastor and let him know I self-pollinated it too - which he thought was hilarious, and a person who overheard what I said, high-fived me and said, "Well give him a cigar!"

In the process we've managed to have some curious results. First, a couple weeks ago we noticed a plant was growing out of our compost pile - not a bad place to grow, mind you, as the soil there is probably the best out of our entire back yard. Nonetheless, we're not quite sure how the seeds go there and aren't 100% positive what the plant actually is. However, from the looks of it, the plant is probably a cucumber seed and must have gotten there as a result of us throwing some scrap piece of cucumber on the compost pile some time ago. Additionally, we acquired an odd looking squash fruit that managed to, so it seems, allow a whole new stem of the plant grow along with it right down its side. Not actually sure how this happened, and I've never seen it before, but perhaps it was the result of some wacky cross-pollination I did when trying to self-pollinate the plants!

The Worth of a Pair of Boots

This past Saturday, we were to meet Amber's parents on the other side of Pittsburgh to give her mom a pair of boots she left at our house the weekend before. These weren't just any boots, but were the boots she wears when they go on motorcycle trips, and they were just getting ready to ride down to North Carolina.

So, I hurried Amber out the door (as we were already running late), only to realize ten minutes later that we had forgotten the boots! We turned around, picked up the boots, and went through a little deja vu experience and were on our way. Then, we got to the interstate. Apparently, Pittsburgh has this lovely concept that they like to do ALL their road construction on weekends to avoid it getting in the way of people traveling to work during the week. Well, it wouldn't be such a bad idea if they didn't work on every highway at the same time AND closed them off down to one lane - AND gave some more forewarning to everyone who utilizes these roads a bit earlier than the 11:00 news the night before.

So, needless to say, we found ourselves in a sea of traffic. This was, of course, quite ironic given the signs we saw on the interstate reminding us it was "nozone action day" and to limit our fuel consumption. Traffic was going so slow, cars were pulling off wherever they could as they were overheating or running out of gas. When all was said in done, what should have been a 25-30 minute drive took us almost 3 hours and 1/4 tank of gas... our entire Saturday afternoon spent sitting in traffic. Grr...

At least Amber's mom rewarded us with buying us lunch afterward and naming me the best son in law in the universe (of course, Amber's an only child, so I'm guessing she doesn't have much to compare me to). Nevertheless, right now, I'm in the middle of preparing material for the twelve schools I'm applying to for PhD programs; And if I get an offer from a school outside of Pittsburgh on a day I'm stuck in traffic, I think I'll be pretty motivated to take it.

The Firstfruits

Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen some tremendous growth in our garden. The lettuce is tall enough we can cut and eat; our zucchini, squash, and cucumber plants have grown to ridiculously large sizes; the tomato plants are starting to bud their first flowers; and a number of bees have fortunately found our little aisle of vegetable plants (that was the happiest I’ve ever been to see bees in my life!).

In addition to the bees, which have only recently begun to do their job, I’ve had to self-pollinate some of the plants by using a cotton swab to extract pollen from a male flower and take to a female one. Ok, so maybe that sounds a little gross (Amber finds it slightly offensive); yet nevertheless, I can say I’m the proud ‘father’ of our first two squash.

On the other hand, we’re still waiting for our peppers to take off, as they’ve been a bit slow going. AND, it seems I’ve discovered that I’m prone to breaking out in a ghastly allergic rash when brushing up against the leaves of vegetable plants! Ugh!

In other news, things are finally starting to slow down a bit after I preached at my church and re-took the GRE two days later on July 2nd. I didn't do as well as I had planend (on either of them), but it's over and I'm quite relieved. Now its on to filling out more paperwork for applying to PhD programs and preparing for August. In August, we have two weddings in our hometown of Lafayette, IN (one is my brother's), school starts up again, and I have a paper to present in Seattle that requires some further work.