I haven't been out in the garden since finding the dreaded water spots on the tomatoes, looks like I have the privilege of entertaining both early and late blight at the same time, ugh. It's a jungle out there, but I will be able to share photos of a harvest soon, the beans are flowering! I'm counting on beans and squash at least right now :)
Getting away from the garden started with an early Friday morning walk, by myself, down at the beach. Being alone is so nice sometimes, just me and my flip flops, not carrying bags of sand toys, boogie boards, coolers, towels or any of that other stuff that "the family" requires.
I admonished some tourists that were letting their kids play in the dune grass, clearly posted I might add... I'm definitely not the right person to serve as a gracious host to tourists :)
Back home by 9 am it was time to make a fruit platter for a BBQ we were going to Friday evening. I've never made a fruit platter before so I had a little fun with it, posting random photos of my coconut splitting adventures on Facebook to see if anyone was worried about me home alone and would send rescue vehicles if I needed them.
No, I didn't really use that knife. I admit though that I was regretting telling hubby a firm "no" the last time he went on his rant about how much a machete would enrich his life. I think I know what this year's Christmas gift for him will be. I did succeed in making a nice dent in the front of my stainless fridge where I thought that would be a grand place to slam it down and split it. Um, no - the cement outside worked better.
I call this my IKEA hack coconut, who knew those allen keys would be so useful for draining coconut?
Success!
Voila! I was amazed at how much fruit all the kiddos ate that evening! Why won't they just eat a regular piece of fruit without all the hoopla?
The next day we went to OpSail 2012. We have a yearly festival of tall ships that congregate here and it's lots of fun and a great learning adventure. The photo I posted the other day with the tall ships at the beach was taken while they were just entering the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and headed to moor at the festival, I just happened to be at the beach that evening.
The kids' first ride on "The Tide", our new light rail system that took us downtown Norfolk. They thought it was pretty cool, and we "rode the Tide" all the way to the festival, no parking headaches, no traffic.
Some photos taken onboard the tall ships that day -
Coast Guard tall ship "Eagle" - this is still used as a trainer and I feel good knowing that our military can still read maps the old fashioned way :)
Hubby has a fascination with rope and knot work, so I snapped a bunch of photos in hopes of editing them a bit for some artwork around the house, since I'm too cheap to buy artwork :)
I really like old wood on boats... to me it is intriguing how much these boards have seen. Others there were staring at me like I'd gone mad, squatting down to photograph the deck!
One of the ships was signing on "crew" for a South Pacific adventure, this old pirate ship looked like it would barely make it down the east coast let alone around the world - hubby had his first taste of age related discrimination when he found out he was "too old" LOL! Of course he grumbled a bit about the fact that he's physically fit and already is a sailor.... blah, blah, poor guy!
Here's the kitchen on the ship he wants to be on :)
Here is the ship under full sail. There is another voyage he can sign up for to the South Pacific that he is eligible for on this ship, for the sum of $38,000! Uh, huh. It's more likely that he'll be getting his fix soon enough onboard the aircraft carrier, where he will actually get paid LOL.
It looks way more seaworthy in this photo that it did onboard haha! Seriously though, it was a really cool ship!
Other parts of the festival commemorated the War of 1812, which had significant battles here and it's the 200th anniversary. Basically it meant there were lots of poor souls dressed up in full garb in 95º temps trying their best to entertain!
Here Loch and Finn are learning to make 2 ply and 3 ply braided rope. You can see from Finn's face how hot and sticky it was that day.
It stayed very hot all weekend but we were able to salvage Sunday evening for a little trip out to Back Bay to enjoy the evening breeze.
Not much else for now, it rained all day yesterday and I have a week full of dentist appointments, Cub Scout stuff and school awards ceremonies. Can you believe the kids are still in school here? Enough already!!!
