Pasta Sauce

Cooling Sauce
Originally uploaded by zostra

Cross 20 pounds of Dirty Girl Farms dry-farmed early girl tomatoes, 2.5 pounds of onions, 15 cloves of garlic, 2 cups of herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary), and one bottle of Cline Los Carneros Syrah 2006 and you get two gallons of very, very yummy pasta sauce.

Gift of Tomatoes

Gift of Tomatoes
Originally uploaded by zostra

This morning, as I went out the back door to go water the garden, I found these. My neighbor had reached over the fence and left them for me as a gift. As I was weeding the front yard, another neighbor stopped by to bring me a full container of tomatoes from his garden. Yesterday, my friend at work brought me apples to make applesauce for our group. The apples were from her friend's orchard.

Proud Mama

Diploma
Originally uploaded by zostra

Very few things make me cry. Opening up my daughter's diploma from Berkeley did. Who would have thought that when I brought her home six-and-a-half years ago that today I'd be standing in my kitchen crying over a piece of paper with a gold seal and her name on it. She's come so far, done so much, and I am so very, very proud of her. She is the best part of my life, and I am grateful for her every single day. And I don't mind saying so, for the whole world to hear.

From the Garden

Derves
Originally uploaded by zostra

Dad came over for dinner, and for our first course we had veggies from the garden. Not a lot of them, mind you. But still...

Colors

Paint Rainbow
Originally uploaded by zostra

I've been working on sanding down the exterior windowsills so they can be painted. I believe I've now counted at least ten different colors that used to be on the trim of the house. There seems to have been several shades of aqua. I find this particularly fascinating as we discovered during the interior baseboard sanding/removal/replacement that every single room in the house had been some shade of pink at one point or another. I find myself wondering how often the exterior aqua trim coincided with pink interior trim, and how many of those overlaps were during the 60's when some form of altered, drug-induced state might have led to the choice of said paint colors.

The Big Breakup

Bert with a sledge
Originally uploaded by zostra

Bert and I have been friends for 20 years, since our junior year in high school. He's been living up in Arcata for a long time, so we don't get many opportunities to hang out. Fortunately, he's really good about popping up out of the blue, even though he lives so far away. He did just that not too long ago, right before heading off on a sailing race from San Francisco to Hawaii. We caught up on the phone a few times after his race, and somewhere in there when he said he needed to keep busy I said "Well, if you're ever bored you can always come break up the concrete in my backyard." He said ok. Then he followed through. Today we broke up the entire 20' x 20' concrete slab in the back yard and hauled it into the dumpster waiting for it at the curb. No power tools. No jackhammer. Just a sledge, some big crowbars, and 2 wheelbarrows to haul the cement. Bert taught me how to use the sledge hammer, but he's much more effective and elegant with it. Notice in the picture he's not just swinging the sledge, he's standing on two big crowbars to hold up the slab and make it easier to break? Dad, of course, came and helped, because he is a saint. Seth came by for a bit at the end, and had a hand in getting the big pipe in the back corner of the yard out of the ground. But really, the credit goes to Bert. The man with the sledge.