Summer

We actually got a garden planted this year. Our squash plants have taken off, especially the zucchini. Ben likes to come out and help me pick the vegetables when they are ready. We have tomatoes, peppers, beans (although not very many), yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers and some cilantro. It's not a huge garden. We wanted to just do a moderate sized one this year. Lots of people have to take all sorts of precautions with their gardens; chicken wire underneath to prevent ground squirrels, a fence around to keep out rabbits, lots of fertilizer because of hard earth, some even had to put a plastic covering over because of birds. I wasn't sure what to expect so we did nothing just to see what would happen. Our dog keeps out the rabbits, we haven't seen any ground squirrels, the birds aren't a problem and our ground in actually pretty good. Next year we'll have to do something a little bigger. We have also gotten a lot of good use out of our jacuzzi this summer. We just turned the heat off and run the filter. The kids go out and swim almost every day. It's great: shallow enough to not worry when the bigger kids are out there (I still watch carefully when Nathan is there), but big and deep enough to cool off and have fun. They had their friends over the other day. I think a total of 7 kids were playing in that little jacuzzi. Good times.