Dear Peepol

Well, do you?

We are loving spring, and E wrote this note for the passersby on their way to church yesterday morning.  You can glimpse my summer uniform - Chacos and a cotton skirt - which might tell you how hot it was (high 80's).  

Some goodies from the Farmer's Market - my favorite

is an heirloom tomato called Mr. Stripey.  It makes me 

want to name all of our vegetables something so friendly.

We had another Columbus-bonanza day yesterday, and we tired ourselves out! I don't know if it was the heat or my mood, or the zoo itself, or a combination of all three, but we were unimpressed with the Columbus Zoo.  The parking lot almost scared me off for its sheer size and number of cars, but we persevered.  I feel like we tried to have a good experience, but really, we were talking ourselves into it.  The animals were hidden behind kiosk after kiosk, food court after cafe, ice cream, ice slushies, puppets, face paints, strollers, wagons, and so many people smoking...and because of the heat, the animals looked miserable, which is really not good P.R. for the zoo, is it?  We'd not been there half an hour when I had to turn us around to find ice cream, in hopes that it would perk us up. It did for a moment, though even the ice cream was an odd adventure - what we found were something called "dippin dots" which looked like some sort of styrofoam packing material; little balls of ice cream that when melted tasted like ice cream.  When I looked confused and uncertain, the guy behind the counter told me, "It's like ice cream, but more fun!"  More fun than ice cream? Hmmm.  Anyway, I don't want to zoo bash and I feel a bit like a snob with our wonderful Woodland Park years to compare it to, but I don't think we'll make that trip again. We listed the bits that salvaged the day for us: the aquarium tank with its beautiful fish, sharks, rays; the manatees, which we'd never seen before, and the sea turtle who was in with them; and the Hammerkop bird in the aviary (well, all the birds in the aviary).  The photo below (which they asked me to take of them!) was one of the only ones taken of something other than a statue of an animal (there were many, and they were cool).  

The day ended at the airport, picking up Dan before a drive home through the countryside at dusk. That, with its Cheshire cat moon, was beautiful.

And lastly, a bit of the garden.  We walked over this morning to water what might be growing, and were rewarded with some onions and strawberry flowers.  I just confessed to Dan that I was checking out other gardens' pea plants on our way to our plot and though we just planted our seeds a week or so ago, I was dismayed to see nothing over in that corner, so if you had glanced towards Plot 55 you might have seen me on my knees, furtively brushing away dirt in hopes of seeing something sprouting...I felt like an impatient novice, but I found sprouts! So I carefully brushed just a bit of the dirt back and gave them some water...

P.S.  I have to mention that as I am writing this, our cat Charlie is focusing all of his attention on the sounds of a rodent of indeterminate size that is gnawing away at this old house.  Really!! I ran and got Dan and he opened the window, as it sounded as if it were chewing its way into the house, but it seems to be in the wall, between windows.  Ugh.  I'm hoping it gets a whiff of Charlie, who has not left his post in quite a while, and decides to leave - I actually find its scratchings friendly, but I imagine our landlord might not be so happy to hear there are mice (right? cute little tiny mice?) in the walls.