thursday adventures

i don't know if i mentioned that boo's been busy with scottish dance camp this week (ceilidh tonight! woo!). my adventures have included sewing, baking, and mowing. perhaps it's the influence of frontier house, which we've been watching for the past few evenings (don't worry, bean, we'll keep the dvds until you come home!). now all i need is a cute 1880's outfit to wear whilst i bake my vegan cupcakes.

depending on your point of view, we've either been cultivating an authentic woodland habitat in our backyard this summer, or else becoming the scourge of the neighborhood. we've basically been pretending we don't have a backyard. an adorable chubby groundhog (at least, i think that's what he is) has taken up residence under the playhouse. i hope he wasn't too disturbed today when i finally mowed the backyard. i mowed the front due to societal pressure, and the mower kept on chugging along despite sounding like it was about to die at any moment, so i continued in the back, figuring i'd stop when it stalled. which it didn't. i am feeling like i've done more than my share of contributing to global warming today. my goal is to eventually replace as much as possible of our grass with non-grass (non-mowable) plants, like groundcovers and other native plants. unfortunately, without trucking in heaps of topsoil, we actually can't plant edible things here in portland due to high amounts of lead in the soil.

i spoke with bean again yesterday, and got a brief email from her. she is continuing to have lots of fun, and spent some quality time with jonah and a bunch of chickens yesterday. i sort of forgot that they're staying on an actual farm there -- an actual british farm! she took a photo of jonah holding a chicken, which i can't wait to see.