What an utter disgrace… we haven’t blogged in 115 days! We’re still here.
Steven and I celebrated my Birthday yesterday in our California-like-spot… Rockwall Texas. The drive was amazing, we listened to all our old favorite songs. The weather was perfect! While we were eating, the near by fountain sprayed us with mist every once in a while, so we pretended it was an ocean breeze. The food was perfectly vegan and delicious. We walked for a long time taking beautiful pictures. I took a spectacular shot of Steven, it belongs on the cover of a Ralph Lauren Catalog- very regal- very handsome! We took a “silly” picture and it was my idea- very surprising. It got pretty hot at around 4pm and so we laid down under a shady tree and talked for another long while. It was a magical day (Thank you, my darling)!
I got a beautiful bouquet of tulips (my favorite), a pirate speed-boat and a super sweet card. It says:
Take joy in the music of life.
They’s playing your Song.
Happy Birthday!
I’m happy to see that we can grow veggies through November here. Our peppers are doing better now than they did in Spring. The tomatoes are producing well but now the plants are looking tired. I learned it’s better to cut the Spring tomato plants back in July than to replant for Fall. We make some killer salsa out of the harvest. Our experimental Mexican Piquin Pepper plants that we grew from seed are finally producing their itsy bitsy peppers too.
One of these slides shows prepared ground for Apache and Navaho blackberry plants (to be planted next Spring). We live on “Hills of Whitestone” so I dug out tons of rocks. One of them must have weighed 200 pounds or more because I could hardly even roll it. We then added a few hundred pounds of various composts (and a little cow manure) to help improve the clay soil. Next week we’ll dump a bunch of mulch on top to encourage the worms to keep working for us over the winter.
Here are some pics from our garden at this point. We’ve have 300+ tomatoes and we’re starting to get some good cucumbers now. The peppers are few but tasty. Our sunflowers expired. The tallest one was about 9 feet tall. Fun to grow!
We enjoyed an unforgettable 4th of July. Steven got me surprise tickets for a Concert & Fireworks Show at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. We arrived at 5:30 and stood in line (we actually sat in our lawn chairs under the shade of a huge Magnolia tree) for an hour. At 6:30 the doors were opened. It was a very hot day, but around 7ish, the temperature dropped to a comfortable 97 degrees so the rest of the night was very enjoyable.
Two options for seating were offered, “lawn” or “tables”. Steven “the genious” got us lawn tickets and we got to sit front and center in front of more than 10,000 people. We really had the best seats (grass) in the house. We laid out our old La Jolla beach towels and enjoyed fun snacks and drinks.
The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra did the fabulous concert. All patriotic marches and good ol’ American classics like Yankee Doodle Dandy. The grand finale was performed by a soloist, a young soprano who sang God Bless America, a huge flag unfolded in the back as she sang and the spectacular fireworks began. We had the time of our lives.
Here are some pictures we took about a week ago. Just try to imagine everything a little bigger. The sunflowers are about half way up the fence as of now. A couple are starting to grow flowers (I think) and the biggest one will probably be near the top of the fence in a week or two. Our radishes are ready, we have about 30 tomatoes, the cucumbers are flowering and some of the peppers are starting to show up. The green onions don’t grow as fast as I thought they would but they are thickening up. Homegrown radishes are spicer than the store bought ones.
6:00am We got up bright ‘n early to give us enough time to get dolled up.
7:45am The door bell rang…I was hoping Steven would get it but the door bell kept ringing so I got it.
Hahahahaha! It was my sweet darling ringing the door bell to deliver 2 dozen yellow roses (my favorite flowers).
8:30am Steven dropped me off so I could meet the rest of the graduates in the basement where we were told to meet.
9:00am Steven and Lucy were allowed in the sanctuary and secured pretty good seats. In no time the house was full. Beautiful church architecture!
9:55am We lined up for the Processional to begin at 10 sharp.
The ceremoy was beautiful. The message delivered by our president Dr. Patterson was Christ-centered and powerful. We also had a lovely time when spouses, parents, grandparents, etc were recognized. Steven and Lucy were honored and that made me happy. BRAVO!!!!
Walking up to the front to recieve the Diploma was thrilling, having it in my hand felt so good!
After the ceremony everyone, faculty, familiy members, friends and gradautes all mingled in the front lawn. Cameras everywhere, lots of fun, energy and hugs. Steven did a fabulous job at following me around as I chased all my favorite profs for pictures. It was a blast to talk to them and introduce them to Lucy. She really enjoyed finally meeting the great professors I told her so much about.
At about 1pm we drove northeast to Plano. Steven took us to a La Jolla type place called Shops at Legacy. We ate Italian at Nicolas and had the most heavenly desserts at the Bakery Bistro across the street. The pastries were heavenly. We took tons of pictures, and walked around. We were very happy and quite silly.
We drove home to open gifts that Steven and Lucy got me and beautiful cards as well.
Professors that touched my life and appear in the pictures:
Dr Johnny Derouen- Human Growth and Development
Dr Esther Diaz-Bolet- Administration and Leadership in the Church
Dr Joshua Williams- Genesis
Dr Gerardo Alfaro- Theology
Dr Octavio Esqueda- Principles of Teaching
Dr Robert Caldwell- Hermeneutics
Dr David Mills- Evagelism
Dr Scott Floyd- Marriage Counseling
Dr Marcia McQuitty- Whom I will be working in my doctoral work
For their investment in my life, I am indebted to them and forever grateful!
Friends shown:Grant, Peace, Debbie and Grace
Steven: Thank you for making all my dreams come true.
Lucy: Thank you for your prayers and your love. Thank you both for believing in me.
Thursday May 7th- we had rehearsal, a fellowship at Price Hall and a grand reception at the President Mansion- The Pecan Manor. They really go all out.
Our big gardening project this year began a month ago when Steven decided we should plant a vegetable garden. We got the wood at Home Depot and baby-love built an above-ground-garden-box. This past weekend we were finally able to buy dirt, pete moss and potting soil in order to give the veggies the best possible soil to grow in. We got all our dirt at the local Plant Shed, a family owned, garden-lover’s dream place. We transported 800 pounds of dirt in our trunk/back seat. Who needs an F-150? We planted Juliet and Cherry tomatoes, green and yellow peppers, one poblano pepper, cucumbers, green onions, and radishes. On four separate small gardens, Steven planted 4 watermelons as well. Right by the fence we also planted sunflowers and wild flowers. Here are the pictures.
Steven has a serious green thumb. It’s amazing! A few weeks ago half of our pansies were eaten by a hungry rabbit. Steven came up with a concoction made up of chilli powder. A week later the pansies were back in full color bigger than ever. Very impressive!
Posted by Steven in Food, Work on April 3rd, 2009 at 04:16pm
We are pleased to announce DreamDolphin Media’s latest site: Vegan Diet Center. It contains vegan articles, recipes, restaurants, books and links. Sudi wrote the content and came up with the color scheme and logo. I did the design and put the whole site together using our new custom CMS (content management system).
This CMS is a joint project between myself and Mr. Dawson of Ei42 fame in the UK. It’s quite top-secret (“hilarious, my friend”), but basically it will let us make database-driven sites of Vegan Diet Center’s quality with zero programming. In other words, really quickly. Future sites will allow for more user interaction such as making comments and writing reviews.
Please give Vegan Diet Center a look and let us know what you think (bugs, typos, etc. appreciated). Don’t mind the vegan restaurants section too much as there are only two at the moment. We’ll be adding 50 restaurants to the site shortly.
