Just a quick update...

Whew! that week flew by!! TGIF for sure today. This week was peppered by a quick field trip up to Coweeta, followed by 1.5 days of washing rocks - for some reason spending hours and hours washing these rocks isn't so depressing. I think because with every rock I wash I know I'm putting it somewhere in the garden. I am excited to fill in the front strip of dirt with more Coweeta rocks and then hopefully get some pots on top. The veggies are doing well - we had some wicked thunderstorms the past week that rocked much of the midwest. A couple of tornadoes touched down north of us, but we just got a major dumping of (much needed) rain. I think that made the plants happy. Hannah had another doggie date with Herman, her 16 lb pug-beagle man friend. It was great fun to watch her be ACTIVE and get along well with another pup. Our friend Eve made another fantastic dinner and if was fun to chat while her husband Mike was laid up on the couch watching football and staving off a cold. Today after an epic nap I cleaned house a bit and I'm off to the Alcove to meet up with Eve for a couple of drinks. Tomorrow Emily and I volunteer at the Arboretum at this Bat extravaganza event that teaches kids about bats. Then there is a Halloween party but I'm unsure what I'll dress up as. Sunday the Iceland boys come back home! I pick them up in the afternoon and I'm hoping to go up early to check out First Avenue Rocks in the downtown area - yippee! Dan's coming home soon!!

p.s. the update is the boys made it fine to Iceland, killer winds though (20 meters/sec according to Dan which comes out to be 44 mph), and here's this link where you can brush up on your Icelandic. Gisli is the Icelandic collaborators, you can see Jon taking stream measurements....

Two posts in one day?!?! Yes.

But this is a short one. I just got back from the Arboretum plant sale and I got inspired to plant some edibles. Whether or not Dan and I will get to eat them is up to nature.

Here are some photos of the new arrivals. Please note, I have no idea what I am doing but I have vague notions of what gardening entails. We'll see how this experiment goes. I got a couple varieties of kale, lettuce, beets, and then a mess of herbs: parsley (flat and curly), oregano, thyme, and sage. I got a couple of succulents for the house as well which I'm pretty excited about. All together I blew about thirty bucks from the garage sale profit, so I feel like it was a fair trade off for selling junk for half a day with friends and getting a box full of green in return.

Weeeee!!!

And, just because:

xoxo

Yard sale! Dan leaves for Iceland! Fall!!

Hello! The last few days have been super busy! Saturday morning I took Dan, Jon, and Alex to the Birmingham Airport - they left (I am assuming) successfully for Iceland via Atlanta and Boston. They should be there now and I should figure out what time zone Iceland is in...I raced back to the homestead to meet up with the neighbors for the garage sale that was in progress. They were kind enough to lay out our stuff for us while I ran airport shuttle. It was a beautiful Fall day and we grilled out and had some beers in the front yard while a decent-sized crowd rifled through our belongings. All in all pretty successful (about sixty buckaroos) considering all of the stuff we were purging was bound for the thrift store and I had nothing planned for the day except relaxing. It feels good to purge the house of unnecessary items - Dan and I are trying to resist using our basement as a storage dumping ground. I'll try to contain myself with the wad of cash I have from the sale while I peruse the Arboretum's Fall plant sale today!

Prior to Saturday Dan has been busy readying for the Iceland trip - a lot of minor details to attend to and double, triple checking of all the field gear. We also made it to Birmingham Thursday night (that's right, 3 trips to B-ham in less than a week!) for a show at the Bottletree cafe. The Thermals from Portland, OR played a raucous set including some of my favorite songs - a pillar of salt, now we can see, how we know, I don't believe you (latest single on the new album), Saint Rosa and the swallows.

Here are a couple pics:

Our staircase is slowly becoming on of the art focal points in the house, thanks to the addition of a Madelin original painting that she made for Dan - we absolutely adore the bright colors it adds!!

Here's another picture of Hannah, using one of Dan's shirts that didn't quite make it to the hamper as a bed. We were working in the office organizing and packing and she likes to be in the same room as us - she also likes anything resembling a bed:

And also, as the title of this post suggests, Fall looks to be fully upon us. Leaves are dumping into our yard with no abandon and the drive from the airport yesterday was peppered by lots of red leaves. Right now I'm finishing up this posting on the front porch while staring at our camellia bush that I hope blooms soon. There are plenty of white buds just waiting to burst open! I don't know is they are Fall bloomers, but I'm taking it as a sign of Fall nonetheless!

xo

Nelson Parental Units visit! Kentuck Art festival! Halloween decorations and the yard...

Hi! a lot has transpired since the last post! We've been busy the last couple of weeks - cleaning and organizing that lead to having great fun with Dan's parents! We put up some Halloween decorations and bought some flowers for the yard to spruce up the place before Gene and Paul visited on Saturday. I love the front yard and I'm happy that it feels like Fall and we have lotsa color in the front and back yard.

On Saturday I went to the Kentuck Art Festival with our neighbors and another friend - it was GREAT! So much art for little Tuscaloosa - overall I was very impressed by the number and diversity of vendors - all who were described as "folk art," but all of them had such a great number of takes on the definition. See pics for some examples...

The Nelson parental units came a day early which was wonderful because it meant they were able to take in not only a UA home game, but Homecoming against Ole Miss! We thankfully won the game (23-10) and are currently ranked 8th which is plenty respectable (good thing Ohio State fell to the Badgers last week!). They got to see the Homecoming parade in downtown Tuscaloosa while dining at Chuck's Fish (very tasty I'm told!) and got to see the streets of Tuscaloosa get crazy busy as game time neared. Parking on our street which is a little less than 2 miles away from the stadium was PACKED! Including many large SUVs that blocked us into our own driveway. We chose to stay at home for dinner and Dan made up a couple of his famous pizza pies - a chicago deep dish and a thin crust. We kept things simple with the ingredients - sauce, basil, mushrooms, and onions....it was delicious!!! We spent a lot of time chatting and I got to hear stories of Dan in his youth, AND Gene was kind enough to bring a bunch of youthful Dan pictures - I'll have to scan some of them and post them onto the blog - thank goodness Dan can't edit my posts. All I can say is that the pictures are PRICELESS.

The next day we had a lovely breakfast at home (banana pancakes from this great recipe!) and drove them around T-town. We visited the riverside park and gazed at the Black Warrior River for a bit - quite lovely temperature walking about! We then took them onto campus and embraced the Paul Denny Bryant Stadium in the peace of a Sunday afternoon. The campus was nice and quiet after a week of Homecoming celebration. The only noise were the groundskeepers breaking down all the party tents.

Later that evening we had an AMAZING dinner at the Cypress Inn. We all shared our well-made selections - steak wrapped in bacon, fried gulf shrimp, and fried catfish. We have heard that Cypress Inn is the best place to eat in Tuscaloosa and after that meal we believed it. The sides were also amazing - hoppin' john, mashed potatoes, great house salads etc. One of my favorite parts of the meal were the sourdough rolls and mini pumpkin muffins - SO SO moist and tasty! The Cypress Inn is especially nice because it is the only riverfront restaurant in town. We walked to the river after dinner and it was great to feel the Fall air surround our full bellies.

Monday we drove to Birmingham and had a lot of fun. We visited the Peanut Depot, had lunch at the Urban Standard (hip sandwich-soup-salad eatery), walked the downtown of Homewood (Penzey's Spices and Savage Bakery), admired the Vulcan statue at Vulcan park, and drove around the fancy neighborhood of Mountain Brook. It was a packed day that was topped off by a delicious meal at Dreamland. Their tangy sauce makes me drool even now! I think in the future Dan and I have decided to ditch the sides and just go for the ribs they are famous for, along with a healthy serving of their equally famous banana pudding. Everything else is just filler!

The next day Dan and I worked in the morning while Paul and Gene went "Zipping" around south of Tuscaloosa - they visited Moundville which is a Native American Archeological site, and got a sliver of pie from the Pie Lab in Greensboro. Dan and I whipped up a tasty BBQ of chicken kebobs with veggies, a cucumber salad, and some homemade pita bread topped with some za'atar spice we got from Penzey's the day before in Birmingham (chocolate cookie ice cream sandwiches for dessert! Thanks Fairfield Inn Marriot!). We capped off their visit with a tour of Dan's lab/building (Bevil). We showed them where Dan works, the aquarium that I cleaned up, and some other areas which was very fun.

All in all a wonderful visit - our first visitors! We hope more will come and we hope they will visit again. It was such fun to meet them for the first time and Dan had a blast seeing them in his new digs. We are so happy they came - thanks for all the fun and treats!

xoxo!!

Here are the pictures!

chau

Just a quick one...

Hi! Only a couple pictures of the front garden area that I cleaned up recently. It looks bare I know, but at least all the weeds are gone. I probably need to top it off with some mulch or something...soon. While turning over the soil I found a bunch of bulbs that were planted - they had been there for at least one season because there were many baby bulbs that were surrounding the larger ones in the area - however, I know nothing about gardening.

Anyhow, I hope to put some pots of flowers out there soon to get some color. In the meantime I bought a small pumpkin from the Farmer's Market yesterday for the stoop. Though I like carving pumpkins and the like, I enjoy the visual of a good plain pumpkin on a stoop. This one is a little wimpy, but I forgot to bring sufficient cash with me to the market for a respectable pumpkin.

Anyhow, a quick note about Pie Lab! I just saw that nytimes did a long story about Pie Lab which is a pie shop/idea lab in Greensboro, AL which is about 40 mi south of us. It was exciting to be reminded of their presence and Dan and I are excited about maybe taking the Nelson parental units there for an afternoon pie and coffee during their visit next week. Oh! I did not mentioned earlier that the Nelson parental units are visiting next week! They drive down next Sunday and stay for a few days which will be fun to finally have some guests to show around. We've been cleaning and organizing the house for their visit and brainstorming about "Must Sees" of T-Town.

(Also, if any Nelson parental units are reading this: If you remember, please please please bring a few pictures of Dan as a child as he refuses my pleas for such a request!! Thanks much)

xo

ct

FALL!!!

Last night it got down to the 40s!! I seem obsessed about the weather here. This is probably because it was one of the many unknowns upon moving out to the Deep South. I guess we can say we survived the summer and we're slowly transitioning to Fall. Woo! Hannah got bundled up this morning as did I in my down booties and my beanie. So nice!

Last week I went to Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory which is run by USGS. As a research tech in the Benstead lab part of my duties will be to accompany Mick (phd student) on a monthly overnight sampling trip. It takes us about 5 hours to drive to the station. We drive due east from Tuscaloosa through Birmingham, then to Atlanta (my first time in Georgia!!!) and head north and Coweeta is right on the border in North Carolina (my first time in NC!). We drive up one day, sample the next, then head home. It makes for a lightening fast trip, but quite pretty. I'm excited to see the forest change throughout the year. By next sampling trip the leaves should be falling, which will make for fun sampling.

This past weekend Dan and I went to the Alcove with our neighbor Emily and watched the Crimson Tide whoop up on some Gator behind. #1 vs #7 was hotly anticipated this whole week, but soon after the 1st quarter we were assured yet another victory. The Alcove did not disappoint as they provided more smoked boston butt pork sandwiches, and smoked chicken wings rubbed with pesto and sun-dried tomato marinade . Now, I don't know about you, but I had never tasted smoked wings so we were a bit intrigued by the provided vittles - they were AMAZING. Despite our full bellies we ended up eating our fair share (and then some) of wings - very tasty rub that you simply could not tire of and the juiciest wings ever! How we love you Alcove!!!

Sunday Dan and I took it easy and did the domestic thing and organized the office. The bookcase has been a godsend to organize our reading material, but then we (I) had unsightly boxes and boxes full of notes from my undergrad. A ginormous amount of purging occurred (far less needed on Dan's end) and we managed to store everything in some sturdy rubbermaid bins. The office looks a lot better now (we think) and we're excited about having the room feel so homey - let's hope for massive productivity to follow!

I posted some pictures here of the sampling trip, Hannah and I in the cold, and a few of the office space that is slowly coming along....enjoy!