Goood night...sleeep tight....

Well, It's 5am on a Saturday morning.

It's a bone chilling 73 degrees outside which means the doors are open and the sweet summer air is rolling in along with the birds and their chirpy ways.

I'm here typing, listening to The White Album while sipping on some iced coffee ("THEY SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY...IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TOOOO").  I've already vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom.

 Life is good.

Perhaps, you exclaim,
"But you're up at 5am!  How could that be good?"

Well, it certainly helps when you fall asleep at 7pm the night before after an exhausting and productive week of work.  I got some lab work done, went up to Coweeta for THE. LAST. MONTHLY. SAMPLING. TRIP. EVER.  Well, at least for this project anyhow.

Here is Mick taking his final core:

This means we washed rocks for the last time, which means no more rocks for the garden!  It's best this way...it really is...(sniff).

Anyhow, I then went out with Kate to go electroshocking in the boat for some fish for her project yesterday.  Using a boat for field work is fun, but can be exhausting!  Thankfully another researcher comes out with us to man the boat while Kate and I electroshock and net fish.

I am very rusty with my general boat skills ("boat engines need oil mixed with gas, oh yeah..I think I remember that"), my boat ramp etiquette ("So when I back up and I want the trailer to go left I turn my steering wheel which way?? Let's just try different things while other boaters are watching and chuckling at me...DON'T JUDGE ME!"), and my boat trailering skills (hitch locked on, chains on, lights plugged in, straps tightened, OMG you are so needy Mr. Boat!!).  It's been a long time since the boating class I took at NOAA back in Seattle.  Oh that was so fun (remember that??)...Getting everything ready in 90 degree heat with 98% humidity probably doesn't help me brain...I'll blame it on the heat...yes...the heat.

So, with a week like that I came home to a shower, flipped on the AC, and CHECKED OUT for the night.  It was fabulous.  So here I am, catching up on the blog, and getting over a little summer cold - just occasional dry hacking now, I'm a real delight to sit by right now.

Here are some photos from the last couple of weeks...included are a FEW videos of Hannah playing with her new toy (consider yourselves warned).  We finally got some nice rain last night so the rain barrel is full again and ready to nourish my plants for the week.  I'm about a week away from my first tomato harvest I think...SO excited...

Been enjoying summer vegetables from the Farmer's market and cooking up some things from the pantry as well.  I was hankering for some lentils and had a sweet potato sitting on the shelf for like 2 months at least.  This lead to a web search for curried sweet potato lentils and I came up with this recipe from smitten kitchen (it's VEGAN even!).  It was delicious, but as always, since I have to adapt recipes dependent on what the pantry dictates, I tweaked it a bit.  I cooked as directed, used only water instead of veggie broth, upped the spices, then added a can of coconut milk toward the end of cooking, didn't have chard so put in spinach and turned off the heat to let the spinach melt into the curry.  I felt it still needed a little acid (I had no limes - gasp!!), so I threw in a can of diced tomatoes and let it sit.  I also had no cilantro or green onions or tamari almonds. OH MY LORD.  This was so satisfying.  I'm glad I made a big pot of it - I got to enjoy it for the whole week and I am sad to see it gone after today.  It was good cold, it was good hot, I ate it plain without any rice as I'm cutting down on carbs as the summer heat suppresses those cravings for me.  It was good with a fried egg on top for a more substantial dinner.  I love putting fried eggs on top of certain meals and having the oozy yolk spill all over and add that silky texture that I find so satisfying.

Oh yes, and this is another reason why life is good -  After I post this I'm going back to bed, just as the sun is about to rise...happiness is a cool bed.

xo

It started with a snip snip...

Attempting to riff off of this song?

yes.( there's a 30 second intro you'll haft a sit thru)

Anyhow, thankfully I am not referring to a self imposed haircut (both my mother and Dan can sigh in relief), but about the garden.

This is the South...the Deep South in fact and we have the horrid and invasive kudzu everywhere.

 You know this because I gave complained about it endlessly in the past. Anyhow, every year about this time I get a bee in my bonnet and go to town on the kudzu I can easily reach in our yard. It starts with using my "garden shears" (in actuality a spare pair of kitchen shears that got demoted to outdoor use).  My daily 10 minute watering of our planties each morning gives me time to notice..

"oh, a bit of kudzu here, snip, snip!"...

Water...water..weed, water..weed...

"Well lookie over there, if it isn't a bit of kudzu twisted up in this ivy, I suppose I should try to clear that up"...

Well, as you can imagine, two hours later I am dripping with sweat after yanking kudzu out of our poor trees, then severely trimming said poor trees because they are blocking out the sun for our tomatoes..

Our tomatoes!!! Anything for our tomatoes!!!  If you've had garden fresh tomatoes before then you maybe familiar with such illogical protectiveness...

In fact, I trimmed a branch today the diameter of my arm! The biggest one I have sawed down to date!  It's easily 25 feet long, no lie. Also, I will not tell you that I did not trim this branch from our neighbor's yard that is now vacant. Nope. I shall not...

That's all for now from Bama.  Dan has been in Iceland for a week now!  So only 8 more weeks until he is home!  I hear things are going relatively well there, aside from crappy Iceland weather - wind, rain, sleet.  But folks seem to be in good spirits so that is great!  

I think soon the weeks will fly by for the boys.  David the undergrad REU comes back in 5 weeks, and then Dan's sister Caroline visits for a week!  Right now Dan and David are sharing a room in a quintessentially small Reykjavik apartment.  The apartment has two other rooms filled by Tanner the Master's student from Montana, and Ellie, another undergrad REU working with Tanner for the summer.  The trade offs on a small apartment are a better downtown location and internet though!  They are also within walking distance to the pools so they can have a nice long relaxing soak after a day of field work!

Have you checked the Iceland blog lately?  Thankfully, Tanner is big on posting on the blog, so we all benefit from his contributions...(i.e., we get to see pictures of Dan et al).  

OK, time to hit work!  Here are pics!!

aaaaaannnnnd...this is what I do when Dan is gone:

arrrrrr matey! I be twitterpated with Cap'n Dan!

Xo

The Tran parental units visit Alabama!

Here are some pictures of the Tran Parental Unit Visit circa 2013!!  We had a great time and it was quite the whirlwind tour of the Deep South!

Our road trip - New Orleans, LA to Gulf Shores, AL to Fort Rucker, AL to Montgomery, AL, to Tuscaloosa!

I picked up my parents in New Orleans and we covered over 500 miles in two days and got to see a lot of new places.  Once we got into Tuscaloosa we spent the rest of the time around the home front.  We visited campus, ate some BBQ, built a screen door, made egg rolls (or, more correctly, watched my mom make egg rolls...). We walked around downtown Northport and did our fair share of supporting the local businesses, Dan made his famous eggplant parmesan which was quite tasty as per usual, ate at Jim N Nick's and the Cypress Inn for some good ol' Southern vittles.  We also hit up Mr Chen's for one of our lunches so my parents could taste what little asian food we have here in Tuscaloosa.  Their cumin lamb dish is super fragrant and addictive, but perhaps my opinion is skewed since regular asian food is scarce around these here parts. We also visited one of my favorite spots in Tuscaloosa -  Brown's Nursery.  My mom helped me pick out a few flowers for the yard along with an intoxicating jasmine plant that I am very excited about.  We repotted him into a large pot but we're unsure where he will finally sit for all to enjoy...

It was getting a bit hot in town these days so it was nice to soak up the AC at home and hangout outside in the backyard area which has gotten quite nice in the mornings.  The birds are lively and the veggie plants are trying their darndest to grow...So far we have 3 tomatoes growing already along with one banana pepper! Woo hoo!!  Let's hope for a bumper crop this year!

Anyhow, it was quite a fun visit with the parents.  Their last night in town we hosted an egg roll dinner for a few friends.  We had 16 people at our place gorging on egg rolls and Vietnamese grilled pork with rice noodles.  Everything tasted so great and it made me miss my mom's food that much more!  It was also fun to share her wonderful food with everyone else so as to finally show them the wonderfulness that is homemade Vietnamese cuisine that I have been raving about all this time.  We also got to show off the new screen door as well that worked like a champ, increasing air flow in the house and keeping them pesky bugs outside!

I'm glad they finally got to visit our happy little home in Alabamie!  And now Dan leaves Thursday for Iceland so we go from one whirlwind to another!  He's readying his field gear for his last summer of experiments and data collection for the project!  I'm glad he's only staying in Iceland for two months this summer.  The time should really fly by and we'll be back together in early August!  Yippee!!

All for now!

xo

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