Crazy week(end)!

I just might have missed a few days in the daily photo thing recently, but its so hard to tell because I have just been so busy that all my days are running together!  This week I started my macroinvertebrate monitoring (only the thing I have been planning for since I moved up to Tahoe in May) and we are working SO much faster than I had planned, getting 8 entire 250 meter reaches done in 3 days (not to mention closing up day three early to go pull invasive weeds in the Upper Truckee Marsh to support another AmeriCorps volunteer in his event)!  Sounds impressive right?  Well it kind of is, but it also involved 2 twelve hour days and one 11 hour day, but thats okay.  That was Monday through Wednesday, and then on Thursday our AmeriCorps training starting with trail building on the Tahoe Rim Trail which involved an early morning and some hard work (fortunately I was able to leave early for that work picnic I made the pie for and the pie was a pretty big hit!)  Then we headed off to the beach to meet up with the rest of our AmeriCorps group to have some dinner.

That brings us to Friday, a full day of training on like after AmeriCorps (job hunting, resume building, interviewing, etc).  The most important lesson I took away from that was to keep in touch with everyone you meet ever because you never know who might prove to be a great contact later on (plus you know, having friends is pretty cool...).  That was a rewarding but very long day that ended with a reception for the Sierra Nevada Alliance Conference attendees and AmeriCorps volunteers which was very cool.  I met and spoke to a science teacher who is also a GLOBE trainer and was utterly fascinated by his stories!  It brought back wonderful memories of some of my science teachers that really inspired me back in the day (shout out to Mr. Grotto and Mr. Mitchell!)

Anyway that was yesterday and that brings us to today, when all of us AmeriCorps folks got to be conference attendees for the day which was a very cool experience!  I learned a lot, met some VERY interesting and amazing people, and learned that my Mom isn't the only one who reads this blog!  (which gave me all sorts of guilt about having not updated for a few days...) I handed out all sorts of business cards that I knew I had printed for a reason, and felt very inspired at the end of the day, after hearing about all the wonderful things all these organizations are doing!  The conference officially ended for me at 4:30 pm and now I'm home, and it really feels like weekend, which I needed after this week because its back to monitoring on Monday and while it is amazing and fun work (can't complain about playing in rivers all day), it is thoroughly exhausting and we are getting reports that it will be cold enough to snow here tonight as low as 7000 feet (that is unconfirmed rumors of course, my favorite information source!) and that could make Monday extra frigid!

Anyway today I have taken several photos to make up for my few days of silence, and I figured it has been a long time since I gave my Mom a garden update so here are my little kiddos:

Basil Flowers

Yellow Tomato Babies, even though I bring him in out of the cold every night he's still having a very hard time figuring out how to redden up his tomaters!

My Snap Dragons, now so tall that they are bent over and flowering upside down!

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a photo and a recipe

I started my day off by getting caught up on some things i was supposed to do for work...sounds worse than it is, mostly I just walked around this meadow (below) and wrote down ground water depths at monitoring wells.  It was more like a morning walk than work really...

Anyway after I finished up at work I stopped into the grocery store and picked up what I needed to make this pasta dish I remembered making (and loving) a long long time ago with Miss Merry.  I found this recipe, which was close to what we followed, but not quite so naturally I edited it to my liking.  This is the recipe I used:
Boil water for the pasta and while you're waiting heat a bit of olive oil and butter in a saucepan and add a few cloves of chopped garlic.  Sauté until it smells great but don't let it burn.  Add about half of a medium sweet onion and sauté until translucent.  At this point I also tossed in a few chopped mushrooms too.  When the onion is done add a splash of dry white wine, chopped sundried tomatoes, and some vegetable broth and cook on medium heat until it reduces to about half the amount of liquid.  Then toss in drained artichoke hearts, capers, and a small can of chopped olives.  Cook until all ingredients are heated through and add directly to cooked pasta and toss.  Serve immediately, the recipe calls for fresh grated Parmesan, which I'm sure would be delicious, but I used fresh crumbled goat cheese instead, amazing!  Below is the result: warning, its strong stuff and requires no extra seasoning, but if you are a fan of capers and sundried tomatoes then you will love this dish!

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TOMATOES!

After months of nurturing and loving and watering my little tomato babies....finally i have some little green tomato babies!  Annnnddd here they are!

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you say tomato...

i say why does my tomato plant look like its been in a knife fight?  a bit of poor leaf health...but its green and blooming, so it can't be tooooooooo unhealthy....

I made chocolate coconut butterscotch cookies again, since tomorrow a few volunteers are getting together for dinner.  I ate way too much cookie dough but i have lots of yummmy lookin cookies to share tomorrow!  Hurray!

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update!

I haven't posted a picture of my babies lately, so I thought I would give you an update.  The Pansies are doing very well (as Pansies always do!) and I get to see their little smiling faces every day before and after work.  The strawberries have the beginnings of fruit, not anywhere near ripe, but still conspicuously strawberr-ily looking, so I can't wait until they're all rosy red!  My tomato is probably twice the size it was when I got it, all fuzzy and such, but the most exciting news of all is that my little baby basils are poking out their happy little heads!  And here is their first (partial, as there are many more not shown here) family portrait:

(The red in the top left is just the tag from the tomato plant)

What do you know, I can grow things! Hopefully they make it even bigger, like full size, or something crazy like that, but I'm already pretty proud of myself!  Its already warm enough here to where they don't have to come in at night anymore, so they don't get to listen to music with me in the evenings anymore, which I'm sure they miss.  I'll have to start pointing my speakers out the window for them.  I did sit outside with them for about an hour today while I drew a picture of a pansy, so at least they aren't lonely.  :o)

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