Going to the Y

Here is a short video of a happy boy who is about to be taken to his favorite place, the pool at the YMCA. He's talking a lot these days.

Link to video

Garden of earthly delights

Chris types today.

We are managing to do a little more than just survive this summer, and it's been great. We installed a fence in the backyard to make space for Peter to play. . I feel very cpable now that I have mastered some basic operations with concrete. And we've done some gardening too

Our tomato plants have grown a lot, and have so far provided us with exactly one perfect, delicious tomato. Maybe we will get some more. The zucchinis were looking very promising, but then we learned the hard way that zucchinis need way less water than tomatoes do, so next year we will not be planting them next to each other. The eggplants have made a lot of foliage and a couple of very elegant-looking blossoms but so far no veg. Stay tuned for an update. Peppers are popping and herbs are healthy.

G has planted a lot of stuff for butterflies and hummingbirds, but I will let her blog about that the next time she has time to herself. Should be sometime before 2018.

I would like to post the video I made of "out" hummingbird. G hung the feeders and made homemade bird-juice, and carefully kept them topped up for weeks before we finally saw a hummingbird. But once it showed up, it stayed. Maybe with a partner. We see them every day now, prety much everytime we go outside to watch for a little bit.

Hummingbird visit from Chris D'Amato on Vimeo.

 

I made this video with our handy little Flip camera, attached to the feeder hanging bracket with a visegrip. Anybody know what kind of hummingbird this might be?

It seems like there are two of them in our yard, they look very similar. They like to perch on the twigs above the feeder, so we get to inspect them a lot more that I ever did before.

Somewhere I have great pictures of this amazing caterpillar that appeared on one of G's herbs, I will see if I can find it.

Meanwhile, I better get back to work. Expect to see more blog posts during the second half of the summer when I have schoolwork to do.

Peter's new train set

Peter has been enjoying Thomas and Friends cartoons, so we bought him a little wooden Thomas which instantly became his favorite toy. He would carry it everywhere and even took it to bed, and he spend a lot of time playing with trains and trucks on a little Matchbox playset someone gave him.

So the other day we found a train set on craigslist for him. This is a time-lapse video of how he spent the day.

He is absent from the video only when he was physically dragged off for naptime, meals, and socialization with his cousins Thomas and Molly who were visiting from North Carolina.

Peter's new train set from Chris D'Amato on Vimeo.