Life lately: hikes, gardening, grilling, and visitors

Time is flying, as always. We've been busy, but here is a snippet of our last month.

The Fourth of July weekend was beautiful- it wasn't too hot at all and E and A spent the weekend as our first multiple-night visitors. We went on a nice hike along a portion the Crosstown Trail in town- the trail that we biked down last year. Except this year, we walked. It was great fun. Of course, Harry came along.

We saw a whole family of swans swimming gracefully, and Harry even got into the water (to chest level!). At some point he had had enough of the water and ran quickly- much more quickly than we could- up the steep hill towards the picnic table. 

picnic table vantage point

The trail was nice and shaded and Harry was able to enjoy being off-leash. He even walked the entire way back on his own! 

With our hiking and visitors, we've been grilling quite a bit. Well in actuality, we don't necessarily wait for visitors to grill- we had grilled hot dogs last night, just the two of us, for dinner. Here are a few of our culinary (grill-ernary) delights. 

grilled salmon on a cedar plank- Chris' specialty

throwing some shrimp (and zucchini) on the Barbie

And of course, our garden. Most of the time, I spend a lot of time looking at the plants in the garden and wondering if they will grow. Though this month we had two exciting developments: 1.) our first tomato and 2.) we harvested a petite salad that we enjoyed for dinner!

But I shouldn't really sell ourselves short. We've had a delicious mozzarella, basil and heirloom tomato salad with basil from the garden, and guacamole with fresh cilantro from the garden, as well. I remember when the herbs and vegetables were just seeds, growing in the windowsill in Boston where we had to fend off predators like Gregory!

just a baby

our salad pride and joy (2+ months of sweat and tears, really)

how does our garden grow

Lastly, Carl came to visit. Here he is, saying good-by to his dog cousin, Harry.