Long-distance Nana

Here's the thing.

I know that I am extremely lucky to be Nana to eleven adorable kiddos. But four of them live in faraway lands and I only get to see them a couple of times a year. This constitutes a serious impediment to my grandmotherly bonding, so when the opportunity presents itself, I lay hold of it with gusto.

I spent the past week in Texas with not just the incomparable London, daughter of Charlie and Sam, but also the North Carolina babes, who were in Texas with their mommy and daddy to pick up Edwin's two boys. 

I will now inundate you with photos of the occasion.

Victoria and London are only a month apart in age, and it was more adorable than words can describe to see them interact.

Note: for some reason, Annie managed to get in more than her fair share of photo-bombs during the week. Not my fault.

Luke, Edwin's older son, is on the left. He is the spittin' image of Edwin and it cracked me up every time I saw the same expression on their faces.

It was stinking hot the whole time we were there, so we weren't outside very often. Elsie, London and I braved the afternoon heat for a few minutes to take some photos.

On Saturday night, we again tackled the heat to visit downtown Wylie for the Bluegrass festival. We do love us some bluegrass music!

Bryce, son #2, is second from right.

The icy concoctions were ridiculously expensive but very necessary.

We all headed to the HOA splash pad when we arrived back at the house. Jeff stayed home with the dog, so he missed all the fun.

There is very little that is more perfect than a warm evening, lots of water, and a happy family.

Charlie did his famous thing, tossing the kids into the air. 

The littles just chilled on the edge of the pool.

This photo makes me more happy than words can say.

Edwin and Charlie tossed the younger kids back and forth like a ball. 

It was pretty hilarious.

That face.

Everyone was quite exhausted by the end of the day, so bedtime was not traumatic. I was all set to read a Dr. Seuss book to the kids and Luke said, I can read it to them.
And so he did.
Right then and there, I fell in love with him.

Wrangler is no longer allowed to put his whole body on the couch, so somehow he figured out that if he only planted his bottom on the edge of the couch, he could get away with it.

Silly dog. 

It worked for him for a few days, but then he started to settle further and further back on the couch, so he lost the privilege altogether.

Poor baby. He thinks he is sneaky, but he is so obvious when he tries to get around the system!

Charlie gettin' all domesticated and cutting Edwin's hair.

And that was my first day in Dallas.

The humble radish

The farmers in our valley have taken mightily to planting grass seed for the last few years. It's an easy and profitable crop, I suppose, but I hate it. It is not picturesque at all, and in the spring and early summer it causes almost unbearable allergies for many of us who live here, both when the seed sets and when it is harvested. Once in a while, the fields near our house will be planted with wheat, which is easy on the eyes and doesn't seem to cause the allergies.

This spring, a new crop came to town and no one could identify it. My friend and I were walking past a field of it one day and wondering aloud about it. A man was walking his dog and told us, very authoritatively, that it was a dry crop of beets for seed. Well, I was thrilled to be in the know, and proceeded to tell everyone I met about it.

The plants grew rapidly and soon the fields were a white swath of gorgeousness.

Photos began to show up on my facebook newsfeed and I was happy to inform people that they were beets.

However, as time went by, I began to wonder about the veracity of my information. The roots didn't look like beets and the greens grew very quickly, so I had a little talk with Google. It took longer than my usual research forays, but I finally identified the plants as radishes. Not your usual little pink globes, mind you, but big old white roots, almost like daikon radishes. 

It wasn't too long before the flowers disappeared and seed pods took their place.

Millions and millions of rather fat seed pods.

This cover crop is amazing. It grows rapidly, suppresses weeds with its quick canopy cover, doesn't need irrigating, and pulls huge amounts of nutrients from deep in the soil so that later crops can utilize them. If the roots are left to rot over winter, they aereate the soil and allow for water penetration the following year. The roots also break up compacted soil. 

Radish is a brassica, and plants produce a compound which is toxic to soil-borne pests (such as nematodes) and pathogens. The greens can be used for forage or the seed for oil, depending on which variety is grown.

Why do I care about this stuff?

I don't know. I just do. It eats at me until I have found answers to all of the questions.

And now you know too.

I would have to disagree with William Andrus Alcott, who said, quite famously in "The Young Housekeeper," that "radishes, though often eaten, are miserable things."

I have to pronounce radishes to be quite marvelous.

As long as you don't ask me to eat one.

That's no monkey...that's me!

Thomy and Jeff's birthdays are in May, so I thought ahead and bought a Groupon (or some such thing) for a trip to the Wildlife Safari in Winston, down in southern Oregon. We took the kids there years ago, but it was so long ago that I couldn't remember much about it.

The boys slept over at our house the night before, so that we could get an early start.

The trip took a little less than three hours. I printed off some travel games before we left, which was a lifesaver. The boys played travel bingo and checked state license plates off a master list as we traveled down the interstate. 

Jeff slept a little. 

Not big Jeff. He was driving.

The park is well known for its cheetah breeding programme, which is about the only thing I remembered from our first trip. 

Exotic birds abound.

We stopped in the petting zoo. Thomy was up for feeding the goats, but Jeff was a bit hesitant until he saw that Thomy survived the experience unscathed.

Nana looks a little manic, and it's still early in the day!

The boys decided they would love to ride on the camel, so I thought, what the heck, the entry ticket was cheap enough!

I do think that camels have great character in their faces, don't you?

We decided that camel rides were over-rated, not worth the $10 for the five minutes or so of ride, so we signed up for the hippopotamus experience later in the afternoon. Meanwhile, we ate lunch and did the driving safari. This takes about 45 minutes and was great fun, because of all the different animals and birds that are running free. 

 

There were several of these bears, just dozing in the sun.

You can buy emu food and the cars ahead of us were feeding them. Of course, a couple of them had to check out our car too. They were quite brazen, and this one had rather an evil eye, I think, but it turns out he looked scarier than he really was.

I do love a real, live flamingo. Or ten.

Finally, the time arrived to board the safari truck for the hippo experience. 

We learned lots of interesting things about hippos, most of which I have forgotten.

BUT.

I am the Queen of Google, a title I share with my sister, so I found some fascinating facts for you.

Hippos can hold their breath underwater for five minutes.

When in Africa, they spend up to sixteen hours a day submerged in water, trying to keep cool in the hot, African sun.

Hippos can weigh around 3,000 pounds, yet they can easily outrun a human, being able to reach 19 mph for short distances. They are also very unpredictable and are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.

The giraffes had just finished their own encounter, where, of course, they had been fed, so this one ambled over to our truck to see if it could scrounge some from us as well.

It was a thrill; two encounters for the price of one, just my kind of thing!

How come giraffes are so stinking cute?

It was quite determined, and tried it from all angles. It stuck its head over the side wall of the truck.

Eventually, the hippo keeper convinced the giraffe that there was no food for it, so it cast us this disgusted look (you see it too, right?) and ambled away.  

A hippopotamus has a very big mouth.

These are both males and they are very well trained.

We had seen just about everything once and some things twice by now, so we decided to go home.

There is a restaurant near the freeway entrance. It is called Noah's Burgers and looked like a fun place, so we stopped there to eat before we started the return trip home.

It was pretty weird, more of a ministry than a restaurant, so we took a few photos and used their bathrooms and headed on home. A rather odd little old man and woman, all dressed up as Noah and his wife, run the place. I am sure their intentions are good, but I didn't fancy microwaved burgers and tater tots for dinner.

We stopped at Burger King instead, which seemed to make everyone happy.

It was a fun day and I hope the boys remember it for a long time.