Hermit Island

Franconia Ridge Hike

I did a nice two-day hike up in the Whites this week. You can check out the photos from my hike on my Webshots page at:

http://community.webshots.com/user/trucston?vhost=community

Italy Continued

The Wedding.....

La Vida Italia

Hi all, sorry for the non-blog-participation...life's been a bit stressful of late but I do want to share our Italy trip highlights!!  It proved to be quite therapeutic and left me wanting to move to Europe to have a baby, grow a garden and drink copious amounts of red wine!!

 

The trip was broken up into three legs:  The first being in Bassano del Grappa which is just an hour north of Venice at the start of the Dolomites. It was mostly farming land with tons of cherry trees. We stayed with Justin's friends who have a little girl Ava (Justin's god daughter) and another that was just born this week! We took it pretty easy and ate and chatted and ate, etc. but did manage to organize a little tour of a local winery  at 10am and proceeded to get quite tipsy before lunch time! 

The second leg was in Cinque Terra which i remembered being these 5 little tiny fishing villages nestled into the cliffs above the sea. It is still quite picturesque but I guess since the last time i was there some travel writer has put it on the map so there were tons of Amercians which always annoys me when im traveling.  I know its unreasonable and selfish to say that but that last thing i want while gazing at the sea and stuffing down a salad caprese is the sound of a booming brooklyn accent at the next table. This was our "alone time" segment of the trip but it didn't end up being that romantic since I hemorrhaged at dinner and had to call an emergency doctor (who arrived on bike with his doctor bag in his basket) and be rushed to the clinic. Other than that Cinque Terra was great!

The last leg of the trip was the wedding in Petrolo, which I can definitely put in my top 5 travel experiences. The bride groom generously rented this amazing Villa which had its own stone church, several outbuildings, lemon groves and vineyards for miles and miles around. So aside from the utterly gorgeous Villa and Grounds we all were all staying on, and all our friends, and all the details they organized it was the food that did it. As a gift to the bride and groom Jaime Oliver (the utterly handsome and sickenlingy down to earth british chef) had four of his chefs there and did all the food all four days...breakfast, lunch & dinner... it was a dream!!  Nothing was not thought of from the 10K run which was organized complete with medals and trophy to the winner, the poker tournament, the italian stallion stripper (for the ladies of course), the make your own pizza for lunch, the screening of the godfather on the side of the villa one night, to the dance parties everynight and the video diary room where you could leave a personal video message to the bride and groom...i could go on and on but I will digress and let you see the photos!!

Music Survey

Thought it would be fun if we each shared a list of certain songs we associate with family members. Would be funny if a couple of us shared the same ones.
This isn't a complete list, just some that come to mind.
1.Mr. Jones Tim & Jordan
2. Piano Man Tommy
3.Hurts So Good Kristin
4.Faith Tatum
5 Bobby Mc Gee Karen
6. It's Only Rock N Roll Uncle Brian
7. Hard to Handle Uncle Kenny

I'm curious to see what you all come up with.

Lincoln

These were too cute not to share.

Summer in Hollis

Wanted to share some pics I took yesterday. There's a photo of my window box roma tomato.

Summer gardening time is here! 

I have taken some early pictures of our vegetable patch.  I'll post some more in 6 weeks and it's amazing by then how everything fills in.  We are already eating our early cold crops ... lettuce, radish, spinach and some herbs.  

2008 Garden Menu

acorn squash, butternut squash, summer squash, zucchini, sugar baby watermelon, tomatillos, plum tomatoes, various other  eating tomatoes, broccoli raab, lettuce, radish, spinach, broccoli, asparagus and herbs.