THE CROWS:

Aaron and I need another dose of gardening advice. This morning I woke up and looked out the bedroom window and noticed that a flock of crows were taking over our Garden Room. One was pulling of the little pink hearts off of our adorable little pink bleeding heart bush! Another was bouncing up and down on our wedding tree like it was a crow trampoline and a third was yanking the plastic tags out of the ground (the tag that tells us the name of the plant and how best to not kill it) and running around with it like a game of Catch the Flag! I yelled for my hubbie and told him what kind of debauchery was going on in our yard he put down his razor and ran outside in his slippers, charging the threesome, and yelled, "gitt!", like he meant it!

The crows few to the neighbor's roof and stared down at Aaron to "caw...CAAAW" at him.

Now what? We have black-winged vandals trashing our beautiful Garden Room. Will a scare crow really work? How about a giant eagle sculpture? We're headed to the Everett Garden Art show. Do you think a kinetic sculpture would cure them? Is there anything like "slug-go" for crows? Maybe some Crow-Go?

We need help....
What do you think?

WE VISITED JOHN MCCAIN:

Well, not exactly. We visited the great state of Arizona; although I would meet John if I had the chance. Maybe someday they'll be an almost-presidential museum for him and I'll go to that.


I got to go to a leadership training in AZ with my company. It was a really a great training; learned a lot. Then on the last day my Honey joined me. I met him at the airport on a triple-digit day and we got a rental car and headed north where it was a "dry 80 degrees".

We wanted to go to Sedona but we're not rich enough for that, so we stopped in Cottonwood and stayed with the Regular People. Cottonwood is a scenic 20 min drive to Sedona at about 1/3 the price. It was perfect. We ate breakfast at a little local dinner where were half the average age of the rest of the patrons and the Blue Hairs shuffled from one table to the next passing the "news" to their neighbors. Everyone knew everyone else. I had the best omelet of my life, no amount of cheese or butter spared, and then it was off to Sedona.

RED ROCKS: We stopped at Red Rocks State Park on a whim and it turned out to be a real highlight of our visit. Actually, it probably tied with the homemade ice cream we had at the end of the day but it ranked for sure! It was halfway between Cottonwood and Sedona. The park is made up of a series of short little trails. We started wandering around and before you knew it our little walk turned into a real hike. We were out there for a couple of hours and end up getting high enough to have some incredible views. The red rocks are just gorgeous. Words and pictures don't do them justice so you'll just have to go see them for yourself. Aaron and I had both driven through the area in the early 90's but this was the first time we had hiked there. It was well worth it to get out of the car. We saw lizards (shown above), a deer, and lots of cactus. After our 2 hour stop-over we continued on to Sedona.




We spent a couple of hours on an art walk. We saw lots of cool thing and met some really nice people. I kind of expected we'd buy something but we didn't fall in love with anything so we didn't.

JEROME, AZ: The next day we went to Jerome which is a little rundown-nothing of a town ....sort of. The buildings are falling apart and it's pretty much a one lane street that switchbacks up the side of a mountain. It's an old mining town that's re-branding itself. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning when we rolled up. Someone referred us to the Flatiron Grill for breakfast which was pretty much the cutest, tiny little down-home shop you could hope for. There were four tables and we sat at the bar. They at about 10 things on the menu, espresso, homemade lemonade and a big basket homemade cookies, muffins, and cornbread. What more could we have wanted?? We had our breakfast and headed through the streets.


Turns out the nothing-little-town is PACKED full of art and unique little stores. It's all retail and all tourism. As the day went on more and more people showed up and a crazy amount of polished motor cycles all over the place. Bands started playing, restaurants overflowed, and the throngs wound their way through the town. We were not expecting anything like that but we were having fun. Not a chain store in site. Glorious!! The views were incredible. The scenery is just so much different than what we're used to. We went to tons of art galleries, including one that was rated #1 in something by Niche magazine. We wandered around all day, had ourselves some pizza, and then headed back to Phoenix to see Aaron's college friend the infamous "JMan", who I've been hearing about for years now.

Downtown Jermore

This building is convered into a glass blowing studio (studio is in the former basement)

Once we found the JMan residence we we're enthusiastically greeted by 2 adorable little girls four and under. You could light a small city if only you could harness the energy!! When their little brother woke up they just referred to him as "The Baby." As they climbed all over Aaron, "That's The Baby....want to hold The Baby?....Mom they want to hold The Baby..." You wouldn't have known that The Baby had a name or could have been referred to as "my brother". I'm not sure they've made the connection yet, that The Baby is related to them. The Baby was equally adorable. We passed him around and everyone got to hold The Baby. We had a great time and it was really fun to meet Aaron's college friends.

Then it was back to Seattle which has been enjoying unseasonably nice weather.

GARDEN UPDATE:


Everything looks great. Lost of wedding plants are coming back and looking good. If we can keep the crows at bay we'll be in good shape. The highlight this week was an unexpected white poppy. Every hear of such a thing? Maybe it's not a poppy??? It regrew from our "seed balls" from last year. I think last year we had a few red poppies. This year it's white with a red fringe. Very cool surprise to wake up to.