Trips to the Botanic Garden

We have been spending a lot of our weekends at the South Coast Botanic Garden this past couple of months.  Eventhough the beaches and trails and parks have reopened, Bobby and I are still not quite comfortable in mingling with too many people.  But the Botanic Gardens continues to have timed entries - only so many people every hour.  And the grounds are quite vast so we don't have to get too close to anyone at all!

We have to mask up now for the Gardens:

This is a new "Living Wall".  Isn't it so cool!

Check out these artichoke plants.  They are so tall!

And so pretty!

The rose bushes here are almost always in full bloom:

We find a nice big tree and a good shady spot to just hang out.  And literally, just hang...

Such monkeys:

Here's my view looking up from a very comfy position laying on the ground.  Ha ha!

On another trip,... we are now geared up with some fancy masks.  Thank you Grandma and Pop-pop!

It's always amazing what else is blooming at every trip.  Pretty Fuchsias:

I forgot to take a photo of the description of this flower, but ain't it so pretty too? There were hundreds of them:

I really do love purple too :-)

Water break!

 We decided to check out the fig trees this time.  It's always cooler in here:

Family we-fie!  This photo I think will be one to remember during these times - one for our Memory Photo wall:

Look at the roots of these fig trees!!!

Just glad no one twisted their ankle!  And after a while, we've parked ourselves under a nice shady spot.  And again, here's my view looking up from the ground :-)

Well, I'm not the only one taking a little nap.  Ha!  And never leave home without chips!!!

After a little while, we walk some more... see more amazing and interesting looking trees.  I told Bobby that our tree in the backyard should be looking like this (photo below) in the next few years.  Ha ha!  I'm surprised he didn't tell me to dig it up right away :-P

Okay, maybe more like 20 or 30 years. I'm not exactly sure.  We'll just let the new owners deal with it then.  He he...

Under another shady tree!  Ahhh.... life is good :-)

Backyard garden update

We have corn!!!  Well, I've actually found out some interesting things about corn during this whole growing process:

So... did you know that the top part or the "tassel" is actually the male part of the plant?  It contains the pollen that is needed to pollinate the female part of the plant.  The corn is actually twice the size now since this photo was taken below:

And as the plant matures, the silk starts to appear - this is the female part.  And this is the part that needs to be pollinated because did you know that EVERY single silk is actually ONE corn kernel??!!  I was totally baffled when I found that out!

 

And since we weren't sure if the bees and the wind was doing its job of pollination, we would pull off some tassels and do this sort of "fairy magic wand" thing on the silk.  No, not really. There's no real technique.  Just trying to transfer the pollen to EVERY SINGLE thing of silk!  

Hopefully something will work. Otherwise, we will have lots of corn cob with no kernel. Ha ha!  Here's a photo of some of that yellowish pollen on the leaf that was blown off by the wind:

So now the question is... when do we know that the corn is ready???  4 out of the 5 corn plants have husks that are sort of brown and only 1 corn plant that has a nice green color to its husks.  As I recall how corn looks in the supermarket, it is definitely not brown!  Hmm... guess we'll find out soon enough.

In the meantime, the zucchini plant is doing well.  Hopefully no critter will come by and eat that one zucchini that is growing nicely:

I actually hand-pollinated a pumpkin flower with another zucchini flower.  So will I get a "pumpkini"?  Doesn't that sound so yummy??!  Can't wait, can't wait! :-)

Not sure if this is a good spot for Charlie and Graham's pumpkin but I couldn't find any other spot.  Now that we have more in-ground soil, maybe I can add some of that to the ground.  The pumpkin plants have grown since this photo but still looking pretty stunt:

And my celery plant that was sitting in the water in the kitchen has finally rooted!  I've planted it outside and so far so good.  The roly pollies did attack it but thankfully it is still doing well:

Do you see the roly pollies?  I don't see how these things are actually helpful to your soil.  Seems that they eat everything!

 

We only have one surviving edamame plant right now and there are signs of edamame! So exciting!  The plant/bush is still so small though. I thought it would be bigger!  Bobby couldn't wait to tell me that something was actually munching on the leaves - the perfect "munch pattern" if there was one!

 

By the way, we have upgraded our wind spinner to a fancy one!  This one actually has a solar light so it glows at night and cascades a nice shadow on the shed's wall.  We're easy to entertain :-)

Charlie picked out a Loon, which is such a funny looking thing:

And Graham picked out a Butterfly, which I have at the front of the house.  Forgot to take a photo of that so maybe will post that next time instead.

The boys can't complain about not having enough balls to play with.  I can see 13 balls in just this photo alone!

And we are finding nerf bullets everywhere too.  Graham and Charlie have shot at least 3 over into the neighbor's yard already and that was just yesterday!  And somehow there is also a nerf bullet is in my shoe???

 Okay, back to the plants.  I replanted the strawberries in this upside down planter.  Hopefully we will actually be able to harvest some strawberries to eat:

I didn't know where else to hang it so I put a hook into the lemon tree.  Not sure if it gets enough sunlight.  Let's just wait and see what happens! 

And the figs are coming back!  So I didn't butcher that trees too much.  At least I can reach these figs now and hopefully this plant won't create all that mess and sticky goo like it did last year:

Maybe I can get Graham and Charlie into fig jam this year :-)

Loving this backyard!  So glad we have this space for the boys and me and Bobby while we are under the Stay at Home order.  The beaches and trails reopened last week but we haven't not ventured out yet.  I am still nervous about being out in public although the social distancing rules and wearing masks are still enforced.  Supposedly the trend of new cases are still increasing which makes me wonder about the decision by the city.  Oh well :-\  Stay safe and healthy everyone!

Recent baking

Lots of people have been baking bread.  I've yet to actually bake any sourdough bread using my starter yeast.  The instructions just seem to complicated and it seems to take all day!  So, I've been doing a lot of pies, cakes, and muffins.

First off, an orange cake.  I really love this cake because you practically use the entire orange in this recipe.  Yup, you heard right.  You basically puree an entire orange and dump it into the batter.  Lots of lovely roughage which the boys need and no complaining about eating it.  Win-win!

I forgot to take a before photo so this was what was left after going through it in one afternoon. Ha!

And Bobby ended up buying a 2 lb bucket of blueberries from Costco!  So... what else but to make blueberry pie.  I didn't have any pie crust so I had to make my own crust. I couldn't find my personal one that I thought I had in my recipe book.  So after searching online for a simple one, here it is!

The top crust was a bit think but thankfully it baked up nicely.  And I forgot to put the butter inside the pie so I tried to squeeze it in between the seams of the lattice work.  I really don't remember what the butter is for.  So, what is the butter for??? And technically I was suppose to refrigerate the dough before rolling.  No time for that! And I'm not sure if it would have made that much of a difference,... I thought it turned out great! :-)

The boys definitely loved it!  I have to make a vegan version one day.  Bobby has been falling off his wagon quite a bit these last few weeks:

And making a banana cheesecake pie definitely didn't help either.  My order of Graham Crackers didn't come through in the grocery pickup list, but I found a box of glazed ginger snap cookies.  Worked out as a great substitute for the crust:

 I did burn the pie a little bit but none of it went to waste :-)

And last but not least, this was last week's find.  I was going through a box in the garage and found some old recipes from Abu Dhabi.  I had the word "Yum" next to this recipe and yup, this Apple Cinnamon muffin did not disappoint!

Not sure what else I'm going to try this week.  Bobby's birthday is coming up on Saturday.  I better think of something quick... and vegan! :-P

Graham's new Lego birthday gift

I would say Graham and Charlie were pretty excited when they saw Graham's birthday gift:

They dive into making their Lego Boost project the following morning.   I love how Charlie is already in the routine of getting all these bowls out so sort out the bags and bags of Legos:

They were going to make one robot but 2 minutes into it, they couldn't find a particular piece.  So I had to log into Lego's website and order a replacement part.  Come to find out (a couple of hours later) that there was an entire bag on the computer table INSIDE the house.  Oops!  Oh well, now we have a spare piece.  The company had already shipped the part today!

About 5-10 minutes later after diving into their project, all the Legos are just scattered everywhere on the ping pong table. I really wonder why they even bothered with the bowls.  Ha ha!

The boys did really spend most of their afternoon on this project.  I love how they are so focused in that sense.  At times, Charlie just wouldn't give up:

Unfortunately, the boys' laptop was not compatible with the Lego Boost App, so they had to download the App onto Bobby's phone.  Here is the first test run on the motor:

Too cool!  They have to do some "coding" on the app - to tell their machine what to do.  I saw "coding" because they aren't really writing any code (like I was... back in the day. Ha ha!).
Quite a few minutes later, they build their first robot.  First test run!

A few more tweaks on the robot:

Hooray!!! Graham was so proud of his robot.  He even manged to put sound and music to it.  It really is amazing what these Lego toys can do these days:

Looking forward to what else they might build! :-)

First new digital Piano

Well, it's not technically new but definitely our first real digital or electronic piano - where the 88 keys are weighted just like a regular piano would be.  And with the keys being weighted, you can therefore also play your notes loud or soft depending on how firm or lightly you hit the keys.  It's amazing how this technology all works!

Well, we weren't going to see the keyboard until later this weekend but the seller mentioned that there were other parties interested.  So I pretty much jumped on the opportunity to see it right away on Friday early afternoon.  Wow, the car has cobwebs on it!

I took Charlie with me since he is the one taking piano lessons right now and is needing this new piano (at least I think so and Bobby feels otherwise :-P)  Every time Charlie's teacher asks him to play with more dynamics, Charlie is not able to play his music piece louder or softer unless maybe by turning the volume of the keyboard up or down.  And no pedal either with his old simple keyboard.  Well, no more excuses now!  We went to see the keyboard with our masks on our faces and gloves on.  5-10 minutes later, the keyboard was plopped into our minivan.  Yay!!!

I tried to negotiate the price down from $240 but the guy said that they were trying to raise money for a person with cancer.  I hope he is not lying about that and using it as some sort of excuse.  In any case, I think it was a good buy.  This Casio CDP-235R has all the bells and whistles the boys could ask for... like 700 different music instrument tones!  Are there really even that many music instruments in the world??  Well, there was another digital keyboard for sale that we had missed out on a few weeks ago and that was $400. So I'm convince this was a good deal for us :-)

Well, someone seems really happy!  And I am happy that this keyboard has a small slim profile so I can still keep it in the same location where the old keyboard was previously at.  Charlie seems to look so grown up here, sitting on his antique piano stool:

I did have to move this thing of toy bins away.  Or... I suppose I could take the legs off the digital keyboard and put just the keyboard on this rack like I did previously the old keyboard.  Hmmm...

Also had to move this wheely 3-tier shelf away.  I better start clearing up some things in this house!

The mess around us doesn't seem to bother Graham and Charlie at all. They are pretty much oblivious to everything especially when they are playing on their tablets:

All is all, it was a good day! Graham's birthday was today and we also bought a new keyboard!  I've been playing a bit more piano lately too.  Graham's new violin Book #2 that we had purchased recently has piano accompaniment pieces that go with it.  So Graham and I have been trying to play duets.  I better cherish these moments!

I am still tempted to buy a real piano though.  Somehow there is just a nostalgic feeling of having a real piano.  Call me old fashion! But if it's any consolation, you definitely can't just put a real piano into the back of a minivan. Digital keyboards are definitely money savers in that sense and there is no need for any forever tuning either.  Okay, okay, I will stop thinking about a real piano now.  At least for now :-D