Hachiya Persimmon（柿子樹）

This giant Hachiya Persimmon tree is conveniently located at one of our usual walk routes. Last spring we got a chance chat with its owner as he was harvesting the last few hanging persimmons, and he told us that they could never predict how well it would do. He said a few of years ago, it produced way more than they could consume, but the following year they hardly got any. Well, it looked like that it was doing all right this year!

Julie & Julia（幸福的定義）

It had been unbearably hot this week! We don’t have AC, because normally the famous (or infamous) SF fog would make the idea of having AC feel plenty silly. But, well… Not this week.

Yesterday afternoon we were like two turkeys being slowly roasted in 375 degree oven, while David was making Jacques Pepin’s yummy-but-not-too-appropriate-today Corn and Hominy Chowder. (He had to make his delicious chicken stock from scratch first, of course.) When he went to the farmer’s market yesterday morning, he had his eyes set on fresh tomatoes and corn and completely forgot about the heat wave back at home. (The power of beautiful, fresh ingredients…) Fortunately by the time our neighbor Mariana showed up, some (warm) breeze appeared as well. Last night’s menu: David’s garlic shrimp tacos as the appetizer, Corn and Hominy Chowder as the main course, and Mariana’s heavenly pear tart as the dessert… Yum… Bon appétit!

* * *

Learning from yesterday’s experience, this morning David suggested that we went somewhere cool. But where? He thought Point Reyes would be nice, because the weather report said that it was only 70 degrees there. But I didn’t want to spend hours on the road under the scorching sun… He then suggested, “How about watching Julie & Julia?” Wow, what a great idea! Dorothy had told us that it was wonderful, and our local movie theater had AC to keep us cool!

It was a charming film! I actually enjoyed both sides of stories and did not understand why all critics hated the Julie part. The Julie side of story was darker, yes, but her character also felt more real. Amy Adams persuasively depicted a young woman (Was it pretty close to the real life Julie Powell?), who was lost and struggling to find the meaning of her life. We were all there, and we knew how hard that could be. Being able to survive through the ordeal was quite an accomplishment already, let alone to find one’s goal and actually follow through.

The Julia side was a bit like a fairy tale, and, Gosh, Meryl Streep did such a good job portraying Julia Child that it felt almost like a documentary sometimes! Julia had her long struggle, too, but it was masked by her lovely relationship with her husband, the beautiful French scenery, and her almost blindly optimistic and joyful view on life. Her story could easily become too sweet, but the superb acting crew and the director Nora Ephron carefully balanced it (I think the Julie side of story helped, too) to make this one of the most memorable film.

And the most incredible part of the movie was how supportive both husbands were. If this movie had come out before I met David, I would just shrugged and concluded, “This only happens in movies.” But now I know how those two women felt. A happy relationship could not be expressed by words, so it was amazing that Ms. Ephron was able to catch those intricate feelings and make us gasp: “That’s It!“

Probably it was like what Jeanine D. Basinger said, “Those relationships just feel so honest, I think they could only have been put on-screen by somebody who understands the delights of a really terrific marriage.”

I wholeheartedly agree (after replacing the last word with “relation“).

A Bowl of Blueberries (一碗小藍莓)

David went to the front yard and picked a handful of ripe blueberries that were begging to be eaten. He was very nice to share a couple of them with me, and, boy, they were sweeter than I thought! Maybe I should start helping myself, too…

See David’s beautiful breakfast! BTW, David made the granola, too.

Surprise! (驚喜)

As I went to pick up some chives (蝦夷蔥) for dinner, I was surprised to see that we didn’t just have 1 apricot this year, but 2! What a happy news! Now David and I can each enjoy our own apricots (杏子) and don’t have to fight over them!

	Apricot No. 1 This one has David’s name on it.
	Apricot No. 2 This one has my name on it.

Our First Batch of Beets (我們的第一把甜菜)

Ta-da! Unlike our radish (櫻桃蘿蔔), our beets (甜菜) grow painfully slowly. It’s been 2.5 months, but they are still quite tiny, slightly bigger than our radish. Oh well… Hopefully the next batch will be more impressive than this one.

Ready For The Prime Time (準備登場囉！)

Among our various blueberry bushes, this one seems to be ready for the prime time. The berries on the others are still mostly green and need another month of sunbath to be ready.

David already tried a blueberry yesterday. He liked the taste (“It tastes like blueberry!“) but thought that they might be a bit too tart for me. The truth is, they’ll never be sweet enough for me, because our blueberry bushes just don’t get that much sunlight. Even though I have no interests in eating our blueberries, I still enjoy seeing them grow and change colors and get eaten by David every year!

DVG – Day 59 & New Friends

If you open your eyes REALLY wide and search REALLY hard, you can see that we have some new friends in the garden. See the 2 little baby green things on the back? Yup, more yummy lettuce! Actually we also planted about 70 radish seeds, but that’ll take a couple of weeks for them to be visible in the group shot.

And David even planted a little one next to its 59-day old brothers & sisters: