Jury Duty

Tonight I completed a full week of Jury Service. I was able to do it all by telephone.

Here, like many places, you can call in the night before to find out if you will be needed at the courthouse the next morning. Starting last weekend and continuing each night this week, I called in (with my fingers crossed) and found out that I was off the hook the next morning.

Tonight I found out I won't be needed Friday morning and my duty was complete for another year. Aimee got just as lucky the last time she was called and she never had to report either.

Broken Shoe

Recently Aimee and I spent the weekend in Pismo Beach and we took along our horseshoe set so we could pitch some shoes on the beach.

We were having a good time until one of the horseshoes broke. We weren't using the horseshoe in an unusual way - it just broke. From what I have found out through a little bit of research this problem is not uncommon for horseshoes sold by this company.

We finished our games with the broken shoe. It did not stop Aimee from her usual excellence at snatching a last-second victory with a double-ringer or a ringer and a leaner. She has a knack for getting just enough points at the very end to win the games.

Next time we'll see if we can find some equipment that is manufactured a little closer to home.

Crop Report II

I should mention that we have been enjoying quite a bounty of cherry tomatoes this Spring. They are very tasty - tangy and sweet. Every time we need a few tomatoes we can grab a few off of the four above-ground plants on the back patio.

The plants are in the same spot where we used to plant in-ground but Aimee constructed some pot-holders out of some old wood we had to raise the plants a couple of feet off the ground. They seem to do very well like that. Last year, the first year of the new planters, we had hundreds of tomatoes to enjoy all Summer.

Aimee also planted two kinds of basil, some parsley and a chocolate mint plant. All are good for adding to whatever we're having for dinner.

Crop Report

These are our plums. The plum tree we planted the same time as the grapefruit tree (more than six years ago) is now giving us fruit for the third year in a row.

The season for this tree is brief and what you see is what you get - one big juicy batch of small and sweet plums. They are very tasty.

We also planted an apricot tree at that time. That tree gave us fruit this year as well but it was gone before we could enjoy them. The tree is planted out front near the sidewalk and it got picked clean by people walking by when they saw the fruit. Unfortunately, the apricots were still a week or two away from being ripe so we never got to find out how they were.

The grapefruit tree turned out to be a winner. It gave us fruit well into April and I finally picked the last one sometime in May. They were very good too. The tree is about six feet tall and the fruit were about baseball-sized.