Long Pause

It's been so long since my last post, that I hardly know what to say or where to start.

Two more deaths of people really close to us, along with ulterior sickness and drama in the family, sent me (and actually both of us) into a zombie kind of state of paralysis for a while. But, life doesn't stand still, and we tag along.

In summary:

• I like San Diego more and more. We've started looking at some options we might have when we decide to move (i.e. when I finish my thesis), and it already pains me to think that I'm going to be leaving San Diego in a couple of years. I've come to learn that there are lots of things to do here, and that this place is only as boring as you make it.



• In the realm of the outdoors, there are plenty of things to do within the city boundaries already, on the beach or the bay or the countless green (or not so green) areas. If one feels like going further, there's up the coast through the pleasant beach towns of Delmar, Carlsbad, Solana Beach, Dana Point, Newport Beach, or down the coast to Baja Mexico, out to the island of Catalina, into the desert or up to the mountains. I even discovered this year that only an hour and a half's drive from here they get seasons with snowfall (up in for instance Idyllwild).



• As for indoors, there's actually no lack either. We're blessed here with a symphony, an opera and a ballet company, world class theatres, including the La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe, but also tons of smaller theatres. Here on (UCSD) campus we get excellent artists performing at the Mandeville Center, dance groups, string quartets, world music, etc. And for pop music there's many great venues, like Humphrey's on the Bay, and the Embarcadero in summer. And although I rant about not having a movie theatre in Pacific Beach itself, there are two theatres in La Jolla, one in Clairmont (just up the street), and in San Diego in total actually two independent movie theatres that play loads of interesting movies all year round, and there's occasionally film festivals. There's also the outdoors one in Hillcrest, Cinema under the Stars, and a couple of drive-ins in the nearby communities of Santee and Imperial Beach. There's a wealth of museums and parks, for entertainment, and that is not taking into account the fact that we are after all only one and a half hours drive from L.A. (should I ever want to check out the culture up there!) There's also no lack of restaurants and there are restaurant weeks twice a year. What was I ever complaining about in the first place ...?



• San Diego is pretty, pretty, pretty, all year round. It doesn't cease to amaze me how lush it is and trees and the strips along the highways bloom with flowers through all seasons.



• I really like my house. It's small, and it feels basic, after all it's "just a beach house", really! But, it's cozy, and cute and it's just so awesome to be able to step out on the porch in the morning and take in another beautiful day, and to be only 50 yards from the bay, another endless source of stunning beauty and peace.



• Even Pacific Beach has grown on me. Sure, it's a little rowdy. But it's fun and lively, great for people watching, and we have the bay, the boardwalk, Belmont Park, the beach and we even have some quaintness, in this mix of old and new.



• The weather here is great. So what if I said it was boring. It's never too cold and never too hot (except for the occasional day.) And it's sunny most of the time. One can't really say the weather get's in your way here. So, it's just confortable and convenient all the time!



• I love my "job", as a grad student. The people in my group are all so nice, and my advisor is a dream. Sure, it's frustrating some times, but that's an unavoidable part of doing this kind of research.



• I really like having people visit. We've had a few visits now, I really wouldn't mind having more, and each time we have people visit it reinforces my liking the place we live in.



• Oh, and my hubby's an angel. I can't tell myself enough how lucky I am ...

Thai Pumpkin and Coconut Cream Soup

It's the season again, so here's the recipe that made a blast last year:

6 cups (1-1/2 pounds) peeled and cubed pumpkin
2 cups Vegetable Stock or water
1/2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 tablespoon chopped lemongrass
2 scallions, white parts only, finely sliced
2 cups coconut cream
salt and (white) pepper to taste
Freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice, to taste
2 fresh kaffir lime leaves, or very finely shredded zest of 1 small fresh lime

In a saucepan, combine the pumpkin, stock or water, ginger, and lemongrass. Cover, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer until the pumpkin is very tender, about 12 minutes. Add the scallions and cook briefly.

Transfer the contents of the saucepan to a blender or food processor and process until the soup is partially puréed. Pour in half of the coconut cream and process until smooth.

Rinse the saucepan and pour the purée into it. Add half of the remaining coconut cream. Season with salt and pepper and heat through without allowing the soup to boil. Taste and adjust the seasoning and squeeze in lime or lemon juice.

If using kaffir lime leaves, fold them in half and, using a sharp knife, trim away the hard central rib. Cut the leaves into threadlike shreds. Ladle the soup into bowls, add the remaining coconut cream, forming a swirl on top of each bowl, and garnish with the lime leaf or zest.

(Adapted from this recipe on Global Gourmet. See also, the CookbookWiki.)

Unfortunately, pumpkins are only in season for about six weeks, or through October possibly until mid November. I have not tried to make this soup with canned pumpkin, as to me that sort of defeats the purpose. Last year at Thanksgiving however, as I could not find fresh pumpkin, I made a variant using butternut squash and sweet potatoes (yams, for the colour) as substitutes for the pumpkin (in the ratios of 2:1). But, pumpkin's more fun, although labourious to cut up. Plus, you get the pumpkin seeds as a bonus ...

I tend to go a little heavy on the ginger, and that doesn't hurt at all! Also, I have used onion when I didn't have scallions, I use black pepper instead of white, and if you like it hot, why not throw in some fresh chili pepper. I have never found the fresh kaffir lime leaves but lime zest works fine. I use a whole, reasonably big lime for the juice and zest. And, since we're going "thai", why not sprinkle some cilantro on ...

Indian Summer

We are 'old' people now, and it's not all that often that we are invited to a party, but Friday we were though. Mark in my office was celebrating his birthday, throwing a party with a Halloween touch. We went there straight after work on Friday, and although I was kind of tired we still ended up staying there for almost three hours. Mark lives in university housing, on campus. I've never visited those student appartments before. They're fairly basic, but the location is pretty good. Mark is really into 'patisserie' and he baked some awesome cakes.

The last few days have been unusually warm, and Saturday there was no wind at all. We haven't been to the beach in a while, so we thought we needed to take advantage of the clement temperatures. C took his surfboard down to the beach, me my boogie board. We dressed up in wetsuits before we went into the water, but I'm not sure if it was necessary that day, the sea was quite warm. We were probably in the water for more than two hours, surprisingly. The waves weren't high, but there was some surf. After we got back on our bikes, we went into La Jolla for 'gelato' and walked the cove a little bit. This italian ice-cream is really worth the trip!

Today, Sunday, Jan invited us out sailing with him for a couple of hours. His sailing club is out on Shelter Island. We took out a small boat, a 21'' that actually didn't sail all that different from the Holder 14 I've been practising on. But, I've never been on a keelboat before since I started taking sailing classes. We went to the fish market on the way back and got some fish and chips. A seagull caught C's fish filets right in front of my nose. The owner of the restaurant saw it and took pity of us and gave us another serving. That seagull was quick! He knew what he was going for ...

What Pumpkins Are Good For ...

I carved my first pumpkin yesterday. We didn't do a pumpkin last year, but last week C grabbed us one of those big fat pumpkins at the market, and put me in charge of making something out of it. Actually, the agreement was that C would open it up and remove all the nasty stuff from it, then I would carve a figure into it. I must say that pumpkins are quite new to me. I didn't even know what it was we would find inside it. I've had pumpkin pie a couple of times, but never made one myself and was actually quite intrigued by this plant (or vegetable, or whatever).

So, C started cutting it open by carving out a lid on the top of the plant, and as it turns out, the inside is pretty hollow. There are seeds inside, held together by some gory stuff, sort of like inside a melon. Once you've scraped out the loose, wet, "gory" stuff, the inside of the pumpkin consists of the pumpkin meat. It's walls are thick, probably two inches, at least. I now took to carving the face, the best I could. There actually exist special tools for pumpkin carving, none of which we possess of course, but without them the carving is not completely obvious, because the walls are pretty thick and solid and one sort of has to saw through them. So, I opted for something simple, but I think the result was not all too bad ...

The pumpkin looks pretty neat by dark too as it stands the guard on our porch.

Now, once I had finished carving the pumpkin, feeling bad about throwing away the leftovers from the carvings, I cleaned the seeds up and put in a pan in the oven with a little salt sprinkled over them (they're great for snack), then gathered the meat that had fallen off and put in a pot. I had heard that good soup could be made from a pumpkin. I found this mean recipe on the internet for a Thai Pumpkin and Coconut Cream Soup, and swiftly cooked up one. It was actually not bad at all. Slightly tart with lemongrass, ginger and lime, but softened by the coconut milk.

Speak My Language

Yesterday I saw again the two girls from Elfland that I met on the boat a couple of weeks ago. I was working up on campus, they were visiting. The university had an "open house" day, or "UCSD rocks" they called it. They were looking at job and grad school prospects, besides just visiting our pretty - or so some people say - campus.

I had a little coffee with them, but then thought I'd invite them for dinner to chat some more. It's nice to be able to speak one's language with somebody, because I don't get that many occasions to do that now. And I haven't been back home in Elfland for quite a while now, or one and a half year.

My sweet husband made us dinner while the three of us chatted away. We even recited poetry! Oh, sweet language ...

Time went fast. It was late when they finally left. It's good to finally have some elfish contacts here.

Movie and Dinner in Hillcrest

We went to see a movie last night up in Hillcrest, a documentary called Jesus Camp.

Hillcrest is a great place for restaurants, so we decided to get some dinner there as well. We went to what has now become a favorite, the Arrivederci. Had Carpaccio with plenty of aragula, artichokes and parmesan for starters, then Ravioli: Pansotti cheese with aragula and cubed tomatoes in a white wine sauce for me, pumpkin filled ravioli with sage butter sauce for C. Both were delicious. For dessert, the waiter insisted on offering us an Italian Cheese Cake, because he had accidently spilled some of our wine on the floor when filling our glasses. We didn't say no! It came with raspberry and chocolate sauce and it was also delicissimo.

The movie was disturbing. But it does portray America today, I guess. God bless us ...

Rhythm of Saints and Sinners

Yesterday we got an invitation to go out on the boat of C's boss. He has a small yacht he sometimes takes out in the harbour in summertime when there's a concert going on at the Bayside venue. Last night, Paul Simon (from Simon and Garfunkel) was playing.

One can basically anchor the boat just across from the stage, no further than if one was sitting in some of the seats in the back. But most of all, this is a nice excuse to get together and have a little drink and hang out on the boat.

Anyway, it was a cool gathering. Paul Simon provided the background music and various people from C's lab, B's connections and the industry provided the company. I met two girls from Elfland and talked longly with one of them.

In and Out of the Bay

Another bike ride today. We decided to see if we could bike around Mission Bay. We knew there were good bike paths on part of the way, but the whole ride amounts to 14 miles. We took the clockwise direction, biked out of our house straight to Sail Bay, then biked along the bay bike path as far as we could, that is to the big part at the end of Crown Point. Actually, just before we even got to the park, we had to veer of the bike path because a whole trailer camp had been set up there to service the big speed boat race that's going on in San Diego right now. We stopped for a while to watch the races, they're pretty crazy, they go sooo fast and they're sooo loud!

We biked on some side streets around Campland camp site, up to Grand Avenue, over Rose Creek and then down on a semi bike path that led us onto the path around East Mission Bay. From there there's a perfect path along the bay through one recreational park after the other. I had just not realized there were so many parks in San Diego. But if you wanta have a picnic or a barbecue or just let your kid run around or play, I would say you have quite a choice!

At the end of the East Mission Bay Drive, we crossed the creek that comes out from Mission Valley, came around Fiesta Island and then onto Sea World Drive, along which there is a street bike path but also a wide empty sidewalk. A path goes all around Sea World onto Ingraham, where we crossed the highway before the bridge. We then biked around the marina up to the Mission Bay bridge, where instead of crossing right away we checked out the Fish Market. They vow to have the best Fish and Chips in town and we shared one of those, with a lemonade, to verify their claims. It's one of those ancient, no-frills places that is kinda fun to visit.

Biking over the bridge on West Mission Bay you get a real nice view of the channel (that I by the way sailed out on my last sailing lesson), so we hung out there for a little while, then biked down to the Bahia Hotel and again around the bay back to our starting point. All in all the bike ride probably took about three hours, out of which we probably stopped for one. There was still time to go sailing, so we went quick back to the house to get my Rec Card for the boat rental.

We ran into Jan as he was coming in, but we didn't wanta loose any time as the boat rental now shuts an hour earlier than in summer. Today I was gonna have C sail me around. The wind was nothing like yesterday, it was very mellow. We sailed out of the cove and just cruised gently back and forth. It was so gentle that I could just lean back and put my legs out on the bow. It was heavenly. So heavenly that just before we started sailing back in, the wind completely died on us. Well, we struggled (or C did, to be exact) for an hour tacking into the cove without ever getting that much closer. We realized we were gonna need a few more hours still to make it all the way, when Jenny, the dockmaster, finally came out to us in a motorboat and most thankfully pulled us in. Sort of shameful, I guess. And no. At least we didn't break anything today!

Drifting away (or What Do You Do With a Broken Rudder ...)

We have now picked up again our weekly bike-down-to-the-farmer's-market saturday routine. At the market we usually get avocados (because we found a stand there we can really trust), eggs (from a sweet old lady that also recycles our egg cartons for us) and fresh orange juice (from this grumpy guy whom we still can't bypass 'cause his pricy orange juice is still just SO good). Otherwise we usually just pick out some seasonal stuff that we seem to need or that looks tasty, sweet corn, tomatoes, grape fruits, oranges, zuccinis, strawberries ... The market's not all that great really, but it does complement the super market nicely sometimes.

After breakfast and stuff we went sailing because it was really to windy to go to the beach. Well, it was almost too windy to sail our little boat too. We realized that while we were rigging the boat already. The wind pulled on the sails alot and it was hard just to hold the boom in place. To top it, after we had put the boat in the water we noticed that our main sheet was too short to let the sail out all the way and that we were gonna have to sail with a tight sail even downwind. This is not ideal if you wanta be able to depower the boat when necessary.

As we took off, I was glad that I have been getting some exposure lately, because sailing the boat was not terribly relaxing. I managed ok though and we did some fun sailing for a while and got plenty of speed. We would get gusts though that would really make our boat lean and make it try to go into the wind, so I would have to hang on to the tiller extra hard to keep the course. We had sailed for a couple of hours already and were just going back and forth on little Sail Bay, across from the Catamarin hotel, when we got one of those gusts. Once we had righted the boat again I suddenly saw this white thing floating in the water. I moved the tiller and got no response! Holy cow, that was our rudder floating out there!

How do you sail without a rudder?? Fortunately, C had some notion of exactly that! He took control of both the sails now, and pulling and letting the sheets he managed to beach us. We then walked the boat around the beach over to the aquatic center. I probably would have been pissed if our rental hours hadn't almost been out anyway. At least we managed to get back and weren't stuck somewhere out in the bay for who-knows-how-long. In a way, this was something of an adventure!

When we got back to the house, I started preparing dinner big-time! I took out the frozen spring roll wraps and to further make use of all the good stuff we got at the vietnamese market last weekend, I decided to make three different dishes: spring rolls, samosas and a kofta recipe. This involved three different meat blends and a hell of a lot of cutting, chopping and shredding, aside from rolling and folding the spring rolls and samosas. Then, the meat ball dough had to sit for an hour before being cooked, the vermicelli had to be soaked and the samosas baked in the oven. All in all, the cooking took a whole two hours. But it was worth it, we thought we had a nice, exotic meal there ...

The Asian Market

Last weekend I talked C into exploring one of the asian food markets here in San Diego, because I have been on the lookout for some products that might not be available except at one of those markets, such as rice paper, galangal root, tamarind and lime kaffir leaves. We found one in Linda Vista, the wonderful Vien Dong, which to be exact is not an Asian market but Vietnamese. We stuffed our cart with interesting foods (yet found no kaffir lime leaves this time), then headed home to try out new recipes. Since the weekend then, we have had Fried Mini Spring Rolls, Spicy Stir Fry Chicken, Grilled Thai Trout and Fragrant Curry Chicken. All have been pretty yum, yum, but none is a favorite as of yet. But there's a whole list of recipes that we are getting ready to try still.

Sailing Again on my Own

To catch up, we rented a boat two times this weekend, and sailed around the bay. If I may say so myself, I think I'm getting better at it. The wind was moderate, and it wasn't terribly crowded on the bay although there was a fair number of sailboats out. I met both Oskar and José, from my sailing class. They were each taking a Hobie Cat out. José said they were so much more fun than the Holder's. I don't know, the catamarins look kinda scary to me, they go so fast and they heel so much. But J said they were actually easier to sail, more stable but more responsive. I guess I might try to take a Hobie Cat class later this fall, if I manage to do more sailing in the meantime.

I'm getting much better at using the extension to control the tiller. (That's kind of fundamental for sailing the catamarins, because you have to lean out of them so much ...) I had one accidental jibe on Sunday, when sailing wing-on-wing. I think it was due to a gust, but I was actually quite confused about what happened. I must learn to be better prepared for this type of situation and better control the boat at all times. I also almost ran into a boat twice (and it was the same boat each time, but in completely different parts of the bay!). In both cases I had the right of way; the first time the other skipper visibly didn't see me, the second time I didn't see him because he appeared suddenly from behind us. But right-of-way is not the most important, but to be able to avoid collisions! So, it's good experience to do some sailing on the bay when it is fairly crowded with boats.

Labor Day Weekend

It was the lazy life this weekend. I had been apprehending the crowds and the traffic one would expect on a big holiday such as Labor Day, even if not as infernal as the Fourth of July, but it was finally kind of quiet around our neighbourhood. Sure, there were people down on the beach, there were big sun shades with tables and drinks, and there were people doing barbicues, but there were no mobs.

The big disappointment was that the Aquatic Center was closed, so there were no boat rentals possible. We had sort of planned to go sailing at least once or twice over the weekend. Well, we were down to the beach, did some boogie boarding (mostly me), and we made that bike ride. We also took advantage of a Labor Day sale to buy a DVD player to hook up to our TV. Sofar we've been watching movies on my computer screen, but this is much nicer. We got an OK deal on the DVD player, although apparently the labor day sale really ended on saturday, that is two days before the actual LD. That is something to know for next time ...

Bikeride to La Jolla

Ever since I got my cruiser bike (the one we saw at a garage sale for $15), we've never been biking all that far really. What we do is bike down to the bay, along the bay, to the boardwalk and along the boardwalk, and to the Farmer's Market on Saturdays. And that is it! Apparently though, San Diego is a real Bicyclist's Paradise.

Today, I asked C how long he thought it would take to bike into downtown La Jolla. About an hour, he thought. There even was a bike path half the way or so. I decided this bikeride would be our activity for the afternoon. To make it even more appealing, I decided that the gelato store on Prospect Street would be our endpoint.

The minute we were out on our bikes, I started regretting a little bit. The sun was strong and relentless and the ride out of PB was all uphill, although only slightly, most of the time. But, it wasn't too bad. Once we reached Tourmaline, there was a bike path following side streets and hidden trails. It steered us to a quiet wide street with a bike lane, just above the La Jolla Boulevard. We took this street through the old, beautiful residential neighbourhoods of La Jolla Birdrock, then turned more into the hillside, where we continued on a bike path again. It had a steep part as we went over the edge of Mount Soledad, then went downhill again to land us on Nautilus Street. Once we had crossed Nautilus, we were on a nice quiet road again, with bike lane, that took us past La Jolla Highschool, over Pearl Street all the way into downtown. The whole ride took us just under 50 minutes.

We locked up our bikes in a side street, and walk down to the cove. I was actually too worked out to have an ice cream right away, so we just sat down on a bench overlooking the beach cliffs and did some people watching for a good while. The park was packed with picknickers and people that had visibly come to spend the day on the lawn, listening to some bands playing. Lots of families were bathing on the beach. Many looked dressed up for the occasion (Labor Day). It was actually fun to be there and watch the scene.

We hung out for almost an hour, then walked back up to Prospect and our Gelateria Frizzante. And my-oh-my was it good! We both got sherberts, C got blood orange and mango, I got lemon and green apple, then we shared. They were all great, but the blood orange probably came out on top. The milk gelatos looked pretty tasty too. That's for next time.

We biked back in about 40-45 minutes. The ride back was more downhill. Maybe not tomorrow, but we'll certainly have to do that again ...

Friends from Seattle

Friends of C are in town. They are staying at the Catamaran hotel just up the street from us. C's been wanting to visit them for a while, even this summer. But hey, they just came down here. So, C's been trying to spend some time with his friend John, for the last few days, that is, when the friends are not doing Disneyland or Legoland or Sea World or the Zoo ...

Last night we went out on a cruise with them on the Bahia Belle paddle boat, sort of a Mississippi-style sternwheeler. One of those things we've been talking about doing for a long time, well, we finally did ...

Cold Sore

I'm in a really bad mood. Thanks to all the outdoors I've been doing probably, the sailing and the surfing, I got a cold sore. I wouldn't have thought it was that big of a deal, but it is very distracting. My mouth is burning and I can't enjoy meals at all. And last but not least, it totally ruined my margarita and chips treat ...

They're going on a cruise

P and R slept over last night, because they had a really early plane to catch from San Diego Airport which is only ten minutes from our house. At 5:30 in the morning, C drove them to the airport where they were taking off on their 10 day cruise of the Caribbean, starting from Puerto Rico.

We scanned through their travel brochure and their trip sure looked tempting. Hmm, maybe for our 20th anniversary ... !

The Skipper

Having finished the Advanced Sailing class, I can now rent small boats from the aquatic center, like the Holder 14 we learned to sail on. For $50 I can rent a boat six times for sessions of two and a half hour each time. So, I took C sailing on the bay today.

I must admit that I was a little nervous, as I had never rigged the boat all by myself before and it had been a couple of weeks since my last lesson. But the rigging was finally easier than I remembered it and it barely took us five minutes. As for the sailing, well, the winds were pretty strong today, probably stronger than they ever were during my advanced classes, so I found it pretty challenging to balance the boat. Actually, another thing that may have felt different was the fact that we were now only two in the boat, whereas previously we always had three people, whereof two always sitting up front in the boat, one on each side, to balance it. Today I had C sitting up front, and he would shift sides each time we tacked or jibed, just like me, so we were having a lot more weight shifting than usual.

In the end it was fine, I got somewhat used to it. We sailed pretty fast, with that wind, so there was more heeling. There were also much bigger waves on the water, more unrest, more ups and downs. With all that heeling and C hanging on to the jib sheet, the bolt into which you cleated the jib came loose, after which the jib had to be held on the left side all the time. Somewhat more action than I remembered from my sailing class. It was fun though. We sailed for a couple of hours, then beached the boat smoothly, and derigged without any problems.

We will probably be renting a boat to go out every so often now, for me to practice my sailing ...

Beach Day in Oceanside

Friends of C through Jake, Mike and Jody, live up in Orange County. He is an avid surfer, and C and him had been talking about going surfing together. We met them this weekend halfway between us, that is on the beach of Oceanside. Originally, the plan was to lay out our beach chairs and bamboo mats in San Onofre, but that didn't happen because of a surfing tournament that was taking place there. We met instead in Oceanside.

We spent the day on the beach, chilling out, reading, tanning, snacking and boogie boarding. C and Mike went out on their surfboards for an hour or so. We stayed later than we had intended, or until five o'clock, so we were both a little bit toasted after the day.

Secret Sushi Place Full

Coming back from work we realized we hadn't anything ready to make dinner from. "In the mood for sushi?", C asked me. We'd been recommended this little place, Sushi Ota on Mission Bay Drive just off from where we get off the I-5, and we figured we would try it. Well, wrong! There were lines coming out of it.

It's a very nondistinct place, doesn't look like anything special, hidden behind a laundromat and a 7/11, but the crowds are there, so it must be good. We didn't want to wait 40 minutes for a table, so we sat down at Lanna Thai next doors, where C got a Pad Thai and I got a yummy Green Curry. The meal, together with three Kirin's and a big appetizer platter, cost 32 bucks. I was unaware you could eat that cheap in San Diego ...

Herb Garden

I haven't given any updates on my garden, but it's actually been doing quite well since we moved. Much better than the last place where the little herbs I planted, basil, mint, rosemary, chives, were a miserable sight at the end of the summer. Even though we got help from our neighbours with watering while we went on our road trip. Our tomato plant gave one fruit, then died, and the fruit had turned bad before we even picked it ...

It turns out that the plants seem to rather like our front porch. And we have now kept alive for the summer several herbs and vegetable plants:
. Tomato plant - It has struggled a little bit, the first couple of months it only bore one fruit, then did nothing until we finally feeded it the plant food it was visibly starving for. It almost immediately started producing fruit, and we soon thereafter got a batch of fat beef steak tomatoes, most of which we ended up baking in the oven as part of our mozzarella-tomato bread. At that point we thought the tree was done, as it started to wilt and the branches came down. I gave it a last shot though, pumped it with food again, pruned the branches and the tomatoes started appearing again. Before long it was packed with them, so much that the main branch broke from the weight. I carefully tied the branches up again, and it doesn't seem to be doing so badly anymore. We are now waiting for some 24 tomatoes to ripen.
. Cherry tomato plant - This one has been very generous. We have recolted somewhere between 100 - 150 tomatoes from it already. The tomatoes ripen pretty fast and the plant has been furnishing us constantly with ripe fruit all summer and there is plenty more still to go. The problem here is that we are competing with the Scrub Jays for the fruit, because I have estimated them to steal probably about one third of our recolt so far. They are tempted by the red tomatoes but they have also, whether it is accidentally or not, broken unripe tomatoes off the tree. Since early this summer when I started noticing fruit disappearing, I have been suspecting the birds, but I have now caught them at the act several times. Actually, they won't even leave if you shout at them to leave the plant alone ...
. Bell pepper plant - It has grown very slowly, and we only recolted two yellow peppers yet (aside from a couple that went bad), but it has a number of fruits on it now, so I still carry hope ...
. Chilli pepper plant - We got several red chilli peppers from it earlier this summer (a total of eight), but then it stopped growing. It has a couple of fruits now but it doesn't look great.
. Basil plant - Actually, we are on our second one now. The first one we got was fabulous, it grew so fast, and so thick and so green. Then it got attacked by caterpillars, who feasted on it so bad, while also laying larvae under the leaves, that I finally gave up and got rid of the whole plant. I got a new plant, it's a different variety (as you can well see by comparing the pictures) that I don't like quite as much, but now I am prepared to deal with pests with a bio pesticide we bought for a little fortune. I've cut it down pretty agressively (and we twice made pesto) but it seems to be doing alright ...
. Rosemary bush - Actually, left overs of our Xmas tree! We just meant to finish it, before we threw it away, but I took pity of it, changed the soil, and now it's thriving.
. Chives - Same thing, we still had it from the old place and it looked pathetic. I changed the soil and since then it has multiplied.

Next year I mean to start up the tomato plants a little earlier. They don't take that much maintenance but standing in the sun all day they do need a lot of water. So does the basil plant, and we have to cut the flowers off pretty regularly. Otherwise, they're pretty easy. We're thinking about getting some mint too, and maybe oragano or marjoram. What we use the most are by far the basil, cilantro and rosemary. Problem is, I really haven't gotten any cilantro to thrive yet. Open to suggestions ...