kimchi and fluffy

I made the kimchi yesterday and today. Yesterday I started soaking the vegetables in the saltwater brine. Today I mixed up the ginger, garlic, pepper and onions into a paste of sorts and mixed it with the drained vegetables, added a little brine and weighted it all down in a glass jar so that everything is submerged. It will now ferment there for about a week. I am very excited. I haven't done any fermenting experiments in a while. The vegetables I chose were Chinese cabbage, green beans, turnips and carrots. Oddly I am all out of radishes.

The kids have been having a lot of fun with our hamster Fluffy the last couple of days. We have fashioned a sort of leash for him and Eva has been taking him outside a little with the leash. This all started when they tried out the cat leashes on all three of our cats. The cats did not like the leashes, to say the least. We thought maybe we might have more luck with Fluffy and we have. There are a couple of things about a hamster leash to keep in mind. The first is that it needs to be very loose so that is doesn't smoosh the hamster, who is very delicate. The second is that it needs to be just tight enough to actually stay on the hamster, which is a challenge. The third thing to remember is that eventually the hamster will get out of the leash. Hamsters are sort of *made* to get out of things and will go from having the leash on to treating the leash as something to get through. Once the hamster begins treating the leash as something to get through rather than as something he is wearing, it is only a matter of time before he wriggles through the leash. This is another reason to keep it pretty loose. And as Eva said, with a Fluffy leash, you kind of have to follow Fluffy...

The garden is going along beautifully right now. It has been an amazing summer with lots of cool days and rain. My tomatoes still aren't red but I don't think there is quite as much sun for them as I have had in the past. I don't hear much from some plants like the eggplant and cantaloupe and the watermelon is really trying this year for me. The chamomile, calendula, shell beans and kale are really satisfying. And if I left everything alone the borage and fennel would just fill it all in with really happy volunteers. I have hummingbirds in my garden this year and that is a lot of fun. I was out there yesterday and one sat down just a foot away from me on one of the tomato cages. I didn't know they would like borage flowers and they even checked out the cardoon. I planted a salvia yesterday and was excited to see the little guy out there today!

We've been having lots of fun at the library lately. Yesterday we saw a magician who talked about different books and Samuel was inspired and checked out some books about spies today. He said he is going to set up a spy business, you know, put up a sign and charge for his services. He is always thinking about ways to earn money for Cloud City.


Samuel has been playing quite a bit with his bionicles. Here they are all ready to go.