Fred and Valerie

With the days of rain finally coming to an end (7-3/4 inches was the final tally!), I was able to take a nice look at the garden this evening and see the blooming Garden Phlox. The blooms are a beautifully vibrant fuchsia in color. Right now, only one of the four plantings are blooming, but it looks like another might start blooming within a day or two.

I’ve also started to get a couple small blooms popping up on a few of the Stella d’Oro Daylilies. I had trimmed back all the blooms after they were spent, so it’s a bit of a surprise to see more coming back.

Lastly, I decided to take a closer look at the herbs and tomatoes now that I had the opportunity and saw that all of the herbs are growing at a great rate. The Basil is still clearly growing the fastest/best. The tomatoes are looking just down-right amazing. The stalks are now about as thick as my pinkie finger and are now easily taller than the stakes I had originally tied them to. I pushed the stalks a little to test their strength and was surprised at how strong they are. I no longer have to worry about a gust of wind knocking them over and will be researching the “next steps” for what to do after I untie them from their stakes.

All in all, the garden’s going great! It’s still not filled in or as colorful as it will be someday in the distant future, but it’s definitely a good start.

How about 4-3/4 inches worth? Since last night!

That brings our total rainfall since Friday up to a whopping 7-3/4 inches.

With another half inch of rain since the last post, we’re now up to 3 inches of rain since this stationary front parked itself over our area and it doesn’t look like the rain’s going to let up any time soon.

Fortunately, my water bill should be a LOT cheaper the next time it arrives in the mail since I won’t have to water my lawn or garden for quite some time.

It may start to become entirely too appropriate that the filming of Evan Almighty, the sequel to Bruce Almighty in which Steve Carrell’s character is told by God (Morgan Freeman) to build an ark in preparation for a great flood, is taking place in Charlottesville. Over the last two days, our area has been inundated with rain.

On average, Waynesboro receives about 3 inches of rain for the entire month of June. According to the rain gauge I have in the back yard, we received about 1.5 inches of rain overnight Friday to Saturday and another 1 inch of rain Saturday and Saturday night. That’s almost an entire month’s worth of rain in about 36 hours and there’s more on the way, according to all the forecasts. In fact, the National Weather Service forecast for Stuarts Draft doesn’t show us having less than a 50% chance for rain until Thursday, when they have us at a 30% chance. That 30% chance continues all the way to Saturday. After that, Weather.com has us with a 20% chance of rain on Sunday, then 60% for Monday and Tuesday.

To recap, our current forecasted chances of precipitation, from Sunday (today) to next Tuesday, are 80%, 60%, 60%, 50%, 30%, 30%, 30%, 20%, 60%, and 60%. And a fair amount of that includes “heavy rain” and “thunderstorms.”
It’s not likely that I’ll need to water my garden or grass anytime soon, but I might have to start gathering animals by the pair.

Yesterday, we held the 1st Annual Fred & Valerie Scavenger Hunt. We had a total of seven teams compete, each with two adults and varying numbers of kids. The hunt started at UVA with the teams having to complete the surprise task of making a newspaper pirate hat in order to receive their item list. The teams then had about 3-1/2 hours to “procure” items using their digital camera and make the trip to Stuarts Draft for the finish line and after-party.

Lovely Pear were the first team to arrive and they joined Team JOK as the only teams to arrive before the deadline. However, it wasn’t enough for them to win. The winners of the scavenger hunt were Geek Squad, with 52 points, including 9 of 10 “Puzzle” items and despite a time penalty of 8 points for being 8 minutes late.. Team JOK finished in second with 44 points thanks to a good mixture of points across all categories. Finishing in third were Stockholm Syndrome, also with a good mix of points across all categories. Stockholm Syndrome could have finished in second if they didn’t get slowed down at a traffic light and get docked 8 points for being 8 minutes late. I Don’t Knoooow received the awared for Best Picture for their photograph of “a teammate wearing a Burger King crown.”
There were a total of 4 items that were procured by at least 75% of the teams involved (6 teams) and declared “Too Easy.” They were:

• “a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich”
• “a copy of the movie ‘Pirates of teh Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’”
• “a teammate wearing a Burger King crown”
• “the Lewis & Clark statue at W. Main and Ridge/McIntire”

Six items were procured by just one team. They were:

• “a gas pump showing just $0.01 of gas pumped” (Big Buckin’ Chicken)
• “a frowning Wal-Mart greeter” (Geek Squad)
• “someone with a mullet” (Team JOK)
• “the Cheese Shop in Stuarts Draft” (Team JOK)
• “the VDOT Worker’s Memorial” (I Don’t Knoooow)
• The Old Schoolhouse Restaurant as the answer to a Puzzle (Big Buckin’ Chicken)

Five items managed to avoid procurement. They were:

• “Miller’s Bake Shoppe in Stuarts Draft”
• “a Mennonite”
• “a teammate eating donuts with a cop”
• “the Stuarts Draft Little Debbie plant”
• “the Augusta County Landfill”

The winners of the Contest items were:

• Highest Exit Number: Team JOK (118)
• Greatest Number of Miles to a Destination: Geek Squad (2563 miles, thanks to their GPS)
• Highest Route Number: Team JOK (1694)
• Cheapest Automobile Fuel Price: Team Jok, Team Phlock, Stockholm Syndrome, and Big Buckin’ Chicken ($2.60)
• Highest House Address Number:  Stockholm Syndrome (6343)

Here’s looking forward to next year’s Scavenger Hunt!

The garden is growing pretty well. Here’s the update from front to back.

The Stella d’Oro Daylilys were blooming well for a week or two after I planted them, but they seem to have stopped blooming now. I trimmed back the stalks in order to let them focus on growing their roots.

The Amsonia seems to be doing okay, but I can’t really tell right now. It’s not really growing, but it’s not dying either. I suppose the fact that the leaves haven’t shrivled up and blown away is a good enough thing for now.

The Garden Phlox looks like it’s really taking off. I haven’t done a before and after comparison, but it definitely looks taller now and I’ve got two groups of blooms on one and the beginnings of a group of blooms on another.

The Spiderwort also looks like it’s doing well. The larger bunch looks like it has some new growth, as does the other two bunches. No blooms, but at least it’s looking good.

The Rosemary is doing fine. It’s not really taking off, but I also don’t know what growth rate I should expect. All I know is that it’s not dead and it looks bigger than it does in the first picture I took.

The Oregano has definitely grown. It hasn’t quite doubled in size, but it’s pretty close.

The Basil is probably the fastest growing plant in the garden. It’s probably tripled in size compared to the original picture I took. greeneseale says Basil likes hot weather, so it’s no wonder it’s taking off. With the summer we’re having, it’ll probably be six feet around by the end of August.

The Burpee Big Boy Tomatoes have also grown quite a bit. The “main” part of the stalk is now to the top of the stakes I tied them to. The stalk is about twice as thick as it was when they were planted. I’m actually a little surprised by their progress given how much wind we’ve been getting in that area of the garden. There’s no doubt that tying them to stakes helped.

Lastly, I was out mowing the lawn last night when a little bitty animal took off across the grass in front of the mower. At first, I thought it was a little mouse, but then I looked closer. It turns out it was a little baby rabbit! I ran to the house to get Valerie to show her. We were almost on top of it before Valerie saw it, that’s how small it was. He went and hopped into the neighbor’s yard and I got concerned that he’d jump into their crawlspace entry and drown with the impending thunderstorms. I picked him up and he started grunting and I put him under our deck. I returned to mowing the lawn and the next thing I know, a big rabbit shoots out from under the deck and flies over to our rear neighbor’s deck!

So, it seems we have a rabbit family hanging out in the neighborhood. Valerie thinks we’ll have a hard time having a garden now, but they don’t seem to have nibbled on anything to this point…

Saw this license plate on the way to work this morning and I couldn’t decide whether it was “Love Two Kids” or “Leave Two Kids.” Valerie asked how wrong it would be if it was “Love Two Kids” and they actually had three kids.

“Okay kids, it’s up to you to figure out which one of you I didn’t include in the license plate.”

Fred & Valerie go to Paris & London

“In late April of 2006, we had the opportunity to travel to Paris and London. Along the way, we snapped 1500 photographs. We’ve pared that down to 578 photographs and this mini-web site is the result. We hope you enjoy the photographs of our trip as much as we enjoyed the actual trip.”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t actually the Easter Bunny, but Valerie pointed out a light brown bunny rabbit hanging out near our garden this morning. Though he/she is quite cute, we’re hoping he/she doesn’t take a liking to our tomatoes, basil, oregano, or rosemary.

Maybe someone in the neighborhood is growing lettuce…

Either the people with the “Graduate” sign read this blog or someone told them about their hilarious grammatical mistake. The sign now reads, “Congratulations to all the 2006 Graduates.”