summer weekend-

It has been a very busy week here-I guess I'll work backward. This picture is from my morning at the farmer's market. The produce is really coming in beautifully for all of my favorite farmers downtown. Everything was blue and purple and green and golden this morning. I spent a little more and bought some organic local bacon to make my OLS meals a little happier for my carnivorous boys, but I am really DIGGIN' the veggies. I got there a bit late this morning- 8:30 (usually I'm there before 7 to catch my egg and goat cheese man, but this is his off week)- boy was it crowded. We all slept in after watching the fireworks on the river-that didn't start until 9:45. It was almost 11 by the time we got sleepy little boy and exhausted parents home. But the 4th on the bluffs of the Mississippi was magical. It was cool (usually it is still 85 and humid at night on the 4th of July here, but last night it was about 75 and breezy at 9). Little boy's never really experienced fireworks before, so they seemed especially enchanted to his sleepy eyes.
My good friend Leigh Ann visited this week-from Wednesday to Friday. She is a PhD candidate in Public Health at Tulane University in New Orleans. She lives in Zanzibar part time, or has for the past few years while she's been working on her dissertation. She is a good college friend, a former Peace Corps Volunteer (she did stints in both Sri Lanka and Thailand) and comes from a family of high hilarity with an emphasis in storytelling. She is a dedicated vegetarian, so I was happy to try some new veggie recipes on her, like this splendid Chard Tart. It was filled with ruby chard, beet greens, goat cheese, and home-grown onions and shallots on a locally-grown and ground cornmeal crust. I got the recipe from Amy of My Land but altered it liberally to fit within the local guidelines. Ya'll should be happy I took a picture before I baked it, because mine wasn't as pretty as Amy's, but my word, it was delicious. I'm going to try it again in the winter with pecans to decorate the top, and try to figure out what sort of herb will stand up to the chard and beet greens' assertive flavors.
While she was here, we took several family walks-my friend is a big walker. This night we took both dogs- it was helpful to have a person for each dog and little boy. Our neighborhood has a wonderful 3 mile greenline park running through it, but the path isn't so conducive to training wheels. The bike gets stuck, with little boy peddling as hard as he can and literally spinning his wheels. I think that our Thursday walk was a 2 miler- leisurely, but still hefty for both dogs and boy.
Birdy dog (Luther is pictured) is 9 in September- she loves her walks but stays in her bed, in the cool of my bedroom, away from the craziness of little boy and Luther, most of the time. She sniffed out this box turtle midway through the walk and gave us a nice opportunity for a little ecology lesson. We learned all about box turtles, and the differences between tortoises and turtles, after this encounter.

I mentioned that my friend comes from a family of hilarious story-tellers. She started a blog on her first night here. I was honored to shoot some pictures for her and play a small role in her second post.