October Visitors

Last month, Fred and Josie came for a visit! We decided to be adventurous and try someplace other than Elizabeth's for breakfast... so we went to Russells Marina Grill for sweet potato pancakes and Egg's Ponchartrain. The food was pretty good ... not quite as decadent as Elizabeth's, but we'll definitly try it again.

We spent the day at Lafayette Square for the annual New Orleans Blues Festival, enjoying the weather, listening to good music, eating yummy New Orleans food like Red Beans and Rice, Crab and Spinach bread bowls, and Gelato, and watching the eccentric people of the Crescent City.

We also had dinner one night at Fisherman's Cove, indulging in boiled shrimp, Fried Pickles, and an Eggplant Pirogue (amazing fried eggplant topped with a crawfish and crab cream sauce).

Thanks for visiting Fred and Josie ... Come back again soon!

A wall of passion vines

Last year I started some passion vines from seeds from a couple Whole Foods passion fruits. I planted the little guys along side our patio last year, and they've been doing well since then. We had some old metal trellis placed along the patio, more to keep the dogs out of the edging than for their aesthetic nature.

So I asked Jeff to build me a wall of trellis for my passion vines.

After we put it up, we spent about an hour carefully removing the vines from the old trellis, and winding them through the new one. I'm planning to put glass pieces into some of the squares, but haven't gotten to it yet.

Hopefully this year we'll have a wall of passion flowers and fruit!

My attempt at an herb garden ... again.

Each year since moving down here, I've puchased various potted herbs including cilantro, basil, lavendar, oregano, various kinds of mints, and rosemary. Each year, I lovingly plant these herbs in new pots to place along our patio ... and then promptly forget to water them. Each year, my herb garden dies only to be started again the following spring. This year, I did a little better because we have installed an automatic watering system for our back yard and patio. This helped and my herb garden was doing great, until the sprinkler system sprung a leak and stopped watering for us. Since it's set to water before we get up or when we are at work, we didn't notice ... until my herb garden wasn't looking too healthy. So I decided this year, I would put an end to the cycle ... I've planted all of my herbs in an area of the edging that I recently cleared, and here they will live from now on ... free from drought (providing the sprinkler system works when mother nature doesn't provide us with the usual afternoon thunderstorm) and free from Baxter's annoying habit of choosing my potted herbs, out of all the plants in our yard, to lift his leg on.