It should not be 80 degrees in December!

I wanted to make soup with the butternut squash I've had for a month, but it was too hot this weekend to make soup. Seriously, when you have to turn on the AC to deal with the heat from the stove, it's not a good day to make soup (in my opinion).

What did I do instead of making soup?

• Knocked off nearly every one of my to-do items early on Saturday before it got too hot
• Picked up our veggie CSA box - highlight? organic carrots!
• Took Alouysius to the dog park (where he ate mushrooms despite TCB's best efforts and then barfed them up - wholly intact! - about an hour later on the woolie in his crate. Nice)
• Did six loads of laundry
• Went back into my veggie garden after several months of abandonment

Regarding that last item, I was pleasantly surprised to find a few things still alive. As hot as it's been around here in the last few months and - of course - no rain, I really thought everything would be completely dead and gone, but I was wrong. The little, 4" African Blue Basil plant that we stuck in the ground back in April is now the size of an old VW Beetle. OK, it's slightly smaller than that, but not by much...it's HUGE. And my strawberry plant is still going strong. It's dormant, which is probably what saved it, but it's still there and ready for covering with straw for the winter. One of the lavender bushes is still doing great, one looks as though it might be salvageable, and the last one looks totally dead; I watered them all. The artichoke bush that we were trying to hard to save last Spring and fertilized the heck out of looks great and I think this might be the year for artichokes. But the best surprise of all is that my beloved peas seem to have sent up a "volunteer" - a brand new plant out of the ruins of the old plants. The peas did incredibly well last year, so they theoretically are a good choice and, if the garden terrorists who stole all of the peas out of my garden last year keep their grubby hands out, maybe we'll actually get to make the Pea and Bacon Tarts I found the recipe for last year.

And Alcott's sister came home from school (UC Davis!) this weekend. She had a very stressful first quarter away from home and cut herself off from most of the helpful adults in her life, including us. I honestly thought we'd lost her forever, but it turns out that she got really busy learning some hard life lessons and an appreciation for the love and support she has at home. After some talking, some hugs, and some tears, we have our unofficially adopted daughter back, and I realized how much it hurt when she disconnected.

There's nothing more important than family and health, and I'm fighting to enjoy both to their maximum.