Hey, a back yard blog!

Jack's acorns
Originally uploaded by texasrobo

The archaeology hasn't been very exciting lately, but I did take some photos a few days ago of some of the latest happenings in the wilds of our backyard. The highlight is that Jack the Live Oak finally grew some nuts! Yep, he's covered in acorns. We also have some marigolds and the fishhook cactus is blooming again. All the pictures are on my Flickr photostream.
The tomato plants keep on going. It's a race against bugs these days, and probably half of the ripe maters are ruined by the bugs before I get to them. Of course, when I do get to them I don't always use them in time, but the Sweet 100s have been very delicious on salads. The basil is flowering like crazy and covered in bees. The zucchini are totally dead, and the new zucchini and squash I planted haven't sprouted from what I can tell.
Going to Spring, Texas to survey for a couple of days. SInce that's next to The Woodlands, we'll be dropping by the in-laws for a birthday dinner tomorrow (Tina's mom) and going out with some of Tini's friends for dinner on Wednesday. Much better than East Texas!

More from the garden

can you see the caterpillar
Originally uploaded by texasrobo

While inspecting the garden this evening, I suddenly realized that I was not looking at a weird leaf but a very large caterpillar. So naturally I went and got the camera before moving him elsewhere in the back yard. He looks like the Very Hungry Caterpillar (which I called the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, oops). Our dear President once called that his favorite childhood book, which is funny as he was in his 20s when it was published. My favorite was Corduroy, by the way.
As usual, there's other new garden and related pictures on the Flickr page. Some of the Sweet 100s are starten to ripen, and there's a couple of zucchini growing, plus one that I harvested this evening!
Today I got 154,000 points for "More than a Feeling" on medium on Guitar Hero. I only missed four notes the whole song. I totally feel like a rock star while I'm playing that song.
Back to TxDOT this week.

Ripe tomatoes and other backyard stuff

ripe tomatoes
Originally uploaded by texasrobo

Some of the cherry tomatoes are ripening. The one in the middle, near the bottom, will be ready to go tomorrow. This way Tini can enjoy the first taste of our tomatoes before she heads to Vegas. The first fruits of the garden were the hot peppers, which Tini passed on, so the tomato will be her first reward for all of our efforts. None of the other tomato plants have ripened yet. While outside, I also took another picture of Jack the live oak (which was supposed to be better than the first one but really might be worse) and of the new screen door. If you click on the picture to the right, you can see the new photos.
Speaking of photos, Yahoo Photos is closing so all of my old photos on there were transferred to my Flickr photostream. Now there's a bunch of archaeological and other pictures to look at there!

Summer of Blog! Day 1.

So I've been planning to call this the Summer of Blog and actully write a daily update every day this summer, just to get in the habit. Today is the summer solstice, so here we go.
The big dig in San Antonio was a mammoth task, to be sure. After 4 weeks of excavation, we were ultimately left with the same questions we started with. So we'll be sending off samples to the experts and doing a lot of fine-screening of collected matrix to see if anything will jump out. It was definitely a unique dig experience for me, one that I likely will never have again. It was also extremely challenging and a bit frustrating at times. When I'm finally cleared to talk about it in detail, I will.
The amount of rain this spring has been really crazy, but great for the yard and garden. Three of our tomato plants have 'maters on them (although I think they could use some sun soon to ripen), including both cherry and beefsteak varieties. The basil plants have gotten huge. Once the tomatoes have ripened, we'll be making some basil-tomato-mozzarella snack sandwiches! The zucchini seeds have all turned into large, tightly bundled plants, and the late-planted squashes have recently sprouted as well. The peppers got chewed up pretty badly by bugs. We did get one jalapeno and one serrano (sooo hot!) thus far.
Summer movies are going strong. All I've seen thus far are Grindhouse (which I loved but bombed) and Knocked Up. If you haven't seen Knocked Up yet, then go (especially if you live somewhere that has beer in the theaters) and laugh your ass off. Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen are an amazing team, and throw in Jason Segel and a bunch of other folks from Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks and Apatow projects and it's gold. Looking ahead, I'll be seeing Harry Potter and Transformers (low expectations) on the big screen for sure, and probably letting a lot of other stuff slide to DVD. I've been so spoiled by the Alamo Drafthouse that I can't really see movies at regular theaters anymore. But I'm pretty broke these days and we always spend a lot of money on food and drinks when we're there. I can't even spend the $20 to see De La Soul tonight.
So that's where things stand. I hope to have some photos to put up, and mix in some old memories and stories this summer to go with all the work and cheap fun stuff.

Chaos in Tejas

Yeah, the hardcore festival is going on, and sometimes I think it might also be an apt description of my life lately. I've been bad about updating, mostly because there hasn't been a lot to say. We're trying to keep a garden alive, trying to keep a house moderately clean, haven't had much time with our friends at all lately (which is depressing). Work at the office has been very dull, but busy. If archaeologists are the "cowboys of science" then I'm the absentee landowner's representative's office manager's assistant. Yee hah!
The New Jersey trip was nice, in that Tini was there for the wake and funeral, we got to see my brother and his family, and I got to spend a few hours in New York City. I'll try and find some time to Flickr some photos this weekend. Spent more money that I probably should've, without a whole lot to show for it but a belly.
I really liked Bastard Sons of Apocalypse and Le Fraction last night, while the other bands ranged from pretty good to "eh". Tonight is the big Kids reunion show, so it should be crazy and a slightly different crowd.
Next week, I'll be working out of town in San Antonio for 3 weeks (well, back on weekends). I'm pretty sure I mentioned the project on here before, but we're supposed to be keeping it really quiet. It'll be a neat project, and could potentially be pretty huge. It'll also be hot and buggy, with a 60% chance of poison ivy.
I've been meaning to take some pictures of our garden/back yard. We've had more success with accidental plants, like the huge squash plants growing out of the compost pile, and the giant sunflowers by the shed. About half of the pepper plants have already died, and half of the tomatoes are looking pretty shaky as well. We're going to end up with a bunch of herbs and squashes, I think. Whenever we had the free time to work on getting plants in and a good soil foundation, the weather didn't cooperate. So we ended up rushing them into the ground literally just before leaving for New Jersey, and we missed the amazing rains in April that would've really given them a good base for getting rooted.
That's about it. See, you didn't miss much.