The Good Life

Well the San Francisco branch of the Thomas family took another step towards The Good life this weekend. Yes, your intrepid trio of sleepy father, down to earth Russian mama, and very cute but useless-with-a-garden-implement 11 month old girl decided to plant a vegetable patch.

In deference to long and surprisingly socialist stories about weekends at the dacha raising potatoes and beets from seed to vodka, the Thomas's constructed a vegetable box from rough hewn lumber (Home Depot store cut), good earth (Chicken shit manure and some organic mixer soil), and the sweat of our own brows (we're unfit so that equates to approximately 15 minute's work). To put it in much less poetic and pointed phraseology: we put some radish, carrot, and other mixed seeds in to some dirt this weekend. It was great fun to get dirty. Lyra was sleeping through most of it, but Masha and I already have plans to tell her how she was raised on purely home grown organics in the hippy dippy Bay Area. Totally untrue but the family legend has to start somewhere.

Of course, the birds in the area scented the freshly turned earth in short shrift and decided that it looked like a free meal. So I'm guessing that another part of the burgeoning legend will be our battles for the rodina [motherland] against the 'evil flocks' and 'wicked little birdies' who will attempt to kidnap out carrots in the seedling phase. Should be an interesting few months!

P.S. This should be in no way interpreted as a serious effort to raise foodstuffs from our back yard. For two reasons: (a) we'll probably forget to water it by next week and (b) the Dickerson's have already posted an impressive tally that we cannot hope to compete with. But we'll try anyway: it's personal this time, Bryan!