Jamie is back at work this week, after four months’ maternity leave that have passed in a flash. We decided to go away for a final hurrah last weekend, before things got busy. (Rather, even busier.)

A destination chosen: Carmel, a seaside town near Monterey at the top end of the Central Coast. We’ve ventured up as far as San Simeon before (back in December 2007), ‘A’ on the map below, taking the scenic coastal route. This time we needed to get there a little quicker, so we zoomed up the infinitely less interesting ‘5′.

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The journey, B to C, is 323 miles.

Our hotel room at the Wayside Inn. We decided to splurge a little bit, as it was only for three nights, and we hadn’t been away on a road trip since February 2011 (to Paso Robles with our forgotten dog Bernie, or is it Basil?…).

Outside the hotel room – convenient parking, and our own tiny patio

Jamie relaxing after we’ve unpacked.

Luke very grown-up in the high-backed chair. He’s by the roaring (gas) fire, so he’s perfectly set for a Rowley Birkin, QC impression. (YouTube video – sound warning!)

Aliens are landing! Or there’s something really interesting like the ceiling to look at.

Down on the beach the next morning. It’s down a long steep hill; excellent cardio pushing the pushchair (’stroller’ as I have to call it in order to be understood) back up.

Some brave people setting up camp – it was a tad windy!

Walk through the woodland park later on around midday. This bit is again significantly uphill! And on bark mulch, so even more resistance to motion. The only solution is therefore to run up.

We walked all the way down to the Mission San Carmel, officially and more snappily named San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo Mission. Beautiful, old (1771), and very tranquil: we had the place to ourselves.

It’s small, by the standards of most missions. It was the second mission to be established on the California coast.

There wasn’t even anyone around to get a picture of all of us, so I used the ever-handy tripod known as the ground.

Lucky we packed lunch for Luke.

On the way back, some interesting cars. Dozens of late-70’s / early-80’s Mercedes SL450s (or 560s, or 350s, etc, for which I have an inexplicable fondness), and this gem:

The view south across the Carmel River Beach; the mission is tucked in behind the bay. North from this headland is the Carmel Town Beach we were at earlier.

Luke and I got to spend loads of time together over the weekend. I don’t really see him much in the weekdays, apart from bath-times, so this was a good time to hang out with him. (Does one hang out with babies?) Look at those chubby arms! And Luke’s!

The next morning, Saturday, the entire world seemed to descend on the area. It was a beautiful day, and there were literally coachloads of people everywhere. We took another walk around Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, this time with Luke in the Ergo Baby carrier on my front. He’s peaceful in there, but it gets hot for him and though his eyes are shut, he can’t really sleep properly… so we had a very tired baby on our hands that evening.

The view out over “Devil’s Cauldron”:

The view south, down towards Big Sur. The craggy granite, with its intricate coves and pools, is most reminiscent of Cornwall’s north coast. There’s just no trace of Rick Stein here though!

A great escape for the weekend. It appears we took no photos of the town of Carmel itself. Suffice to say it was charming, compact and highly pedestrian-friendly. If you’re into art, the hundreds of little studios and boutiques would provide endless fascination. For us more practically-minded folk, the variety and number of excellent (-looking) restaurants was tantalising. We couldn’t try many of them, of course, as we haven’t yet mastered the art of Baby Comes Too. We did manage to have a nice lunch at Flaherty’s Oyster Bar and Seafood Grill.

The choice to stay in the centre of town certainly paid off; we didn’t have to drive anywhere for meals and supplies, and the leisurely activity of milling around the town was not bracketed by the hassle of bundling the family in and out of the car.

The drive back on Sunday was predictably boring but luckily mostly clear. The 530xi returned a reasonable 27.0mpg (32.4mpg in UK gallons) at an average speed of 66.0mph. This was mostly at around 75mph cruising speed.

An incidental driving-related lifestyle note: I am currently surviving my commute by listening to Books On Tape (or Books On CD as they need to have been called since the 1990s); the narration is actually audible now I finally have a quieter car! I’ve had some good ones lately: the classic A Year in Provence, entertaining and beautifully stereotyped, and Alan Alda’s two highly personable and easy-going memoirs Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself. (In between, there was also the catastrophically smug and sanctimonious The One Minute Entrepreneur.) I’m now starting Operation Mincemeat, about a World War Two deception plot. I made the mistake of tuning into the talk radio again, twice today, and was repelled by the relentless Republican nominations ‘news’. Otherwise, the music selection on KCSN is often worth listening to and has provided me with invaluable new additions to my collection.

This is old news for most of my reader(s), but Jamie and I welcomed our first child Luke into the world early in December. He was 7lb 13oz, 21″ long, and is a beautiful healthy baby.

It has been a rather busy seven weeks since then, and we are only just beginning to feel that we are surfacing back to any semblance of normal life once more. It’s only now that I finally have the time to blog!

As they say, having a baby turns your life around. We are now unequivocally on his schedule, and he leaves little time for anything else. Finally we understand the situations of those parents who seemed so unnecessarily bound by the bedtimes of their little ones.

He is the most incredibly easy baby to care for (so far, touch wood, etc), and hopefully he will continue this way! He goes down at night with little or no fuss, and wakes once in the night for a feeding – though this is looking as if it may phase out soon, thankfully.

In the last week or so he’s just started smiling frequently. This makes him dramatically more fun to interact with! He smiles at the simplest of things, like following slow movement of our heads from side to side, and gentle ‘pops’ with our fingers on his cheeks and nose. He’s not yet active enough to be constantly lifting his head to look around, so he still relaxes on our shoulders like a warm bag of potatoes.

Without further ado, here are the pictures.

Only a couple of hours old:

One of his first meals:

He had some jaundice, so he had to stay in for an extra night under the “bili” lights while we went home. It was hard to go home without him!

Snuggling up with Mummy before leaving the hospital, three days old:

In his first real clothes, in the car seat for the first time, ready to meet the world:

Basil looks on with anticipation, excitement, and not a little confusion. What is this thing?

Trying on Daddy’s glasses, two weeks old:

Mum’s hands are a little bigger:

Cocooned in the ‘Mobi wrap’:

Hungry, maybe? Or needing changing? Who knows…:

Middle-of-the-night feedings, around three weeks old on New Year’s Eve:

Checking out the view on the porch:

Standing with a little help for balance, but supporting his own weight easily, at one month old:

Gangsta get-up with an oversized white shirt:

First smiles! So rewarding. He’s finally giving something back! Six weeks – right on schedule.

He’s a cheeky one.

So now we can play!

Last night, seven weeks old: the first try-out of the Bumbo. He can sit in it easily; he just needs a little help holding his head up after a minute or so:

More to follow. And a load of other stuff I haven’t yet got round to: a hiking trip to Yosemite, my family’s visit after Christmas, and a new car!

I’ve completed a number of construction and modification projects in record quick time over the last few weeks. I hope I can maintain this new level of efficiency once our baby’s arrived – otherwise I may never get anything done again.

We needed an area outside for keeping garden hand-tools, plant foods, fertilisers etc (which were taking up valuable space in the garage), and a work surface for growing vegetables from seed. I’d originally intended to build a movable free-standing potting bench, but I realised the ideal solution would be to make better use of the space under the lean-to on the side of the garage – currently home only to a couple of forks and some planks.

I had most of the timber just lying around, so I got started quickly!

I need to see a doctor about this dandruff…

(For some reason, chop-sawing through the knots in the wood produces shavings rather then sawdust!)

The next day, all finished. Total build time was probably only about six hours. Using Josh’s nail gun to fix the slats in place was by far the biggest time-saver (ok, having a car to fetch the timber was quicker than walking, but you get my point); just pop-pop, pop-pop… in several hundred places… and you’re done.

Jamie gets organised, and gets potting! Mmm tasty onions and lettuces for the winter.

The quickest project of the lot: putting up the shower curtain to hide the bath. Now we don’t have to clean the bath!

The most annoying project: dryer vent tube. When the gas man came to turn the gas back on, a couple of days after we moved in to the house, he left a report about the dryer vent being of an outdated material, and recommending corrective action to replace it.

We’d never identified exactly what he was talking about: I assumed he meant the vent flap on the outside of the house, but we couldn’t find it! This was something of a mystery – where did the dryer vent to, exactly? Under the house? Up the wall and through the roof? Into thin air?

We had always noticed the storage room getting very warm whenever the dryer was used, which made me wonder if it was venting to anywhere at all. I decided to investigate: if this was any safety-related issue, I wanted it solved before the arrival of our precious new joy-bundle.

So, pull the dryer out, and have a look. OK, this might be the answer to one question – there’s a big hole in the tube letting hot air out! That could be why the room gets warm.

More worryingly, this answers the other question: it vents into the wall. So, all the hot air, lint-dust, and combustion products (it’s a gas-heated dryer, rather than electric) are just floating around in the wall cavity, and probably coming back into the room from under the floor. This definitely explains the light-headedness we’d noticed whenever running the thing for a large number of loads. Certainly a safety issue.

OK, off to Home Depot to get a new tube, a vent to take it to the outside of the house, and … other stuff. $200 worth of other stuff. While I was there, I signed up for the Home Depot store credit card and was rewarded on the spot with an $8,000 credit limit. (Baffling, then, that I have to plead with the bank to get an increase from $1,300 on their credit card: I asked for $5,000 and they graciously raised it to a nice round $2,100.)

Mmmm… man-retail-therapy.

It turned out that there was originally a hole in the outside of the house for the dryer vent, as I could see a section of the underlying supports cut away in the same place. When the careless contractors re-sided the house, some time in the 1980’s we think, they didn’t bother to cut a new hole.

This just feels wrong!

Job done on the outside! Now just to attach the tube on the inside…

… and this is where things started to go wrong. The flexible tube was really difficult to attach to the dryer, and in the process, it pulled the non-flexible tube (in the wall) off the vent flap. It was only clipped in place onto the flap, so I wanted a stronger attachment with staples. So I sought the staples. I couldn’t find them in the garage, and we have various poorly-organised boxes of DIY stuff in the storage room, so I re-organised them:

Then in moving the ironing board out of the way for the fifth time (it’s cheap and nasty, and used approximately once a year), it hit me on the head. So I exiled it:

(That was most incredibly satisfying.)

Finally I found the staples in the garage, tidily stored in an unlabelled box. Everything back together, shiny new duct in place, and we are good to go!

OK, next thing. This was quick and easy: a tie-point for the dog, to allow him to sit out with us on the porch, and prevent him running off after cats and getting squashed by cars. He looks thrilled:

And the next! I bought a dog-flap ages ago but hadn’t got around to fitting it. The dog had a funny tummy (which later turned out to be tapeworm and coccidia), and we needed to allow him to go outside in the night.

Stage 1: unmolested door. Commitment level: 0%.

Dog flap. Design largely unchanged since 1979!

Instruction 1: measure dog.

Hmm, need to remove the metal panel holding rotting door together. Commitment level: 20%.

Truly delightful colours and textures are revealed!

Mark it out, plunge the drill bit in, and start sawing. Commitment level jumps to 60%.

… 70% …

… 100%.

Dog flap fitted, ensuring structural integrity of the door once again.

Now the training begins! He is skeptical, but not afraid…

Look, mummy can use it… and mummy has food outside…

A tentative first look… and he’s comfortable with it. Hurrah!

The beautiful finished look.

OK, what’s next?

Crikey. I’ve nearly finished documenting the summer trip, and only two months late! Apologies for the terse or nonexistent captions to follow…

We finished with a weekend in Chicago, a city I’ve never been to, but which my Dad loves.

Dinner the first night was at a restaurant recommended by Ken: Shaw’s Crab House. We didn’t eat any crab…

…but the oysters were fab:

…and the fish main course (cod? haddock? I forget…), with a chilli and caper sauce (still making my mouth water even now) was probably the best fish I’ve ever had.

Chicago’s architecture is beautiful at night:

I’m full. We had three puddings!

We realised (after a hefty breakfast the next morning) that there were too many tourist sights to see in the city over a short weekend, so there was basically no point in trying. Instead, as we readily accepted, we would do better to just experience the gastronomic delights of the city. Basically we had a weekend to eat Chicago.

I don’t have any flattering pictures of that breakfast. It seemed to have involved Huevos Rancheros and indecent quantities of French toast (deep-fried) at … some place.

So we waddled around for a bit, and did a bit of shopping, then went up a really tall tower: the Hancock Centre. We got to the top, 100 stories high, just as a rainstorm was sweeping over the city, and across the lake. It was most dramatic.

Hmm. We don’t have umbrellas.

Other really tall buildings look tiny!

Lots of other tiny tall buildings – this is the view north along the lake shore. A sprinkling of groynes in evidence, to quell that pesky Longshore Drift.

T’wife. She looks a bit tired: must be all that travelling for two.

Ey oop – t’wife again. Later that evening; this was my first exposure to the phenomenon of Chicago style pizza. I had some vague notion that I knew this, from various frozen supermarket offerings, but this was like nothing else I’ve ever eaten. More of a hearty pizza pie than a delicate sprinkling of tidbits on a wafer-thin crust, it was very tasty and very filling. We couldn’t eat it all, so we had it packed for take-out and found a homeless guy to give it to. He was pleased!

The next morning. Hello, we’re hungry. Breakfast time! Let’s fill the table with food!

We waddled around again, and decided it might be safer to sit for the rest of the day, so we booked an ‘architecture cruise’ to take the not inconsiderable weight off our feet.

Curvy building.

Our hotel.

An old building. I’m sure I knew what it was at the time; something to do with newspapers or telly I think.

What’s with all these curvy buildings?

Groovy retro 60’s riverside residences, with boats.

Crusty.

I want one of these signs.

This is definitely a newspaper building – it occupies a whole city block! (Brits: that’s quite big.)

Trump Tower, up close.

An old fire boat.

The (hourly) water jet across the river, just by our hotel.

There is so much history to Chicago, even as a relatively young city. It was flattened by a fire in 1871, but the speed and energy of the rebound from this disaster propelled it to unprecedented growth and success.

So there’s more to learn, on our next visit. More importantly, and more memorably, there’s more to eat.

Chapter three of our saga took us to Lake Como in Italy, via the delights of Gatwick and Milano Malpensa airports. (Gatwick really was a delight: they have a bright, wide new security area with nifty return conveyors for the trays.)

Arrival at Malpensa:

We enjoyed a good hour and a half’s unplanned sightseeing around the airport, and a delicious lunch in a grand restaurant nearby. The drive from the airport, in our rented cars, was nothing short of hair-raising: along tiny winding mountain roads, with narrow gaps between buildings in the crowded towns, cliffs of rock to one side, and lake to the other, and continuous rush-hour traffic.

We made it to our apartment safely, and as it was a Sunday, we couldn’t buy anything edible from any supermarkets to stock up the cupboards, so we spent the entire afternoon and evening in a bar. The view from there looked something like this:

The next morning we wandered down, through the streets of Lenno…

… to the ferry terminal to go across the lake to Bellagio. The views from the ferry were unparalleled.

This monastery (I’m guessing that’s what it was) perched high on a cliff was especially impressive.

Steep hills in Bellagio! Quite touristy; we were glad we were staying in a slightly more ‘local’ town.

On the ferry on the way back.

Sunset over the hills that evening, from the balcony of the apartment.

Mum and Dad whipping up dinner – now we’d finally been able to stock up the fridge!

Breakfast the next morning: a seriously nice chocolate croissant from a cafe in Lenno. Jamie, Barlie and I set off for Villa Balbianello out on the peninsula – only walking distance from the apartment, but not to be attempted before fuelling up!

Lenno from the hill as we walk up to the villa.

Some of the villa gardens.

A quiet spot between the buildings of the villa. It was last privately owned by an entrepreneur and Himalayan explorer, Guido Monzino.

T’wife!

T’wife and us!

We elected to take the little taxi boat back to Lenno, rather than walking. Glad we did – it afforded these spectacular views of the villa from the water:

Time for a dip at the Lenno Lido:

And a snooze:

The next morning we drove up into the mountains and got lost in the tiny mountain villages clinging to the hillsides. The gradients were tough, especially for small cars loaded with Brits and one-and-a-half Americans. The parking spot for this local’s Mondeo neatly illustrates the space issue:

On the way back, we went up the cable car for a stunning view over the lake:

Dinner that evening was a blow-out meal at l’Osteria. Our last evening already… all too soon.

We had most of the next day to amuse ourselves before leaving, so we visited Villa Carlotta (given as a wedding present by Princess Marianna of Prussia to her daughter… as you do):

The drive back to the airport mainly featured looking for George Clooney as we drove through his holiday home-town of Laglio, yet more gelato in Como, and not driving into the mountains again. Getting out at Malpensa was… delayed.

Back to England for one last short night in Woking, then the last stop of our trip: Chicago!

The second leg of the Massive Summer Trip took us back to Chicago to drop the car back off and fly out to England. We had about five days there, with the intention that we could ‘not plan much’ and relax. Well that didn’t happen.

Day 1, our arrival, was spent largely feeling a bit wiped out after the travelling and not much sleep. Mum and Dad’s garden is in fine summer form. Much greener than ours!

Day 2 was a visit to the Abinger Hammer Tea Room, with Mum and Annie.

We were served by the lady who also runs the shop! She was busy, but managed to attend to our cake-, scone- and tea-related needs eventually, in a suitably eccentric manner. (With no shortage of random chit-chat: for example, her daughter was born at 23 weeks. So now we know!)

Annie gave us a tour of her garden, also in good shape, and actually looking much better after the removal of the large yew tree (the stump now has the cockerel statue on it). The little barn has been standing for decades, if not a century, and has a story or two to tell. My aunt lived in it, as a teenager, at one point!

I have no photos from Day 3. I suspect we slept a lot. Day 4 we largely drove around from shop to shop, gathering food and drink for The Party (planned for Day 5). In the evening we took Mum and Dad to Wagamama in Guildford for their first-ever visit. They seemed to enjoy it!

Jamie tucks in to one of her favourites.

All of a sudden, Party Day was upon us. We had chilled the wines, made the salsa, rustled up some salads and bought the meat the day before, and Neil had generously provided 51 pints of the finest ’session’ ales (what a great concept) from the Hogs Back Brewery. Warm, flat and tasty – perfect!

So we just needed some guests. Luckily I’d remembered to invite some. Family under the gazebo, from the left: cousin Arthur, little bro Charlie, aunt Cath, Annie, and cousin Jessie mid-preen:

Ben Smith charms aunt Butty, Karin, and my godmother Angela (also an owner of two mad English Springer Spaniels):

Laura and Andy back on home turf after their visit here in early July, Bill from New York and Ellie from … London?, and Helen and Neil (no longer) from Bedford.

Butty, Jessie, chef Dad, Cath, Angela and me mum.

Erika, some numpty, and Chris Carpenter.

(Here goes…) Mark, Diane and Neil, Neil’s mum Jenny, Ben Smith, little George and mum Kirsty, Sarah, Ben Hughes, Charlie, and Natalie.

Little Smith, Thomas.

Coki the cat, getting old now. She had a nasty sore that was going septic, hence the collar.

My old boss from Voller, Jim, and his wife Liz, with cousin Arthur gurning in the background:

Mark, me and Neil, recreating a picture from our school days (which I *luckily* don’t have available to publish here).

Mmm, tasty burger.

Finishing up some leftovers:

Pretty much everyone. All told, I think there were 35 or so people. The next day, we were heading out to Italy before dawn, so the party couldn’t rave until the early hours as they once did!

I have a good excuse for radio silence this last few weeks… we’ve been away on a trip of fairly epic proportions. There wasn’t a spare minute (or hour) to update the blog with the photos as we travelled: we weren’t in any one place for more than four days or so.

In this first part of four, I’ll cover Destination 1: Iowa, where we visited Jamie’s relatives in Elgin.

We left at an ungodly hour on Jamie’s birthday at the end of July, flew to Chicago and rented this beauty of a car. Its most appealing characteristic: fuel economy. It’s a six-hour drive to Elgin, and we weren’t anticipating snow, mountains or race tracks, so we didn’t need much from the car.

We drove past Chicago in rush-hour traffic; not that I noticed it much, as I fell asleep quite soon after taking this shot of the downtown skyscrapers, dominated by the beautifully named Willis Tower:

After crossing the Mississippi (a really big river), just into the eastern edge of Iowa, we saw the aftermath of the 12 inches of rain that had fallen on Dubuque the night before. The Mississippi itself had not risen appreciably, but many of the small tributary streams had completely burst onto floodplains, devastating crops, flooding houses, and covering the roads in mud.

The next day, we took to the river in a canoe with Jamie’s second-cousin Bruce. He and I did the paddling, and the fending-off from rocks and things (hot work!), while Josh and Daniel relaxed and ate cookies. The river was not deep: only a foot or two in most places. Over some little rapids we grounded out, and had to get out to walk the canoe on, to deeper water. Daniel was most cautious at first, careful not to put his hands near the edge, but within ten minutes he had gained the courage to look over the side, and ten minutes after that he was happily splashing away.

Later that day we ventured to the County Fair, to see the best of Fayette County’s offerings from its sparse population of 20,000. First up, a cow-judging:

We were able to wander through the barns and examine the contestants for ourselves:

Goats are always the more entertaining of farmyard beasts, but despite various antics – such as this one stealing its neighbour’s food, and another leaving droppings in a water bowl (the photo of which I should not burden my reader with) – sadly none matched the legendary Crazy Goat’s raspberries.

Daniel vs Daddy on quad-bikes… Daniel seems to know what he’s doing!

More animals – a little herd of bacon:

I don’t pretend to know what’s going on here.

After standing in a queue for an hour and a half, Daniel gets a new bike:

That evening we jumped in the river to cool off. We stumbled across some old chassis part of a car or truck, and rescued it from causing further toe-stubbage.

The timing of our visit was planned to coincide with Elgin Sweetcorn Days, which Jamie attended in 2008. So, eating free sweetcorn in the town park was the order of the evening, along with an ‘oompah’ German brass band (complete with lederhosen) and a sweetcorn-scoffing competition. (As it turned out, the sweetcorn we had had for lunch, sourced by Jamie’s aunt Marilyn from a local farmer, was far sweeter.)

Now, on to the main attraction of country life: a demolition derby! This was probably the highlight of the trip; a truly hilarious spectacle. We only stayed for one round, as the evening was unbearably hot and sticky, but I haven’t laughed that hard in months. Interestingly, as the competitors were immobilised one by one (the objective is to be the last one still moving), the action became less and less frantic, and almost painfully slow to watch. I felt as if I’d been watching spiders with no legs dying slowly in a box.

A certain little boy is rapt!

Time for one more photo by a vintage tractor before heading home for the evening:

The next day we drove an hour or so north, along the stunningly beautiful Great River Road, to Seed Savers Exchange, where heirloom and heritage seeds (not sure of the distinction, here) are produced, collected and sold.

View Larger Map

We stocked up on some seeds for next year’s planting: comedy massive tomatoes, lettuces that *should* be more resistant to bolting in the hot Southern California sun, and several others.

The new barn was completed within the last few years, built by the Amish with traditional methods: not a metal nail or screw in sight, only wooden dowels and pegs used, and designed with rugged aesthetics in the internal beam structure.

Next up: England!

It’s been a month since the last blog post. If anyone’s still reading this, I’m sorry for the delay! I’m writing from Iowa – it’s the first chance I’ve had to relax in a while.

It has been a busy month; I’ve been buying trees and planting them, five in the back garden and one in the front.

The first to go in was the little fig, my birthday present from Jean and Marcos. Apparently summer time is the best time to plant a fig, so it’s just as well that I didn’t get round to it earlier. I don’t have pictures of that one, but as soon as I have a good harvest of fruit I will be sure to report about it!

On a Saturday morning in early July, the family set off in the ‘fun car’ to the Garden View nursery, about 20 minutes away, to see their sale offerings: up to 60% off!

We chose trees (or selected the species, then I went back to choose them, trekking around in the dusty heat of the day, while Jamie sat in the air-conditioned front office, lucky girl, it’s not as if she’s pregnant or anything). The species selections were based on those that the city is offering rebates for, under its ‘cool trees’ program. There is up to a $40 rebate per tree available; a healthy incentive for once.

I dropped the family back at home with the pecan tree (in a 15-gallon pot, weighing about 20kgs), then returned in Josh’s truck to pick up the first two 24-inch container trees, a camphor and a Chinese Flame (70-80kgs each). The Garden View chaps load the trees off their hilarious golf-cart type contraption (which required push-starting every time):

Back at home, on my own: something of a logistical challenge to get the trees off the truck and onto our dolly. Satisfying to accomplish without mishap. For once.

The next day, 08:45. Planting site for the camphor, an evergreen, identified: near the house but leaving room for us to extend the house or add a decking in the future. Now to dig!

10:53: Hole dug. Ground was dry and weedy, so I spent most of the time sifting and picking weeds out. Love that Bermuda grass. Dog was in and out of the hole when it was only shallow, getting decidedly in the way as he wanted to lie on the cool earth… then after I’d dug to a certain depth he became a lot more reluctant!

11:13: Tree maneouvered into place, and rocked up onto some 12ft 2×4s (courtesy of the gentleman who sold me the slate a few weeks ago, as they were taking up space in his garage: “Take them all, please, take whatever you want!”):

11:15: A quick lift, and the tree slides gently into the hole:

11:17: A bit of jiggery-pokery with the 2×4s to get it central in the hole:

The rest was just backfilling with the original earth, with sand and compost and water mixed in as I went. Nice and quick!

13:05: After another trip back to Garden View to pick up the last two trees, the 24-inch Chitalpa (though it had long outgrown this, weighing 100kgs or more, and should have been in a 36-inch) and a 15-gallon peach:

That was it for that day; I was knackered and it was hot.

During the week: Chinese Flame looking decidedly unhealthy. I contacted the nursery; it’s hopefully just a lack of water, and shouldn’t get too much worse if it gets watered enough.

The next weekend I got the Chitalpa in the ground, roughly half way across the lawn by the little rockery flowerbed. This tree is enormous, and required a bit more effort to move around and get planted.

The view from the bathroom window, with the Chinese Flame now in the back left-hand corner where we hope to eventually make a shady little seating area. The peach is in place by the gate, but not yet planted:

Monday evening a couple of days later: finally I get some generous help in the form of our trusty friend Will, planting the last two (smallest!) trees, the pecan in the front garden and the peach in the back – this was a breeze compared to the bigger jobs:

I’m looking forward to seeing these grow year on year, and finally provide some shade and structure to our garden. It’s already made a huge difference, transforming the back from hopeless desolation into a much more inviting, interesting area.

We have some news: We are expecting a baby! Jamie is about sixteen weeks along, so the baby should arrive some time in December. We are thrilled, needless to say, and now very much in planning mode. We ordered a pushchair from eBay (new, with a massive saving over retail store prices) and are thinking about how to bring the bathroom up to a more usable standard. The donated baby equipment is starting to pile up in the house. The V8 car project may have to go on the back burner, and the blog may be inactive from December until about 2018.

Last weekend I picked up about a tonne of slate from Craigslist for what I hope was a good price, to pave the pathway to the arch and to cover the seating area we’re gradually developing by the house. It’s all just sitting on the ground at the moment, killing weeds:

Bit by bit I’ll be laying it into the path and patio. It’s a long job, and there’s no particular hurry… other than the little matter of the December deadline. It’d be nice to have a seating area done for the summer, though, so I should crack on with it; it’s just an unfamiliar job so it’s hard to know how to do it well. It should look good when it’s done though.

Petunias are loving it in the new bed! I planted them with the first ‘harvest’ of compost from the bin we’ve been diligently adding to over the last year (this brought forth an eruption of tomato seedlings), and it has certainly done its job; they are probably the healthiest plants in the garden.

Last night there were gourmet food trucks in town:

These are a relatively recent phenomenon, having appeared only in the past couple of years, and they’re something we’ve been wanting to try for a while. I waited in the queue for the ‘LobstaTruck’:

… while Jamie purloined a couple of gourmet tacos from the Flying Pig; pork with Asian vegetables of some sort on the left, and tamarind duck on the right:

The food was all great, and there were plenty of non-truck vendors with cookies, cupcakes, spice mixes, as well as jewellery and other unnecessary non-food items. It was a good format for families, with plenty to look at and try, plenty of seating, and a good community vibe, but the long wait for food was far from ideal.

The Lobsta haul (crab roll and lobster roll, and a Clam Chowder), and a couple of mini burgers from Slammin’ Sliders truck:

More foodie goodness: breakfast this morning at Auntie Em’s again, with Ken, Celeste and kids this time:

My Black Forest Ham and scrambled egg sandwich, with mustard cheese on pretzel bread, was a protein promise that didn’t disappoint.

Jamie’s french bread was deep fried crunchy deliciousness:

Dog shaving time! The weather’s really warmed up this week, so it was time for the summer cut this afternoon, as he’s always hot. Before:

The hair removed:

After – a leaner, skinnier pup. He was much calmer this time than last, perhaps he knew he needed it! His fur is so much softer once clipped, and his ears and paws should stay much cleaner. We even found a foxtail grass seed speared into one of his paws, with a nasty swelling that was obviously causing him some pain. Sorry Basil, should have seen that earlier. Neglectful parents! Oh well, this is only a practice run; we can get it right with the real baby.

I’m putting a lot of miles on my poor car these days, and I haven’t been giving it the care it needs. I’ve been giving it no care at all in fact, lately, just oil every couple of months (it drains the oil itself, gradually) and a bit of screen washer fluid if it’s lucky. I suppose I’ve been getting off quite lightly: 32,000 miles in 20 months since I started commuting, with major maintenance expenditures being minimal: a set of tyres, a set of brakes, a rear window for the roof, and fixing odds and ends along the way.

So it’s no surprise that a few bigger things need attention. A couple of weeks ago on Friday at lunchtime, following a rapidly executed U-turn, the steering rack started sticking. This was rather unnerving, as it would continue cornering when it should have been straightening up. I drove home gingerly (and fortunately uneventfully), and struck out for a scrapyard on Saturday morning.

This is ‘Della Huerta’ (’of the Orchard’) Autos, with a fine collection of old Volvos – perfect for parts for Josh’s project P1800.

The chap running the place, Art, couldn’t have been more helpful and friendly, and gave me a great price on the parts (once I insisted on a great price). I wasn’t expecting this at all: my experience of scrappies both in the UK and the US is of consistently grumpy, scabby places with grumpy, scabby people. Of course this never detracts from the thrill of the place, with the grime, decay and abandonment of rotting mangled corpses of cars, along with the promise of finding just the right part (and many other bonus treasures) for the repair and salvation of your own vehicle.

I decided to go for the later E36 rack while I was at it, as this is a ‘quicker’ gearing ratio (more movement of the wheels for a given movement of the steering wheel) and apparently requires minimal modification in order to fit. Same price; nothing to lose!

Back at home, car is jacked up as far as I can get it, with my mini shoddy Pepboys “My First Trolley Jack” (which doesn’t even work properly after use on only a handful of occasions). I’m saving up for a proper speedy ‘aluminum’ ‘racing’ trolley jack.

I don’t have many pictures of the job itself, as I was (a) too grubby to operate my phone, and (b) busy. Here’s the interior in tatters under the dashboard, though. I had to get at the bulkhead hole where the steering column goes through, in order to alter it: the column comes down about an inch further over towards the centre of the car.

This is the hole I need to enlarge. It’s a pig to access! Job done well with a Dremel.

Some days later, this evening, I have finally finished the job by doing the wheel alignment. I haven’t test-driven it yet, apart from a tyre-scrubbing circuit round the block after finishing everything else last weekend. (The rack needed to be lengthened by about half an inch on each end!)

I’ve been able to drive the Diamante to work this week and last – this car keeps on being useful! – so I’ve had the chance to get a load of other jobs done on my car: changing all the brake hoses and fluid (needed doing desperately), fixing a couple of niggling issues with the instrument cluster, replacing the throttle cable (didn’t really need doing, but I had ordered the part months ago, and it made sense to do it while the under-dash area was in bits), and fitting a nut to the bottom of the driver’s side engine mount. Yup, you read it right: there wasn’t one. This might explain a few things, like the nasty jolting noises that I’d put down to being wear in the drivetrain!

On a tastier note, we have scored some lovely large Sunday breakfasts lately. This was at ‘Uncle Bill’s Pancake House’ in Manhattan Beach:

This weekend we stayed closer to home, at Auntie Em’s in Eagle Rock. (I wonder if Auntie Em and Uncle Bill were related at all.) This was my bacon and three-egg sandwich with fig spread, mixed greens and blue cheese spread. An unconventional combination of flavours, but very nice indeed. To follow, there was strawberry shortcake which was also excellent.

Last week Basil and I attended the first session of a ten-week dog obedience class. It’s over at the Rose Bowl, and I run him there on the bike – it’s nearly four miles, so we both get a good bit of exercise into the bargain. Next class tomorrow – hope we’ve done our homework properly!

When we moved in, there was a graffiti tag on our garage door. Now it’s gone! I can only guess someone with the city must have come along and done it. It’s good to see we’re getting some value out of our $700 a month property tax, though the roads haven’t been swept in months.

A view of the garden from the bathroom window. This shows the finished archway into the vegetable garden, and the raised flowerbed (I call it a rockery, as it has rocks on it; everyone else calls it a berm) to the left of the little orange tree, and a good shot of our magnificent lawn:

The Angeles Forest campgrounds and hiking trails have been closed for months following the fires and landslides last year. Finally they have reopened, so all I need is an excuse to get out there, get hiking, and get back to nature.