Last weekend we decided to dig a second vegetable patch. We are running short of space in the first one!

We might as well make it big, so we allocated a 24ft x 5ft plot and staked it out. The northern side of the plot (on the left of the picture) will at some point have a nice fence running across the garden to divide it up between the tidy lawn side (eventually it will be a real lawn) and the mucky vegetable patch side.

Our existing ‘lawn’ looks like this before we start – crab grass and wood-chip mulch. We have to rake as much of this up off the surface as possible, before we can start digging out the roots of the weeds.

Jamie raking the mulch and weeds. Hot work in the sun!

Digging is hard work too – constantly bending down to pick out the roots and bash the earth off. These are the crab grass roots: each plant is a mess of roots, probably 5-10 large white roots per plant, each up to 2ft long. You have to dig these up completely; if you leave even a small bit in the ground, they will grow back!

Weeds mostly removed from most of the plot. There will be stragglers…

Some of the new border is now in place. It feels like we’re really starting to conquer the garden, now, with two veg patches and even a pathway between them!

Jamie cooling off in the hose – this felt so refreshing! We dried off in minutes.

Next door’s tiny noisy cat, adventuring on our porch.

Squirrels have been chewing on the main overhead power lines running into our house – apparently they like to sharpen their teeth on it. Four or so of the six strands of the main earth cable, providing the mechanical strength for it, were chewed away. It could have been catastrophic given a few more months or years.

We called the Pasadena City chaps in, to have a look (luckily this is their responsibility to maintain), and they declared it a Code One Red Emergency and repaired it straight away!

Nice shiny new cable glinting in the sunlight:

This is a low-flying bomber on Memorial Day, on the same day as the Spring Bank Holiday in the UK. There were also seven planes in formation, making several passes up and down the valley – most impressive.

Memorial Day Burger, that evening, at Jean and Marcos’ house.

We’ve splashed out on another new piece of furniture for the dining room, a cabinet/dresser type thing with cupboards and some wine storage space. A flat-pack job from CostPlus, with reasonable quality wood (mostly solid hardwood) and a nice dark ‘distressed’ finish.

Assembled, it really completes the room – and makes it look a little less like we’ve just moved in.

First pickings from the courgette plant – we have had several more since – they are tasty!

Dad came to visit for a few all-too-short days, this last weekend. He was able to squeeze it in before a work trip to Chicago, not exactly ‘on his way’, but worth doing while on the same land mass at least.

We had a very good weekend, eating and drinking far too much, with a big Sunday lunch: sixteen of us around the table – a real testament to the space in our dining room, and to the sheer volume of cutlery, crockery, serving plates, chairs etc we have accumulated so far! Pictures to follow…

There was also an excellent meal at Noir (one of our favourite restaurants), breakfast on the porch, a barbeque at Ken and Celeste’s, a brief visit to Santa Monica and the beach, a walk around Griffith Observatory overlooking the city of Los Angeles, plenty of driving around with the top down, and an Ethiopian meal. Quite a busy weekend. Again it was great to be able to share some of the more local experiences.