garden

My darling daughter picked two of my four unripe tomatoes this afternoon. I scolded her firmly and walked to set the two sad creatures on the steps. As I turned back around, I saw her engaged in picking the other two (on a different plant). She didn't get them detached, but did wound the stem; we'll see if they survive.

Rassin'-frassin kids. Get offa my lawn! Oh, wait.

(Peggy delivered as-yet-nameless son on Friday at 10:53 am).

Father's Day

In rather better news, we did father's day yesterday, since mr. flea worked today. His choice of activities:

Breakfast at Guglhupf: chocolate croissant, cherry cheese danish, fruit, good yogurt (I think it was Total), strawberry cream cheese, and assorted bread basket. Casper ran around with 3 other 2-3 year olds in the courtyard but behaved very well (one of the others was a hellion, a toy-stealer and runner-in-all-directions.)

Then to Raleigh to the Art Museum whch was having a special show of art glass. mr. flea found Dale Chihuly overrated and preferred an artist who worked in cut and polished glass and made sparklies. I was reprimanded for letting my toddler push her stoller around the glass exhibit. I was being very careful - she was not particularly exuberant, and I had my hand on the stroller handle, but I see their point: toddler. stroller. art museum. glass exhibit. Yeah. We played in the children's room for a while, then looked at the ancient art (naked statues - we looked that their bully buttons; she asked to see Heracles' butt), American art (identifying chickens and doggies in paintings), and contemporary photography (amused a roomful of people by saying, loudly, "naked!" in front of a naked guy photo). Fascinating artist, Loretta Lux, who photographs children and digitally tweaks the images. They are beautiful and peaceful yet creepy. (http://www.lorettalux.de/) As mr. flea put it, an art museum is a difficult place for an almost two year old. But she was very good indeed.

Then to Neomonde for Mediterranean Deli lunch. I gobbled baba ganoush (a difficult dish for me - if it's good I adore it, but I guess I've had a lot of bad baba) but we were winding down, Casper especially decelerating, and she fell and whacked her head on a chair when we stopped to pet a doggie on the way out. So home to nap.

After nap mr flea introduced Casper to the joys of playing in the sprinkler. See photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/casperflea/. She was shy at first but warmed up, but then got shivery fast, and with that and the mosquitoes it was a short play. Plenty for Casper, though.

After dinner we rode out to Maple View Farm (http://www.mapleviewfarm.com/) for ice cream as good as Graeter's, I kid you not. Saveur magazine even says so. mr. flea has]d a Papa Praline sundae and enjoyed the Sunday drive in the countryside. Casper counted the cars lined up next to ours: two, three, five, six, seven, nine, ten! She has an aversion to eight.