This Year's Garden Lee and I returned from our vacation to a jungle of a yard.  We then spent the next three Saturdays (hard to believe we were actually in town three weekends in a row!) working in the yard.  The first weekend was maintenance.  The second weekend was the garden and backyard and the third weekend a little more maintenance and the front yard. It's a bit astounding how much time it all takes - and we don't even have a big or manicured yard! We had a lot of fun choosing flowers to plant along the house in the front.  We've been wanting to do that for a few years now and finally did it.  We also finally repotted our little maple tree, filled our existing pots with new life and our garden FINALLY got planted.  We certainly hope we can keep it alive despite the extreme drought conditions.  Lastly, we paid a new friend from our church (arborist) to do some major tree clean up.  We really like the result -- and we are surprised by how much more open parts of our yard feels.   We laid down some weedblocker and added mulch to those areas and we hope we can keep it looking better than usual from here on in. 

Riding Buddies I've also been taking advantage of the longer (and warmer) days and being in town to spend more time on my bike.  It's been exactly a year since I dusted off my bike after an all-too-long-hiatus and started my climb back to fitness.  It's a slow process, but there is progress and it feels good.  Santa Cruz Sunset My return to cycling has been well timed since I've made a new friend from my church who is a cyclist (actually does Iron Men races) and we have been able to get out and ride together.      The most recent ride we did was a couple of weeks ago.   We rode from our homes in Fremont to Santa Cruz.  It's the longest ride I've done in years and we were both pretty wiped out when we got there.  But it was beautiful and so satisfying.  Her husband and boys and Lee met us at the beach where we had a lovely evening.  Lee made us delicious dutch oven dinner and dessert and we enjoyed just hanging out.  It was a surprisingly warm and pleasant evening on the beach and we were sorry when we had to head back.   I look forward to more outings like this over the summer.  Evening at the Beach with the Gutierrez