Our New Buddha

Dylan enjoys the statue we won at the Pesto Festo silent auction.

Pesto Festo

We celebrated Pesto Festo, the annual end of the season fundraiser for Sweetwater, on May 2nd.  I hung out for a while with Kaiser and some friends by the creek.  I really enjoyed listening in as Kaiser and Chloe discussed the fact that the sounds of their names started the same way even though they had different first letters.  Early literacy skills at work!
Lorie was volunteering, she washed the greens for the salad, lots and lots and lots of fresh greens.  Then hung out with us and Judy and Billie for supper.
I participated in the first (and last?  or annual?) organic fashion show.  Here is one of my outfits; I bought the pants.
The food was great.  

So was the music.  Dance music courtesy of the Urban Gypsies, enjoyed by all, hula hoops or not.

The Planter's Ball

We celebrated the beginning of the season at our farm last night, even though two city sewage line breaks that flooded our creek and well with sewage made our fields unuseable this year, and forced the heartbreaking plowing under of early crops. Luckily we have other fields available, the organic farmers are a supportive community and our farm will have a good season even if it starts later than usual.

We had a great potluck dinner; the vegan and vegetarian tables were overflowing with tasty dishes.

Jen and Mark are taking a break before tackling dessert.

The Urban Gypsies play regularly at Sweetwater Organic Farm parties, they do everything from bluegrass to roots rock and are easy to dance or hula hoop to.

Kaiser had a great time playing with his new farm friend.

It was a very good weekend

Pesto Festo is the big annual fundraiser for Sweetwater Organic Community Farm. Leigh and I (we now share a membership with Jen and Leigh, alternating weeks to pick up) went early to cook but found the cooking pretty much done when we got there. Here are some people finishing up the salad. The tables were ready and waiting.
And the people came and ate. There's Mark and Greg on the right, digesting.
The lines were long and the food was worth it. This year they made some vegan/wheat free pesto -- no cheese in the pesto and long skinny strands of zucchini instead of pasta. Everyone loved it!

There was great ice cream donated by The Old Meeting House for dessert, organic coffee donated by Whole Foods, a silent auction (someone won a trip with Mark on the sailboat he crews on Thursday nights) and live music by the Urban Gypsies.



The next day, Mother's Day, I awoke to a fabulous box of chocolates. I love when the box includes an identification guide.
Plus a gift card to the new chocolate place right near us.

Later we went to the Tampa Theatre to see a very moving film, The Visitor. Highly recommended. Thanks, Mom, for recommending it to us.

And finally, we totally stuffed ourselves at The Melting Pot. It's fun every five years or so.

Typical lazy Sunday

This is absolutely my favorite thing about living in Florida. A gorgeous sunny clear day, perfect for eating a relaxing breakfast, reading a couple newspapers by the pool (one takes an hour, the other takes the rest of the day), migrating out to the yard after a while with the magazine section or a book, Mark coming home from the farm with enough food for our dinners this week, the last pickup of the season. Then, we are on our own veggie-wise until late fall.

Just came across an interesting local show, Flashpoint, with Brendan McLaughlin. There was an intelligent interview with people involved with the making of a Norwegian documentary on the trial of Sami al Arian and a thoughtful political commentary. I'm happy to have found this show (and hope I remember it exists by next week), and welcome the unusually progressive attitude for a public figure in Tampa. It's not totally surprising since Brendan McLaughlin sometimes can be heard hosting a music program on WMNF, my other favorite thing about living in Tampa.