Vic

Our weekend excitement began early last Thursday, when we had a surprise visit from our 9-month-old grandbabies, Allison and Lauren, and their parents, Scott and Nicole. The babies had just come from their first "acting" job. They landed a big part in "Big Love," an HBO series about a polygamous Mormon family. Lauren was cast as the baby of one of star Bill Paxton's wives. Allison was on standby in case Lauren got timed out. Babies can only "work" for a limited amount of time, which is why identical twins are in demand.

The Orange County Fair is almost upon us. The fair in Costa Mesa opens July 15 and closes Aug. 14. I expect to enter some of my vegetables in the garden competition. Also, Vic and I will both be exhibiting photographs in the visual arts photography competition. It is the first time that Vic has entered, and he was thrilled to have one of his photographs accepted. He has been using our new Canon PowerShot SX30 IS, which has the equivalent of an 825-millimeter lens. With the camera's image stabilization system, it is possible to capture great close-ups of birds even without a tripod.

It’s finally raining! I was beginning to doubt predictions that this was going to be an El Niño rainy season. This weekend, I accompanied Vic on a field trip to the Sacramento and Stockton areas with his natural history class. On Friday, we visited the San Luis Reservoir, a major water storage facility along the California Aqueduct. Water from the Bay-Delta is stored there until it is sent farther south to the farms and cities of Southern California, including Huntington Beach.

Vic and I had a great week of agricultural and biological adventures with relatives and friends. Last Tuesday, I took my last large beet to the Orange County Fair to enter in the giant beet contest. Mighty Max wasn't the biggest beet that I've ever grown, but at five pounds, it was respectable. I also entered three radishes that our granddaughter Megan had grown. She had planted the radish seeds as a preschool project. Megan was the only child in her class who still had radishes surviving at the end of two weeks.

Vic and I are really enjoying our new hobby of mothing. And it isn't just about drinking wine with friends while sitting outdoors on a warm summer night. Sometimes actual moths are involved. This past Thursday in Silverado Canyon, there was no wine at all. Just some fascinating moths, beetles, bugs, mantids and even some spiders. You really never know what you're going to get. You set up a blacklight against a white sheet, sit in a folding camp chair and wait to see what comes. I enjoy this new hobby because I like taking photographs of interesting things, and because I'm learning a lot about the world of insects in the process.

Vic and I flew to Seattle last Tuesday for our granddaughter Brianna Murray's high school graduation. We left on Alaska Airlines from Long Beach Airport, which is a friendly terminal to fly from. But we still had to take off our shoes, jackets and jewelry. We can remember when we dressed up for air travel instead of undressing. From Sea-Tac Airport, we rented a Jeep Liberty and headed south to visit Vic's sister, Marg, and her husband, Jeff Blackman, in Vancouver, Wash. Their hobbies are wine-making and vegetable gardening, and we enjoyed the fruits of both of those pastimes.

I've been asked by the Orange County Conservation Corps to provide staff training on the importance of conservation. Vic is helping me prepare a PowerPoint presentation. First, we had to agree on what conservation is. Basically, to conserve means to save. A definition that suits our purpose is that conservation is the preservation, protection, management and restoration of the environment and its natural resources. Many things can be conserved. We can conserve land by removing it from private use and holding it in trust for wildlife and the enjoyment of the public.

Vic and I have three chickens but no eggs. Our hens quit laying in late October this year. I've actually had to buy eggs from the store, three dozen so far. The store-bought eggs pale in comparison to our home-grown eggs in flavor, color, and freshness. Part of the problem is that egg production slows down in winter. Another part is that all three of our hens went into molt at about the same time this year. When they are busy losing their feathers and growing new ones, they don't lay. The last part of the problem is that two of our hens are almost middle-aged.

Vic and I went to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico with our son Scott and his family over the Labor Day weekend. Our three granddaughters and baby Mike constitute an active brood, and Scott and Nicole needed our help baby-wrangling. We stayed at the Hilton Los Cabos, which is actually in the town of San Jose del Cabo, a few miles east of Cabo San Lucas. We spent most of our time in the hotel's beautiful pool. At only four feet deep, it was ideal for the little girls to practice swimming.