Our home town before moving to Costa Rica was Lafayette. It’s about a 20 minutes drive East of Boulder. Every year they have two fun festivals; Oatmeal Festival in January and then Peach Festival in August. We were very excited to attend as we missed last year’s due to scoping out where we were going to move to in Costa Rica. This years was even bigger than two years ago. More art, food, games for kids, live music, and of course peaches!

It was a hot sunny afternoon so we drove with the windows down and listened to Jim’s new “Indie Mix.” (I love that he’s getting more into music I like. Hahaha.)

When we first started walking we were excited to see The Styria Bakery stand. Styria is the part of Austria where my sister-in-law and her husband got married just last month.

So many people! Our first stop was to get Jim some peach cobbler (which he shared a bite with me) and then walked around. We got there late in the day so many of the food vendors were running out of food so i missed out on falafel. Oh well.

They had rides for kids too, which they didn’t have a couple years ago. After walking up and down Public Road checking out all the options and comparing the prices of peaches I decided I needed some roasted corn. We got some and found a nice shady spot in the grass.

Jim put some spicy stuff on his.

I loaded up on pepper (or course) and a little salt.

Happy to have eaten such juicy sweet corn!

We went back to the peach vendor we liked and got a large sack of peaches (some of which we’ll eat right away) and others we’ll freeze before heading to my good friend Coleen’s wedding this week. The stand we chose was local and organic and also had the cutest shirts that said “Don’t squeeze the peaches.”

We then headed over to our friends Kate and Sita’s house. They bought a place in Lafayette just as we were moving back to CO. We now live in Kate’s old place in Boulder. I was SO excited to check out their garden. Kate built the beds!

They have all kinds of goodies growing including tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, beets, chard, and melon!

Kate and Jim used to work together at HP and are super fond of each other. Scratch that, we’re all fond of each other!

It was nice to relax, eat a little (I brought a veggie and bean quinoa pilaf), and chat with people. They have such nice friends and family.

While sitting there an old war plane flew overhead. I had such a fun time watching some boys at the party play together. Remember when it didn’t take much for us to be entertained, all we needed was to be outside? These boys reminded me of the simple joys of life and the never ending curiosity and wonder that’s inside us all.

Now, did you notice that I forgot to take photos of both the peach cobbler that Jim ate and the sack full of peaches we bought?! I know, it doesn’t seem like much of a Peach Festival without the photos, but trust me, peaches were the focal point.

Within a few days of each other Jim celebrated an anniversary, I turned 27, and we moved into our new place. It was the perfect occasion for a party. Luckily the weather was beautiful so we grilled and ate lots of other great food (lots of vegan options)! It was so fun to catch up with friends and just enjoy spring. (As a side note: for the first time I feel weird about getting older.)

Delicious salad made by SimJam.

Of course our friends didn’t start showing up until 30 minutes after we said we’d start grilling.

I love Marc, and I appreciate his interest in being the grill master, because after the veggies were done I didn’t want anything to do with the grill. Some people have to have their meat.

Rick making burgers. Poor guy, I threatened him not to get his meat hands on any of my stuff.

Annabel gave us the coolest glass platter that is perfect for our coffee table as a housewarming gift. It’s so colorful! She also gave me the sweetest silver friendship necklace for my birthday. (I’m wearing it in the photos). Funny thing was that the weekend before we were at her housewarming party, though she actually bought a house. I had the most incredible experience with her while helping her shop for her party. With out all the details, I found out that her mother (who passed away last year from brain cancer) was the most influential woman in my life (other than my own mother) in terms of instilling a passion for food within me. This revelation lead me to drop all my self-doubt about pursuing a career in food (and both of us crying in the middle of Super Target). It was beyond incredible. Here’s a photo of us at her party:

Here are some of my friends forgetting that they are white and live in Boulder, therefore negating any toughness they may have.

My friend Gabe became a vegan while we were in Costa Rica! Love this rascal.

Natalie looking oh so summery. She brought us a flowering violet orchid that reminds me of Costa Rica.

So great that Adam came up from Denver. Wish he’d move back to the bubble!

This became the “smoking section.”

Lita and Sasha both went crazy when they saw Marissa. She and her husband Jeff used to watch the girls for us when we’d go away. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in 8 months the girls remembered and greeted her with exuberance.

Lisa (on the left) has been my biggest mentor and hero since we met almost nine years ago. She and Ashley are gems.

Marissa kindly asked me what seeds I’d like to have as a housewarming gift to plant in our gardens. Isn’t she the cutest?!

Baby Eliza is the cutest chunk of a baby you’ll ever see. She’s so social and smiley. Alisha gave us a gorgeous blue hydrangea plant that reminds me of Costa Rica.

Kate, used to work with Jim at HP and also used to live in our place. (She and Sita just bought a place in Lafayette.) We were thrilled to get in touch with the landlord before they had started advertising.

Natalie, Kurt, and Cecilia are our next door neighbors (and rock). Cecilia loves Sasha and Lita. It was great that Kate and Sita came from Lafayette as we didn’t get to chat with them much at their housewarming party the week before. Fun for them to be able to see the work that was done on the place and Kate’s old neighbors and friends.

This didn’t last long as most people were more interested in going to play frisbee golf.

It was such a fun party, with lots of great friends, food, and lovely weather. It’s times like these when it’s nice to be back in Boulder and I don’t miss the beach in Costa Rica so much.

Our friends Heidi and Noah petitioned to their HOA to build a community garden. It passed and they/we built one. Not many people were interested in it so we were granted a generous amount of space. The sides of the raised beds and the door are made of old fencing that their HOA replaced, the soil and rebar came from Heidi and her connections with the Broadway construction project (she had a buddy dump the dirt over the fence, and some of the fencing was donated too. Noah and another guy along with Jim’s help did most of the work. Then, between Noah and Heidi and Jim and I, we got a bunch of bags of top soil and compost and Noah got some llama manure. Before adding all those goodies to the dirt, we sifted all the large rock out of the dirt with a giant sift Noah made. The soil is awesome!

The Boulder Community Gardens had a plant sale a few weekends in a row and Noah, Heidi, Jim and I went wild and purchased a ton of plants and seeds. It was way too cold for a couple weeks after getting the plants so they had to stay inside. (It has snowed 6 times since we got back at the end of April!) When it got warm enough we planted. Most of our plants and seeds went to the community garden, but the herbs and edible flowers were planted in pots at our place. We’ve also planted some more seeds at out place. I see the whole thing as being a massive science experiment on growing and sustainability. I planted a tea garden at the preschool I used to work at, have had potted flowers, tended to the preschool’s garden, and planted lilies last year at our old house (which have grown back this year!) but other than that I haven’t had a proper garden since I was a kid (and that was really my mom’s garden). I’ve been so impressed by the generosity and hard work of our friends. It’s fun to be apart of something you do as a group, each of us checking on the garden to see if things need to be watered, pruning, weeding, and replanting when critters have dug things up. It really turned out to be an awesome garden.

These first photos were taken a few days after planting. Jim and I love riding our bikes there when it’s warm.

Two weeks after planting we stopped by the same time our friends Noah and Heidi did. They had planted a week earlier but our seeds had started to sprout too!

Three and a half weeks after planting we were delighted to find that our tomato plants were bearing fruit and our cucumber and yellow squash seeds were sprouting (which we had only planted a week before)! The rest of the plants really burst with life.

Jim and I went again today to check on them and even with cold temperatures and 3 days of rain everything looks great. I’ve been educating myself on how to care for plants, esp. pruning and harvesting. It’s quite fun. One of our spinach plants is ready for it’s first harvest!

We lucked out with this place by knowing the previous tenant (who just bought a house). The landlord was born in this house and then moved to the house next door when he was young. He inherited both houses when his mother passed away. Another thing about our landlord is that he’s hard of hearing and very adamant about us being non-smokers (which we both are, thankfully) as both his parents died of lung cancer. He and his wife (with the help of some others) did a ton of work on the place before we moved in, including new carpet and linoleum, paint on the walls, adobe-like plaster on a few walls, and a new stove and hood. His wife also gave us a bunch of huge pots to plant in which I was ecstatic about. The funny thing about our landlord is that he really likes all the old details (check out the cupboards) that keep the place looking like it did when he was a boy. Our landlord’s main handy-person is this man who rents a room in a trailer, wears a crystal around his neck, talks like Jimmy Stewart, and communicates with cats via his higher self. He’s pretty much awesome and loves Sasha and Lita.

So our place is pretty great. It’s 3 blocks from my favorite Sip House, Ideal Market (AKA mini Whole Foods), and a bunch of other neat things. We’re also 5 blocks from Pearl Street, which is rad. It’s been great to walk down to Pearl for dinner or to meet up with friends. As for the house itself, we’ve got a great big open yard that we share with the house next door. It’s got a lovely apple tree (which is great to hang a hammock from), a picnic table, and along one side of the house there is garden space. Inside it’s about 600 square feet, 1/4 the size of the townhouse we owned before leaving for Costa Rica, but we’ve found we don’t need much space. We still haven’t really used the space off the kitchen. Jim pointed out that no matter where we live, we always don’t use one space. My favorite part of our place is our red claw-foot tub.

The first night at our place (which was the day the stove was put in) I cooked up a curry meal for us and we watched a movie, before sleeping on our blow-up mattress (which we did for almost 2 weeks before getting out bed). We hadn’t moved everything into the place yet, so check out the plants on chairs, and our nifty laptop console.

The following day Jim built a fence for the girls. Actually, it’s really for us, so that we don’t always have to put on a lease when they just need to go potty or want to lay in the dirt in the sun.

Check out that cute butt!

The girls were very interested in sniffing everything out in their new hang out place. They approved!

While Jim put the last touches on the fence I planted in the massive pots we were given. Lots of flowers, including organic edible ones, and a bunch of fresh herbs, which took 2 weeks to become fully vibrant and cheerful.

My next post will be on the garden space along the side of our house, but here’s some lovely Irises that were there already.

Jamie Oliver taught 1000 people to cook a stir-fry dish in 5 days! This is only one of the ways he achieved it. I’ve been a mega-fan of Jamie’s for years and I’m so thrilled about his mission to help change the way people eat by teaching them how to cook.