81°F In Late Feb = AWESOME!

Just when we figure we can’t spend more time outdoors, it hits 81F and we find ourselves eating almost every meal outdoors!  This last week had some awesome weather, and we did some really nice runs from the gym (after we climbed of course!).

Friday we had a small public tour of TGen, called DNA By Moonlight, which was a lot of fun.  There were about 60 people from the community who had the chance to see 6 labs and got a small schpeal about what we do, and how the technology works.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and there were some students who came that were compelled to look a little more at our Helios Scholarship program.
Afterwards we decided to try and make Grandma's Ice Cream Dessert.  It was an absolute favorite of mine growing up and I hadn't had it in years.  It's not the healthiest of things, but how can butter and sugar wafers be healthified!?!  We did make one small mistake (adding the chocolate on top when it was too warm), but it only made a small difference.  The rest was GREAT, and I think we have some guests coming out in a few weeks (G&G Syring, and John & Margaret) that might like to try some...:) 

Saturday we did some much needed yard work by completely removing our cactus from our front yard.  It was a nice cactus, but we just didn’t want it in our yard.  The root ball posed a challenge in that it was rooted pretty well in the ground, and heavy as hell.  But that’s one of the reasons we got a truck…J  With a little ingenuity and some horsepower I was able to rip it out of the ground no problem.  Mara helped hack some of the weight off and we tossed it in the truck and hauled it to the dump.  Our replacement Ficus tree should be installed next weekend.

Sunday was pretty packed as well.  We started on a 10mi bike ride that turned into a 16mi bike ride.  The trails we looked at on Google Maps didn’t show the fenced off areas that we couldn’t get past, so we had to ride quite a ways out of our way to get around it.  It felt great, but we all needed a nap that afternoon!
One thing that has kept Rohan busy the last few weeks was a planting project.  Mara and I are notoriously bad cultivators of plants.  We have literally killed bamboo, and all that needs is water once a month.  Given that we live in an area that gets 300+ days of sun per year we picked up some small starter pots and some basil & parsley seeds to plant.  We found a nice kit that has a sort of built in greenhouse and it made the plants come up pretty quickly.  Rohan has been fascinated with them and how they will "grow really big".  We transplanted the three smaller pots to a new, larger pot so they can continue growing.  We also got some more seeds, this time lavender in hopes of perfuming the kitchen nicely, and also got some cilantro.  It will be great if we can start a little herb garden that we can even start to cook with.