Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July to all you Americans out there! Hopefully you all will be enjoying better weather than we are here. Every year, the 4th is hot, humid and dry, dry, dry. Not so much this year. Our family has a tradition of running a race that our local running club sponsors every year on the 4th of July. This year we even got grandma out there to watch and a cousin came to run. Hopefully we'll have a few more family members involved next year ... if the weather is better. Pouring rain and 63 degrees! What's up with that? Usually we want to come home and jump in the lake. This year, we jumped into warm showers and put on our flannel pajamas! Hopefully it will clear up a bit (and warm up a lot!) before our family cook-out tonight.

The race went well despite the rain. Youngest dd won a huge trophy for second place in her 5 year and under age group with a time of about 9 minutes for a one mile race! And even better, she got to shake hands with the new Mayor! Older dd ran an amazing time. Her fastest yet, but unfortunately this year she moved up an age group and so even though she's only in 5th grade, she was competing against high school freshmen. :-(

The rain may not be great for running but hopefully my herbs will appreciate it! This year I've done all my herbs in containers. By next year I hope to have an actual herb garden laid out. Here I've got marjoram and lemon thyme and they seem to be thriving. I've also planted some dill (though it's not doing so well.) I planted a ton of basil this year. I can't find it fresh around here often so I wanted to have plenty this summer since I'm on a Caprese Salad kick. I've planted regular thyme, thai basil, mint, cilantro, parsley, chives and a few others that I can't think of at the moment. Plenty to keep me experimenting in the kitchen for the rest of the summer!
I planted some lavender a couple of years ago and it's really taken off. It's a shame I don't really know what to do with it. I just love the beautiful purple blooms and it keeps coming back bigger and better every year.