Had a small panic this week that the tomato plant was dying, but have started putting plant food in the water and now it seems fine.

The Blackberry and Strawberry plants are happy as clams:

The pole beans are stagnant and haven’t figured out how to climb yet:

The peppers seem happy, but are still about the same:

and the herbs have grown enough that they had to be separated:

(teens… heehee)

Maybe next week I’ll have something more exciting to report…

This is Celia (Cici for short) on the day she came home from the Humane Society.

And this is her today, a little more than 2 months later:

Okay, so maybe she looks about the same in photos, but trust me, she’s a few ounces heavier and a few hair mats softer than she was back then.

She’s such a wonderful addition to our home that I strongly encourage anyone looking for a pet to find one at your local animal shelter! Choose an animal that is right for you and give it the loving home that it deserves for the rest of its life. It will bring you more joy than you know!

GARDENING

I truly do not have green thumb, but I am determined that if I try a little bit each year, eventually I will learn enough from my mistakes and successes to be able to have a garden full of happy plants.

Let’s take a look at my little patio garden:

This year, I’m being rather ambitious by taking on the following projects:

A tomato plant:

(I was advised to buy the largest plant they had)

A blackberry plant (!):

I am using a technique I found in this article.

Pole Peas:

Grown from seed they were super easy.

Two red bell pepper plants:

3 Strawberry plants (not pictured)

and an Herb Garden with Chives, Parsley and Cilantro:

Wish me luck!

these beauties from Crate and Barrel — $36.95

a lightweight hand mixer; this 5 speed from KitchenAid is at Target–$39.99

‘skunk duster’ from Pier 1 –$8.99

(ps they have a ton of other super-cute animal household products too)

ginger-peach ROOM SPRAY from Pier 1 — $7.00

a lemon zester. this OXO one is $6.00, google

a second recipe box–this one from RecipeKeeping.com for $18.99

You have exactly one month to meet my demands, people.

AdeChicke — Terribly cheesy music, but I did get goosebumps at one point, so … 7/10

Alex Wong — hmmm, that was underwhelming. And I was waay too distracted by the shininess of his partner’s pants to pay attention to Alex. 7/10

Ashley — I liked this. v sexy. 8/10

Billy Bell — where was the edge? where was the heavy? girlfriend was hitting all her marks and Billy was bounding around like a baby deer in the forest. bleh 3/10

Robert — WOW. so super hot. he is so sexy in those pants. hot damn. 9/10

Melinda — I like this. v pretty. 8/10

Jose — that was actually pretty good! they were in sync, and he seemed to get most of the moves. 8/10

Megan, no, wait. Lauren — I still don’t like Megan/Lauren, but I kind of got into this. Although, now that I think about it, there wasn’t much ‘dancing’, was there? so maybe… 4/10? (she’s going home)

Kent — what is this!?! an S&M brothel?? awesome. so much chemistry. and neither was showing the other up. loved it. 10/10!

With my calculations, that puts Billy and Megan in the bottom 3, plus either Christina, AdeChicke or Alex. But of course, that’s not going to happen. So… Megan, Christina and Melinda will be in the bottom 3.

…that is all.

1. Alex Wong
2. Sexy Robert
3. Billy Bell
4. Spicy Christina
5. Jose “Full Deck” Ruiz (how come they’re not using that on the show?)
6. Kent from Hicksville
7. AdeChicke
8. Alexie (already gone)
9. Ashley, Melinda, Lauren?… who are they again?

and can I just say that while this new format of having an ‘all-star’ dance with the contestants is a good concept, it’s mighty confusing to those of us who are new to the franchise, because half the time I’m not sure which dancer I’m supposed to be watching, and the  all-stars are so amazing to watch, I almost don’t want to pay attention to the actual contestant. not sure that’s the best strategy for winning and keeping viewers, SYTYCD, but whatever.

Ya think Indian-Americans are the most inherently funny people, or is that just NBC’s opinion?

And speaking of NBC, how bout a shout out to Mindy Kaling (Kelley Kapoor) of the Office for being a writer, producer, and actor on one of America’s favorite comedies for over 6 years now. We need more amazing women like her in television, Indian or otherwise. (but if they’re Indian then I’ll write about them here)