From Susan

Hi Dad,
I want to talk about the weather.

For three days, we've had strong afternoon and evening thunderstorms. On Tuesday afternoon, I was downtown and had to pull my car over under a big tree to take cover from dime-sized hail. There were six tornadoes on the other side of Denver, but fortunately they did very little damage. On Wednesday, it hailed at our house for about 15 minutes, but it was quite small and didn't damage too many plants: I used every pot, saucer, and lid I had to protect my vegetable garden!

So, with another round of storms in the forecast for Thursday afternoon, I got down to business and built my first "hail tunnel", a semi-permanent protective cover for the vegetable garden.

A "hail tunnel"

I didn't have much time: it started to rain as I erected it over the onions, lettuce, carrots, and zucchini. I rushed inside, got my camera ready, and soon two big storms rolled through and... no hail.

Great! If building this thing protects me from hail this summer, I won't complain!

There's more information about the materials I used on my garden blog:
http://teamspgarden.blogspot.com/

Paul
Paul has spent the week in Alaska. He had a conference on Wednesday and Thursday, but on Tuesday he went birding. He also drove down to Whittier, which he called "the most beautiful place he'd ever been to in his whole life."

Whittier, Alaska

Since Paul took the iPad with him on his trip, I haven't been able to check Facetime. He (and the iPad) will be back on Friday.

Mom
I talked to Mom for awhile tonight. She's doing well; we're both eager to find out what name the new baby will have!

She told me that she's going to an eye appointment Friday morning. She thinks she'll be able to see you in the afternoon and I hope she will-- but those eye drops take forever to wear off whenever I have to have them. I hope she has nice dark sunglasses!

Tootsie and Daisy
Tootsie does not like the thunderstorms. After all, they are not intimidated by her; she can't make them go away with a hard stare. Late this morning, she aborted our greenbelt walk because she heard distant thunder. She trotted hastily back to the car, and then when we got home, rushed under the office desk.

I finally took pity on them and moved the big bed under the desk. I took this picture around 3pm this afternoon:

Dizzy
Dizzy, Anna and Jeremy's new dog, is settling in beautifully. And there was a surprise: Anna took Dizzy to the vet for a checkup, and the vet exclaimed: "This isn't a pit bull! This is a Boxer and American bulldog mix."

I decided to google "white boxer bulldog mix" and immediately saw about a hundred pictures of dogs that looked just like Dizzy.

So, the shelter had it wrong!

That's all for now!
Susan