“Mom!” Annalie called out across the yard. “Look at this! I can make waterfalls. Watch.”

While Annalie swam, I drank my Coke Zero and did some editing. Yes, I do that kind of thing for fun. Yes, really.

I mentioned the other day that our tomatoes and some of our herbs had basically withered in the heat. I finally threw out all the sad, brown plants. The pots and tomato cages are waiting, neatly stacked, till I get around to taking them to the garage.

The chives and the thyme are all that remain of our container garden.

I love taking pictures of water in motion.

Annalie thinks the water photos are neat.

Lily is unimpressed. She’s so snooty sometimes. (Kidding. Lily’s a total sweetheart, not a snob at all. She just comes off that way sometimes ‘cuz she’s shy.)

Hey, look! A camera! Let’s run towards it!

The above photo is Day 51 in my photoset 180 photos for Troy on Flickr.

The day that Jill & Kevin were here we noticed our first cucumber was ready. Technically that wasn’t the first thing we’d picked from the garden since I’d been using the herbs since day one, but it was our first vegetable. (Or are cucumbers fruit, since they grow on vines like melons and pumpkins? Yes, Wikipedia says they’re technically fruit, though they’re usually considered, prepared and eaten as vegetables.)

After we’d waved our friends on their way, I asked Annalie if she wanted to eat the cucumber for a snack. She thought that was a great idea, and asked, “Can I peel it all by myself?”

Well, sure, why not? She spent a looong time making sure she got all the dark green skin scraped away. Then she asked, “Can I cut it myself, mom? I’ll be careful!” I thought about it for a few seconds. Annalie had been doing more in the kitchen recently, stirring things on the hot stove with supervision, and she’s been helping Troy make pancakes on the griddle for a while now. I figured, she’s gotta start using a sharpish knife sometime, and a cucumber’s probably a good thing to start on.

Annalie was very careful with the knife. I had to remind her several times to keep her fingers tucked under so she didn’t accidentally cut herself.

As she was slicing she chattered excitedly about how she was going to surprise Daddy with the cucumbers, and wasn’t he going to be proud of her for peeling and cutting the cucumber all by herself?

She was pretty proud of herself, for that matter.

Annalie arranged the slices on the plate she’d just painted for Troy for Father’s Day and sprinkled them with salt, which is our preferred method of eating cucumbers.

Annalie excitedly called Troy into the kitchen and presented him with the plate full of cucumber slices. Troy did a good job of being surprised and amazed to hear that Annalie had prepared the cucumber all by herself. Then we enjoyed eating our first garden-fresh cucumber.

Not a lot has been going on around here lately. Sure, we met friends for lunch and discovered a new park when some other friends invited us to join their playgroup for a birthday party, but mostly we’ve been having a lot of stay-at-home kind of days. That leads to something of a conundrum for me. Being boring does not make for good blog posts.

But the main reason I blog is so friends and family who are far away can stay caught up on our lives, and right now one very important person is far away from us: Troy.

I thank God every day that I am married to a sailor at a time when things like email and cell phones and the internet exist. I have a soft spot in my heart for snail mail, and when Troy is gone on long deployments I do send him tons of postcards and letters and care packages. But the immediacy and instant gratification of email is such a blessing when I don’t know exactly where Troy is or how long a letter will take to get to him.

Troy will only be gone a few more days, and then he’ll be home again. It’s not like a few days without talking to each other will kill us, or that he’s going to forget what his child looks like if he doesn’t see photos of her for a week. And as I said, it’s not like we’re doing anything all that exciting around here.

But I want to be in the habit of documenting small moments. When Troy’s ship deploys this summer, they’ll be gone much longer than a few weeks. When people are gone that long from home, working in a place so far removed from their normal way of life, I think the “boring” moments are the ones they want to hear about the most. Like, say, that Annalie asked to water the plants all by herself and then proceeded to do: finding the watering can, turning on the water, filling the can with the hose, carrying it up the stairs and watering all the pots.

Or about how Annalie, who usually has to be bribed to wear so much as a clip in her hair, requested ponytails the other day and then told me while admiring herself in the mirror, “You know, I used to not like ponytails. But now I think I’ll wear them every day. They’re so FASHIONABLE!” (She has only permitted ponytails once since that announcement, though.)

Or maybe it would be nice to tell the story behind this photo Annalie took of me. By herself. With the heavy, expensive D40. I could tell about how she bossed me around, telling me, “Mom, I want to take a picture of you by the lemon tree. Go stand over there!” And how when I placed the camera strap over her head and tried to remind her how to take a photo, she impatiently waved me away saying, ” know, I know! Turn this thingy to zoom, and push the silver button!”

Or I could simply let the world know how our child-labor program is coming along (nicely).

Or maybe just a photo of Annalie pretending a stick is a flute is enough.

I sometimes feel like I must be overloading you guys with information and photos. It’s like I’m the annoying person at the party, blabbing on and on about how great my kid is and showing you zillions of photos that—oh! I just happen to have in a mini-album in my purse! I worry that even the real-life friends and relatives who read this site will get sick of it.

Here, once again, I must proclaim the beauty of the internet. Those of you who are getting sick of it can just click away when you don’t feel like reading without fear of hurting my feelings. (Honestly, even if I knew you were clicking away I doubt my feelings would be hurt. Why would I want you to read something you don’t want to read!?) And those of you who can’t get enough (Hi Mom! Hi Carol!) can keep reading. And if you do, you’ll be rewarded sometimes with photos like this one.

Remember a month ago when we bought all those herbs and the tomato and cucumber plants, with the intention of potting them and having a nice little container garden?

We finally potted them this past Sunday. Yeah, I know. I KNOW. A month! But we were a little busy with the birthday parties and everything.

The good news is that all the plants managed to survive a month of semi-neglect and too-small containers. A few days ago I realized I hadn’t watered them in a while and when I went out to check on them I wasn’t sure if a couple of them could be saved. I watered them anyway, and they were fine the next day. Plants are resilient.

Annalie totally loved potting the plants. She’s always loved gardening. See?

When we were using our hands to scoop soil into various pots, Annalie said to me, “I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve ever helped you plant some plants!” I laughed and told her that actually, she’s been digging in the dirt, planting flowers, and watering gardens since she was old enough to walk. I guess since we didn’t do it last summer, in her mind that means it never happened at all. I had to dig out these photos (ya like how I say “dig out” like I’m rummaging through boxes of photos, when in reality I just clicked a mouse a few times to open archived files on the computer) to remind her of all the gardening she’s done in her short life.

Not afraid to get her hands dirty, this girl.

Annalie was also excited to plant her “bee seeds.” One of her birthday gifts was a kit for growing lavender from seeds. The brand name was “Buzzy” and there was a little cartoon bee on the package, so to her they were bee seeds. It was cute so I didn’t try very hard to correct her.

So…lavender, three kinds of basil, thyme, oregano, garlic chives, tomatoes, and cucumbers. We’ll see how they grow.