The cucumbers have done a little better, even if they did try to take over the kitchen window, we have actually got a few cucumbers off it and are hopefully of somemore. The teacher who gave Karina the plants in the first place said that as far as she knows she thinks we are the first who have actually got cucumbers from these plants.
Cherry and plump tomatos, hot and sweet peppers, we are starting to see the fruit of our labour, however as it is getting late in the season I don't hold out too much hope of the tomatos ripening. Conclusion; It's easier and cheaper buy them!
Early July I was in Germany for Leadership Meetings with some of my colleges. We were in a beautful part of the south and were staying with a partner company who looked after us really well. Unfortunitly I got very sick during the time there, which was very busy and rather than paying attention during the meetings I was falling asleep as I had been unable to sleep at night. On one of the last evenings there, we were going out to find somewhere to eat, we were going to one of the local villages and the guys decided to go by bike, to me this seemed like a bad idea as I had been so sick, but decided to go along. When we arrve in the village we finally found a really nice cafe where we ate. The picture above shows what I had to eat (sorry its a little dim, no flash on the phone!) but it is raw meat served on a hot stone and you cook it yourself to however well you want it done and you also have different sauces to dip it in. It was wonderful. Well after eating it was time to head back to where we were staying, but none of us were to sure of the correct way so after an hour of cycling up and down hills and along little lanes through farmer's fields (it was already getting dark) we finally arrived back at the cafe only to decover the road we need was a short distance the other side of the cafe and within 20 minutes we were back at our accommendation.
This is how our plants were looking in July, they were starting to take up a lot of space and Gudrun is starting to complain about loosing a lot of space to hang up laundary on the balcony. We are beginig to see signs of fruit.
On our return trip to Moscow, we had a layover of about 8 hours in Frankfurt and as we had a very early start in Ireland we were all quite tired so we were all falling asleep in McDonalds where we had camped out for the 8 hoours.
As we were in the airport so long we saw a few of Lufthansa's Airbus A380-800 coming and going. This was our first time to see one of these up close.
This is how our plants looked when we reurned the end of June. Our friend Julie had done a good job of looking after them when we had been away.
This summer we had three weeks of vacation in Ireland with family. We went shortly after the kids got out of school and of course being Ireland, you can never be too sure of how the weather will be. Daniel asked if I thought it would rain while we were there, to which the answer was almost certantly. Anyway it wasn't too bad, we really had only one bad day when it rained almost all day and it was horizontal rain! We got to do quite a lot while we were there, took the kids swimming a couple of times, to a movie, visiting friends and of course lots of shopping to take advantage of cheaper clothes prices. We stay with my (Ivor) parents and it was nice to be able to relax and spend some nice time with them. my sister and her family live right next door so the kids were able to spend lots of time with their cousins play football, riding bikes and of course the trampoline. My dad had got our old car back on the road, it had been sitting there for two years since we were last home, but it ran great and we managed to put over 1000 miles on it in the three weeks we were home and we never went anywhere that was more then 40 miles away. The last weekend we were there, the whole family came to visit and it was great to see them all, we had a great time together, went out for a meal all together, took family photos and just spent a really nice afternoon sitting around our parents house talking. The three week went all to quick, but it was time to head home and I had only a few days at home before I was off on another trip, but that's another post.