Dear Vampires,

Please stay a healthy distance away from our house. Otherwise, I'll garlickify you.

Chrissie and I harvested our garlic this week. All in all, I think that it turned out to be a good crop. When we first planted the garlic, I was a little worried because my dad told us that garlic didn't grow well up here because they didn't get enough sun. Sure, we didn't get huge heads of garlic like you see at the super market, but we got something. I like to think they look like the stuff we would find at farmer's market. They will sit in our pantry for a few weeks to dry and then we will use them.

We are already talking about how we can do better next year. First, we are going to try spacing the cloves farther apart. Second, we are going to look specifically for "hard neck" variety garlic to plant. Hard neck garlics grow better in more northerly lattitudes. I don't know what kind we got this year. I picked the ones we got because they were a German variety and figured that our climates would be similar enough for the garlic to do well.

A couple of other things to note this week for me. I went on a vegetarian trip on Tuesday and Wednesday. Totally unintentionally, but that only makes me prouder of myself. However, I think I can only handle a couple days there, tops. Today, I ate fried chicken for lunch and more chicken for dinner. I'm trying to get Chrissie on board for roasting a chicken for dinner over the weekend. Does being a vegetarian count for a couple days if I just make up for it the day I go back?

Also, thanks a bunch to the guys at Morgan's on Crown Hill. We had a leaky outdoor faucet and the normal hardware stores didn't have the washer I needed (Lowe's and Home Depot). Granted, I have one of those complicated frost-proof faucets, but it shouldn't be hard to find a bloody washer. Anyway, the guys at Morgan's were really nice and spent half-an-hour with me figuring it out (sometimes it's hard to find a bloody washer). That's the kind of thing I really appreciate, so I think I'll be going there in the future for stuff.