Winter garden

After the relative success of my summer garden, I had grand notions of a fall/winter garden overflowing with kale and peas.  I planted about 10 weeks ago.  Here's my progress.

Foreground: mesclun mix, arugula, cilantro and mini Romaine.
Middle: snap peas.
Back: I tried to grow beets, kale and green beans ... and
those broccoli plants are left over from the summer.

I actually planted this broccoli back in April - by September it still
hadn't produced a darn thing.  I left a couple plants in just to see what
would happen.  Check it out!  Only took seven months to grow a
golf-ball-sized head.

Kale and beets ... but the kale leaves are only about 1 cm long, and the
beets grew sorry little greens ... and nothing else.

Container kale ... which is doing much better than my garden kale.

Container mesclun mix.

The Chinese Circus

The Chinese Circus was in town a few weeks ago, and Jeremy and I decided to take the girls. We have been wanting to get them out to performances more, as there are so many good kid-friendly ones here.

They loved it. I would have gotten more pictures, but, like Carrefour, the circus employs a good number of intimidating guys in suits whose sole job is to make sure that you don't take photos.  I got nabbed halfway through.

In this case, I think maybe the security guys were on the payroll of the Chinese government. My guess is they don't want anyone to know that they send their fourth-string performers to places like the former Soviet Union, where a good portion of the population doesn't need convincing that communism is awesome.  After watching the opening ceremony to the Beijing games, I had figured that anyone representing the Chinese government would be able to dance in sync.  Alas, this was not the case at the circus.  So communism: still not awesome.

But the girls loved it, and certainly there was some neat stuff to see.

Some seriously strong dudes. 

Natasha's favorite.  My covert camera operation was shut
down right after this photo - but this lady was later hoisted up
 on that ring and did some neat acrobat stuff.

The kid on top is 9. 

Afterwards, the girls had fun entertaining us with their own circus tricks.