When we last left you, we were still in Jackson. That would be the town that has dead stuffed animals on its buildings. But at least the beer is real. On the way out of town we snapped this picture of the Gun Barrel restaurant where we had dinner the night before.
Back in Logan, Momthra and Anna made Piroshki all day. Why is Momthra smiling? Because she rearranged our dish drainer, moved our toaster, and restructured our freezer.

Anna and Momthra made hundreds of piroshki. We are well stocked.

Momthra spotted this cool dolphin-shaped cloud. We had to take a picture.

Lately we've been getting wild clouds. Just tonight, in fact, a thunderstorm passed through. It stayed and rumbled for about an hour, but dropped the temperature 15 degrees.

Momthra left on Saturday, and that evening our friends Andrew and Dorian showed up (oh, and Ruby). They came from Fresno bent on bringing us alcohol and seeing if Utah was truly as weird as we described it. They left satisfied it was.

Yes, we can't forget Ruby, their Chihuahua.

Yes, Ruby is tiny even by Chihuahua. standards. But cute. Definitely cute.

They spent two days here, and on the last night we had a nice chicken dinner and enjoyed the wonderful wine they brought.

Andrew is a wonderful photographer, and he took a number of great flower shots. These next few are his pictures of Anna's flowers.
 
 

This is another Andrew picture. This one and the next one he took while we were in the Wal-Mart garden center here in Logan.

 

Andrew, Dorian, and Ruby left Monday morning which happened to be Memorial day. Anna was in a crafting mood, so she painted these cute stars we got from Joanne's.

And her crafting was not limited to painting stars. They say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans," so when in Utah, do as the Mormons - scrapbook.

Anna scrapbooked all of our pre-wedding, wedding, and honeymoon pictures in one beautiful book. Jordy gripes about Anna scrapbooking, but really he knows she does it out of love (and more artistically than most).

And the farmers' market has started again. Yeah! Right now it's more crafts and plants than fruits and veggies, but we're just glad it's started again!

Meanwhile our own garden has taken off and just about everything is growing quite well.

Our corn and giant sunflowers are growing. Soon we'll have to thin the corn - but, damnit, we're not thinning the GIANT SUNFLOWERS!

After a slow start, the bok choy (top) and butter lettuce (bottom) are doing incredibly well.

In front Anna's star dahlias are coming up. That gap between the dahlias and the sweet peas are where the stargazer lilies are supposed to be. They're MIA.

And in the last row we have three tomato plants (which are recently caged) that are viewed here through our shallot forest.

Here's the same row from a different perspective. Our cilantro is enjoying the hot weather, but I wish we could say the same for our sad basil at the bottom of the shot. It doesn't help that everyone's garden plots have been overrun by Mormon crickets.

Anna attended the Fife Folklore seminar where she met Robb (far right), who invited Sabina (next to Robb) back to his partner Ken's house for drinks.

We all became fast friends and had a wonderful time.

And Ken manned the kitchen - and what a glorious kitchen it is, and the house too! Truly a breath of fresh air!

Speaking of houses, the next night we offered to help our friends John and Melissa clean out the house they're having built.

Their house is in a little town called Providence, just south of Logan (about ten minutes from our apartment).

You know you're really nobody in Providence unless you own a really big broom.

Like most houses in the area, they've got a huge basement. And in this basement John (and his broom) rule.

Utah Gothic.

...And this is the children's room.

We'll end with this shot Andrew took of us before they left.

We've already loaded up the camera, but who knows when we'll have the roll completed. Happy early summer!