Petaline: Daily Buzz of Delightful Things: June 2006

Cute pug photo

I took this at the pug gala a few years ago. I love this photo for the smoosh faced sleepy pug puppy cute factor. Enjoy!

Flowering Oregano

Not culinary or medicinal, just cool looking:

Me and the Mister cracking up

We had family photo shoot recently at my mom's house and someone, more than likely my dork of a brother, was saying something to me that was really cracking me up. The mister was dutifully trying to hold it together, but I was laughing that uncontrollable kind of laugh that makes your belly ache - Smidge was getting really bounced around for a while there. Anyhow, it was so much fun, that I just had to share.

Angelica

I have been wanting to plant some Angelica archangelica in my garden for sometime now. It's a shade loving plant that grows tall with gorgeous umbel-like flowers. Medicinally, the root of this species of Angelica is used as a bitter, meaning that it helps with digestion, as most bitter herbs do. I'm also intruiged by the prospect of candied Angelica stems, apparently popular in France as a confection. As you can see from my photo below, Angelica is stemmy:

I've found this recipe and I cannot wait to try it. I bought 2 plants just so I could play around a little bit. I'll keep you posted.

My first craving

Caprese Salad

I think I could eat it all the live long day.

Here's some beautiful food

I have made this delicious green bean salad:

from Jerry Traunfeld's first cookbook The Herbfarm Cookbook a couple of times, but it has never turned out as beautifully as it did this weekend. It has green beans, tarragon and nasturtiums and it is delish. As is every other dish I have made from this amazing cookbook.

I also love his new cookbook:

The Herbal Kitchen : Cooking with Fragrance and Flavor

If you love to cook and you love to garden, you should check those baby's out.

My new friend, Olivia

Olivia is a 3 month old bulldog. Olivia is just the most precious thing ever. She belongs to my coworker and we keep on talking about getting Sprints and Olivia together. You know I'll post pictures of that cute explosion, ASAP.

Get outta town cute:

2 free downloadable patterns from Wee Wonderfuls.

Wee Bunny

and Pointy Kitty

I am so making these for baby Smidge.

Cute blog for parents and kids

Kiddley. Chock full of fun activities and useful things. Recently, she posted about author and artist Ed Emberley who wrote the books about how to draw things using your thumbprints (Ed Emberley's Complete Funprint Drawing Book ). I had totally forgotten about those books. I used to love them when I was a kid.
Here's an image to jolt your memory (cross posted from Kiddley)

The adventures of Sprints the pug

Sprints did the Furry 5k last weeked with her gramma. Sprints is not really what you'd call a trim and fit pug, so 5k was a lot to ask of that little girl. My mom said she was a trooper though and only had to be carried a couple of times. I guess there were like a million dogs there - my mom says that Sprints ignored all of them. Typical. She's a people dog as opposed to a dog's dog. Here are some photos from the walk crossposted from Kbo's blog:

Here's Sprints with Oskar the Irish Wolfhound and Bjorn the lab mix. Oskar is like 7 feet tall.

My mom, LMB, Cosmo and Sprints.

I told my mom not to let Sprints go swimming because pugs sink like stones when they try to swim, so they took this photo just to get my goat. That's my family for you.