The Garden

The boys are doing much better. We are all learning again about all the safety tips one should remember. There are quite a few actually. I'm still very comfortable with living where we do. I called and left a message for the "Inpector of the Precinct" -- she called me back the same day and was a WOMAN - in charge of my local police station! Coming from Chicago "land of pissy male cops" (except for steve) - it was refreshing to have a female police connection. Also there is a person who's title is "Crime Prevention" - another female. They both emailed me and called me and gave me a lot of information about crime in your hood and how to be safer about it. The one male that I've dealt with had the advise of checking with my local precinct and to ''stay inside."

Knowing that was really lame advise I have spent time every day watering in the front yard. But no walking in the neighborhood at night. I am going to go on the next hood walk that a local group puts together. I think it might be this Tuesday night. They meet at a restaurant and then walk the streets for a while.

We have a lot in bloom right now. I do love the garden (it is WAY better than the gravel and dirt of the past two years) - but I can't wait for a more "lived in" garden. Everything looks so planned to me, and too controlled looking. I like it when the flowers and plants go different directions in the garden.


The bee, the bee, see the bee???


Erika and I went to a nursery and bought flowers for all the front yard containers.





this is the water in the fountain. we bought an awesome fountain from costco.


we bought vegies from the lcs plant sale (the kid's school) and love picking salad before dinner. tonight we had a great one with romaine, bib, dill, chives - then we added tomatoes and black olives from the store. the kids eat more when they know it was something that was grown at the land school (lcs's farm school). zane is thrilled that the banana pepper plant he picked out is starting to have peppers grow he is also amazed at seeing all the different buds that will become peppers.

Guards Back Up

We had an altercation here in the 'hood - luckily nobody was hurt.

Last night Cody, Graham, and my nephew Wes were robbed by two guys, one with a gun!

The boys were really shaken up, but did just what the guys asked and got away without a scratch.
But what a f-ing episode.

The story is as follows:

I asked the three of them to walk or ride bikes to The Wedge (our local co-op) just a few blocks away.
We needed more fruit of course! They wanted to also walk to get a movie from Blockbuster a few
more blocks away. It was between 8 and 8:15 when they left the house - plenty light here still. It gets dark around 9:30pm. They went to the movie place, then The Wedge, then were walking back on the street just north of us,
at some point they noticed some guys walking ahead of them. These two guys kept turning and looking back at them, this made them feel like something was going to happen. The two guys started to slow their pace and quickly they were just a few feet from them - when the two guys turned to them, one of the guys showed them the gun by pulling it amost out of his pants and putting it back - asking them "wanna get shot tonight?" this question was quickly followed by "empty your pockets" - they took cash from Cody, Graham's wallet (but not his cell phone) and Wes's wallet. Unfortunately they made off with almost $75 - Wes had extra cash for being up here for two weeks. At some point the two guys kicked the grocery bags out of their hands as well - I guess when they asked for them to empty their pockets. The two guys took off down the street and my guys started walking the SHORT DISTANCE TO OUR HOUSE - just around the corner. We called 911 and they sent a couple cars which drove around looking for them and two cops came to the house to get the story, etc. We did hear on the radios that they caught one that matched the description, but didn't hear more about it last night. I emailed the contact for our block club and a contact for our neighborhood organization group. This contact sent me an email saying she was forwarding my email to several folks in the police force. Today I got a call from the Sgt for our case. He thinks he has a line on these guys and wants the boys to come look at some photos and give more details for their description. I'm taking them down to City Hall tomorrow morning.

Shockingly it seems that crime has been up in our immediate neighborhood. If I had known that I never would of let them go to the store.

So it is time to become a very pissy mother and demand more from all the city folk I can find - being at City Hall tomorrow will make that easier.

I was up late last night talking with Cody, Graham & Wes. We feel like the biggest lesson learned is 1-no walking in the hood when it gets dark 2-if you sense danger remove yourself from it as calmly and quickly as possible 3-don't carry so much cash and 4-for me to give them safety reminders when they go out on their own - which i failed to do and have almost finished beating myself up about. You know in hind sight you can fix everything! We did get a call from someone who found Wes's wallet - just at the other end of the street from us - the police asked us to bag it and bring it in tomorrow.

A couple other creepy things: The neighbor who's house this happened in front of had a couple large lion statues knocked over from the side yard in the last two days and in that same time we have some new graffiti on our fence. It is strange because the graffiti is a drawng of a tv - and it is right where if you looked up at night from that spot you would see the tv we have on the second floor of the sunporch - and the last two nights i have been up late watching tv. Kinda creeped me out.

I went out this afternoon to walk some of where the boys were and where they said this took place - I was eyeing everyone who walked by me with quite the evil glare - I just couldn't help myself. Luckily nobody looked like the decription they gave.
It is ironic to have the surges of wanting to kill when harm comes close to ones own - so I know that energy spent negatively will do me no good. So we will march down to City Hall and give them the descriptions and look at photos - and then we will make them look at photos of the graffiti and knocked over statues and ask for print outs of ALL crime for our immediate neighborhood -- and then the questions I will have for them. I might have to give out some negative energy and anger to get it out of my system - and maybe light a few asses in the process.

Luckily the boys decided to ride their bikes down to their sailing lessons today - instead of having me drive them. I asked them last night if they would be comfortable doing it, I would drive them, but only for a day or two. I told them that they couldn't let this make them live in fear and be afraid to go anywhere.

We have also been having lots of fun since I last posted and I have tons of pictures of the awesome time we had up at the lake house for the last week and half - but not the energy to post it all yet.

We came back from the lake for their sailing lessons and for Seby & Zane to go to Camp Kicci Yappi - a YMCA day camp they went to last year.

I will try and post some pics soon.