Like I said in my last entry, I'd been feeling the end of summer panic so I had to get out and away from the machine for awhile which is why I am updating this after more than a week of absence. Of course the break wasn't as long as this but I have a lot of work to do right now so it took me a while to get to this. Plus my computer has been acting up all week. It's back in full working order now so everything's good. I also want to apologize for the lack of new content on the site. We're working on a Fall Issue content blitz which will be out in the next two weeks. I promise to put something new up before that time.
I realized last night, while reading a post in the forums that my plant purchasing is getting out of hand. Looking back on past journal entries in which I chronicle various purchases, it is evident that I am purchasing plants at a rate of approximately two per week. I went to the Home Depot for some garden provisions this week and purchased two plants. Believe me I was holding out using all the willpower I could muster and Home Depot isn't exactly a gold mine of selection. A lot of their plants were looking pretty sad. But they had a nice assortment of carnivorous plants and aloes. I purchased a cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica) and an unknown aloe that has short, wide, stubby leaves that are covered in spines. It's beautiful. The cobra lily really does look like a cobra standing up. It is actually kind of scary in a Little Shop of Horrors kind of way.
 Last weekend I discovered the best Latin American food store in Kensignton Market. I can't remember the name, just how to find it. I got fresh cactus paddles and fresh poblano peppers. That may seem like a small feat for some of you Southerners, but for me it was big excitement. I like to cook cactus but I can usually only get it in the can. In case you're wondering, it tastes like green beans. I also bought two huge bags of cactus fruit (called tuna in Mexico). I didn't get those at the same store. I just finished eating the last one a few minutes ago. It's the end of an era. I'd been eating them at a rate of four or so a day. I even made agua fresca de tuna (cactus fruit water). The good news is that it's the season for cactus fruit so getting more shouldn't be too difficult. I plan on buying a whole box this time. I was talking to Gwen who lives in Texas and she said the plants are ripe with fruit right now. Too bad customs won't let her send me some.
 When we went to Mexico this past Easter I was in love with tuna nieve, which is like slush. The taste was sort of similar to strawberries. There was a whole slew of Nieverias a minute's walk from our hotel in Oaxaca City so we went there a few times for a refreshing treat. The one in this photo is actually rose petal nieve and it had milk in it which makes it more like ice cream then slush.
Now that I've started talking about our trip to Mexico I can't stop. I took hundreds of photos of plants and one day when I get the chance I hope to post some of them on this site. We need an intern (yeah right) who can help us with stuff like this. Sorting and cataloguing hundreds of images is a huge undertaking. Going to Mexico was heaven for me. We'd been to Mexico once before but this time we spent two weeks travelling around. If you go to the photos page you can see the route we took. It was mostly bus and then a plane from the coast to Mexico City at the end. I was not in the mood for another 14 hour bus ride. Travelling around like this was excellent because we got to see a variety of landscapes-- from the desert and mountains of Central Oaxaca, the fields of agave in the Valles Centrales, to the lush Pacific Coast. I need to go on another vacation. I'm getting stir crazy. When I go on vacation I like to travel. I'm not a lay-on-the-beach-of-a-resort kind of gal. I can't sit still.
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