I went to a Farmers Market a week or two ago and bought some canned beets and pickles. They were really good, but kind of expensive. So I got it in my head this past weekend to make pickles myself. I went to several stores looking for the ingredients and supplies and in the end it probably would have been cheaper to just buy them already made, but now I have 8 jars of home made spicy gardenia mix in the fridge. The spice comes, in part, from a habanero pepper cut into two and put at the bottom of each jar. There's also a few cloves of garlic in each one, some red pepper flakes, mustard seed, dill seed, dried minced onion, and a mixture of cider vinegar, white vinegar, sugar in the raw, and salt that I boiled and poured in the jars as the brine. I'll test them in a week or two and see how they're coming along.

Things are going pretty well with Jake and I. He's outside licking his paws and enjoying the cool pleasant morning, which is one of his favorite things to do. I'm inside having coffee that I roasted myself and ground and press-pot brewed earlier this morning.

Believe it or not, its been almost two years since I departed for the sailing trip. This time two years ago I was closing up the law practice and longing every day for the month of April to pass quickly so I could be gone. Now I'm longing for April to pass so it will be May, the month of my wedding to Sarah.

This is the perfect time of year to be in Tucson. It's warm outside, but not hot, cool in the mornings and evenings, but not cold. The flowers are in bloom and you wouldn't know its a desert for 6 months of the year.