A winter halo that’s currently surrounding the moon, as seen from Central New York, United States.

Tonight’s dinner: sautéed ratatouille!

I finally visited both Brooklyn Gimme! espresso bars this past weekend. They’re so close that it only took twelve minutes to walk from the Lorimer Street espresso bar to the one on Roebling Street. I liked the sign outside of the Roebling Street Gimme!, so I thought I’d share it.

Acrylic on canvas painting of a coffee plant that my brother painted. After a frame support repair, it’ll be hanging on the wall in our new apartment kitchen. Post-repair and installation photos will likely follow soon.

It’s been about 260 days since my first avocado plant germinated and almost 100 days since I last posted about it. Since both of those times, it’s come quite a long way and I’ve been impressed by it’s ability to thrive so well up here in Central New York when it is primarily grown in southern California, Mexico, New Zealand, and some parts of South America. It does surprisingly well indoors throughout the colder months, growing a new set of leaves every so often, but it really takes off up here in the late spring and summer. In the last few weeks, the plant has grown a number of inches and has produced two new sets of leaves and the third has already begun to emerge. Here are the photos of the plant that I took a little more than an hour ago.

As you can see from the photo below, the plant has added at least four new sets of leaves since I last posted about it three months ago and it’s stem has bulked up quite a bit and now dons some reddish speckles.

I’ve attempted to germinate four more avocado seeds since this one and so far, they’ve all successfully germinated and some have even developed into seedlings. The second seed that germinated and developed into a seedling was unfortunately eaten by a groundhog, but the third and fourth seeds have germinated and begun growing and the fifth is on it’s way. Here’s how the third plant is doing now.

More on the development of these guys and the rest of my 200+ vegetable plants of 2011 to come soon!

It’s funny that you should ask that, Valentina, because I just came inside from checking up on my plants and noticed how well my avocado plant is doing. I thought about posting up development photos and now I most definitely will. Also, the third avocado seed that germinated a while ago is finally extending it’s first shoot upward and I’ll post up photos of that as well. I’m very impressed at how well this plant, that is native to Mexico, is doing in Central New York. :D

After craving funnel cake for much of yesterday when I was at Coney Island, I decided to make my own today. I’ve been waiting to do this for a while, but now it’s something I can cross off my bucket list.

Thanks, Julia! I’ll be sure to keep it up. :)