The garden is winding down. I dug out the last of the potatoes today and wished, again, that I’d been keeping track of how many pounds we grew. I gave today’s collection of green beans to the neighbors, since I’ve decided that 5 quarts in the freezer is enough. There are more than 2 pints of sun-dried tomatoes in the fridge, and bowls of tomatoes on the counter waiting to be converted into pasta sauce. Ian is responsible for eating the paprika and mariachi peppers – they’ve both turned out to be too hot for me. Tomorrow, I’ll check on the two apples on the apple tree and see if they are ripe.

Caitlyn and I went to the zoo yesterday for what is likely going to be our last visit until spring. The zoo is open in the winter, it’s just not a whole lot of fun to be wandering around out there in 40 degree weather. And our animal-viewing luck was really, really good. We saw the brown bears getting lunch (when a bear eats a cantaloupe, it somehow manages to scrape all the yummy fleshy parts out and leave the rind – not something I’d expect from bear jaws), the grey wolves (for the first time), the giraffes when it was time to cross the path back to the giraffe barn for dinner (so they walked by about 10 feet away from us), and several of the smaller monkeys who were actually up and out and doing stuff. We even managed to catch penguin feeding time.

The highlight for me (not really sure what Caitlyn thought – she has a thing for giraffes, elephants and penguins), though, was the tiger cub. Although perhaps “cub” is just a technicality now as she’s about 10 months old and recognizable as a cub only if you have some idea of how large the adult tigers at the zoo are. This was the first time I’ve seen a tiger chase it’s tail… she’s still a kitten. Large and fast and deadly but a beautiful, playful kitten.