The entire time I’ve been here in Oklahoma City, I haven’t ventured far from home too often but only because I’m hopeful that I will be returning later this month on a permanent basis. There is truly a lot to see here and I like to think I will have all the time in the world once July comes to a close.

Anyway, I often pass by this gated city park on my way down 36th Street to May Avenue. Even from the outside, one can see the meticulous landscaping and grounds work that is put into the place. This is Will Rogers Park, by the way, and it’s on the National Registry of Historic Places. There is a building for garden exhibitions, a single one used as a tennis training center, an outdoor playground, and even a community pool and splash park. But the signs that caught my attention a few weeks ago were those directing visitors to the arboretum and the rose garden. Last week, I finally decided to take a walk inside the gates.

Some of the places I saw in this park reminded me of a real-life version of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, but only those parts of the film when Alice and her sister are supposed to be reading lessons under the shade of a tree. Instead of swans, though, there were geese and Dinah wasn’t there, either. However, I do recall Alice talking about how much she enjoyed books that were filled only with pictures.

I went a little overboard in quantity the other day when I bought some peaches from the OSU-OKC Farmers Market. My shopping list included only three things: okra, tomatoes, and fruit. It didn’t matter what kind of fruit because I am not familiar with Oklahoma’s seasonal stuff yet, I just wanted something fresh and local.

The first vendor I saw when I walked into the pavilion was selling peaches and there was a line of people waiting to get their hands on some. That’s always a good sign. So I waited my turn, handed over my cash, and came home with a basketful of peaches.

Because of my deep loyalty to the South (some the first things I made when I got to Oklahoma were a gallon of sweet tea and a key lime pie), I publicly declared on Facebook that no other peach could possibly be better than a Georgia peach, although South Carolina peaches are pretty darn tasty, too. This didn’t necessarily cause an uproar but my husband called me out, and rightfully so.

“You can’t judge our Oklahoma peaches until you’ve actually eaten one!”

I’ll admit it – I hadn’t even put a bite of an Oklahoma peach in my mouth yet before I’d downgraded it to some kind of substandard replacement for the real thing from Georgia.

And here is where I make my public apology, because these Oklahoma peaches are freakin’ delicious! I have eaten at least one each day since Sunday, mostly for breakfast but sometimes for dessert. Sadly, I don’t think they’re being eaten quickly enough because a few of them are becoming wrinkly and squishier than they should be, but I’m doing my best!

Some people might say, why don’t you can them? And I have two reasons for why I am saying no.

1. I’m too lazy to learn and, quite frankly, I don’t want to.
2. Why save for later what you can EAT RIGHT NOW!!!???

Surprisingly, I am not yet sick of eating peaches. I am, however, sick of this song playing over and over and over in my head, though. Does this little ditty pop into your head every time you hear the word peaches? Damn you, 1995.

Believe it or not, this is the first full weekend we have all spent in Oklahoma together. Nobody got on an airplane to fly to Jacksonville or packed suitcases to make the 20-hour trek out west. In fact, we never even left the city limits, except to have Matt give us a tour of some mansions in Nichols Hills.

I had coffee Saturday morning with a high school friend from Maryland and loaded up on fresh flowers, fruits, and veggies at the OSU-OKC Farmers Market that afternoon, all while Matt and Elle were watching The Avengers on the big screen.

Later, I simmered bratwurst in a pot full of beer and onions and soaked fresh okra in olive oil while Matt and Elle stuffed hamburger patties with mounds of feta cheese. The key lime pie from the night before had hardly been touched so we invited some friends over for a cookout and to share in the feast. They brought with them their cute little 4-year old son and a bottle of Cupcake brand Moscato (that stuff tastes like Sprite and comes in a really pretty bottle). Elle finally managed, with much gore and blood, to yank out a troublesome baby tooth during a break from playing Flapjacks and Sasquatches. Then little Daniel got a nosebleed. Typical family fun.

On Sunday, we searched Best Buy for some techno-contraption (that’s not my department) and picked up a bag of potting soil and a daylily (totally my department) from Home Depot. Then Matt took Elle and me to brunch at La Baguette, a French bistro that could manage to up their prices and still be reasonable. Delicious! There was a lot of maple syrup and southern-style gravy, crepes and croques and coffee. The little market in the front of the restaurant is filled with European-style pastas and fizzy drinks and love truffles. Norman love truffles? Ha! I’m a love truffle.

We spent the rest of the afternoon potting new flowers and lavender plants, clearing the debris of a dead tree, enjoying the sounds of two girls – one of which being Elle – playing soccer in the front yard (the neighbor has kids!), and closing out the day by eating leftover brats and burgers and watching Bob’s Burgers, our new favorite thing on television:

Temperatures have been hovering in the triple digits all across Oklahoma this week. Yes, it is a different kind of heat from the humid, steamy boil of a Florida summer that I’m so used to, but this dry heat is sometimes unbearable even for me. Back home, this is the sort of weather that sends the kiddo and me to the beach to splash around in the salt water and get knocked over by waves. But as Dorothy said, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” (And this, folks, is a good thing because the Kansas town of Hill City topped off at 115 degrees this week.)

Elle and I were in need of an adventure outside the confines of any store on May Avenue, so I searched for directions to Arcadia Lake. A few months ago, I learned Arcadia Lake is the only lake in the OKC metro area that has a designated beach and I was really looking forward to the right time and opportunity to head out there.  With forecasts warning of possible record-breaking temperatures on Wednesday, the two of us packed our beach bags, suited up, and headed north to the city of Edmond.

There were no records broken that day, by the way. It only reached 101 degrees.

Before this day, I hadn’t been swimming in a lake in over two decades but I at least knew what to expect. Elle, on the other hand, is a born and bred Florida girl, raised near the ocean and taught to stay clear of lakes and their shores for fear of alligators and venomous water snakes. Even in the ocean, one must always be aware of her surroundings. It’s not uncommon to be bumped by a shark or suddenly enveloped by a floating armada of jellyfish.

It was quite understandable that Elle was a tad nervous about taking her first steps into the lake and she asked me to hold her hand.

I linked her fingers with mine but instead of calmly wading in, I convinced her to run down the beach with me and into the lake until we both collapsed into the water. We ended up playing in Arcadia Lake for over an hour. The water was cool and refreshing for a day that had gotten so hot, so early. Elle and I were reluctant to leave but even the lake temperature was becoming uncomfortably warm as the morning wore on. It was time to pack up and go home.

Homesickness has been a slight problem for me this week and knowing the ocean isn’t nearby to soothe my soul when I become overwhelmed, which is how I have been feeling quite often this entire week, has made me find other ways to comfort myself.

Arcadia Lake did a damn fine job of that.

Ever since I crossed over the Mississippi River for the first time in my adult life last year, I’ve been fascinated by it. Not necessarily by the river itself, just by being on the other side of it. So when we exited the Audubon Aquarium and decided to walk into the French Quarter for lunch, I insisted we walk by the river. I can’t help myself, but every time I look at this big body of water, I see Mark Twain and his old timey steamboat.

The river walk was not as crowded as I expected it to be. It was noon time and the weather was typical for a soupy, humid city like New Orleans. Luckily for me and my trigger-happy camera finger, there were more monuments than homeless people.

The end of our walk led us to a crossing of railroad tracks, at the moment an empty space and surprisingly peaceful and quiet. Another couple was speaking to a nearby musician who had propped himself up against a black stool with an open instrument case to collect tourists’ change. The moment I turned around to snap this photograph, the sounds of a jazz saxophone took over the entire tracks crossing yard. Finally, I could feel New Orleans!

We walked through the opening of a boundary wall and were immediately met by the overwhelming bustle of New Orleans’ French Quarter: the tourists, the horse carriages, the curbside trash bins, the hot, humid air being stifled by impassable buildings, and a sign propped on the sidewalk declaring the best po’ boys in town. Matt had heard incredible things about Johnny’s Po-Boys and it was becoming very crowded in the meantime. That’s always a good hint, so Matt took a place in line while Elle and I headed upstairs to an air-conditioned ice cream parlor to grab a table.

Lunch consisted of an alligator po’boy, a fried catfish po’boy, a hamburger for the kid,  too many French fries and not enough refreshing glasses of iced sweet tea. After a short walk back to the parking garage, we were on I-10, heading west to Oklahoma City.  We made it home by 1 o’clock in the morning, accompanied by the right amount of sunshine during the day and a sky full of stars when it finally fell dark, somewhere around Dallas.

My only regret:  I have yet to see the Arbuckle Mountains in South Central Oklahoma in daylight.  Time to go exploring in Oklahoma…

The weather this week only made it more difficult to stay indoors doing classwork instead of digging in the garden and finally getting seeds into the ground.  After a wet and windy start, the sun broke through the clouds on Wednesday and the temps got as high as 87 degrees yesterday (woot!) which is when I actually got around to planting everything!

Today is the last day of our faux spring (round two) before a new cold front arrives and while I’ve been stuck inside since this morning, I did make a point to go outside with the dachshund and count flowers on the strawberry plant and to stare at the dirt in the raised beds…because staring at the ground makes thing grow faster.

Here is the garden layout:
BOX 1

I should probably explain the Zombie Carrot. Last week I found the green of a carrot outside of our raised beds. This was especially odd because A) why would we plant stuffoutside of the garden beds? and B) the last time we planted carrots was approximately 9-10 months ago.  So I gently pulled it out of the ground and marveled at my teeny carrot. Matt suggested we replant it and he haphazardly put it in the garden bed where it promptly died.  Not two days later, it was alive again and thriving. I have read a little on how easy it is to do this with carrots, but I much prefer telling the story by referring to it as a raised-from-the-dead being, therefore making it a Zombie Carrot.  Besides, the text font on the photograph is super fun!

BOX 2

Because I have such an awful memory, I will soon be creating a little spreadsheet to remind myself of each plant’s watering schedule and harvest period.  I am also trying to keep myself from gauging my success on everything producing an ample supply. My joy from this will come in the form of a salad, created with vegetables from my own garden. It’s okay if some of the cucumbers fail or the tomatoes burn – I’m a newbie. But I do want to be able to enjoy a simple yet gorgeous salad of loose-leaf lettuce, tomatoes, purple carrots (or maybe even Zombie Carrot!), topped with nasturtium petals and a ground cherry vinaigrette.

Actually, I don’t know that I could actually eat Zombie Carrot.  See, I’ve named him (and assigned him a gender, apparently) so I’ve already become too attached.

(Humiliating Update – 03/09/2012: That’s no carrot! Seeing as I was not the only one to misidentify the greens as a carrot top, I can only chuckle at our naïveté.  While walking the trails at the Jacksonville Arboretum, I spotted a whole patch of “zombie carrots” and immediately knew I’d been had! What? I’m new at this. I’ll figure it out eventually. And, for the record, those are known as Carolina Geraniums or more commonly as Wild Geraniums. Let’s pretend this didn’t happen, mmmkay? Well, I’m not pulling down the posts because, let’s face it – a zombie carrot would’ve been bad as hell. I’m keeping the dream alive.)