Shoes or No Shoes?

Here at Chiot’s Run we’re a no shoes in the house kind of place. We have a shoe rack by the back door and remove our shoes in the laundry room, which is the entrance we use 99% of the time.

I have found that by removing shoes and having a few good absorbent rugs by the back door my floors stay so much cleaner. I don’t have regular rugs by the back door, I have those washable bath rugs. They get washed every other week and they do a wonderful job of keeping dirt and grime off the nice floors in the rest of the house. Of course sometimes my feet are just as dirty as my shoes, so I’m not sure this is quite as effective in the summer.

Are you a no shoes kind of house or do you wear your shoes indoors?

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A Weekend Away

This past weekend I was in Cincinnati with some of my college girlfriends. The group of six become fast friends during the few months our freshman year of college back in 1994 and we’ve been getting together every year since.


It’s a weekend filled with eating, laughing, looking at photos, and staying up too late reminiscing about the good old days when we didn’t have a care in the world and were all living together in dorms and apartments.


We enjoyed a few of Cincinnati’s best like Skyline Chili and Graeter’s Ice Cream and Arthur’s.


It was a great time, it’s always nice to spend some time with old friends.

Do you have any yearly meet-up with old friends?

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The Flight of the Monarch

Earlier this year Mr Chiots and I watched The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies. It’s a documentary about the migration of the monarchs. I’ve read about this incredible natural wonder before and always thought it would be neat to see. We have a few monarchs around here in the summer, I see them occasionally, but yellow swallowtails are our most prolific butterflies.

Last night about 7:30 Mr Chiots and I headed out to take Lucy on a walk and I looked up at the sky and noticed a few butterflies flying over. Then I noticed a few more. We kept watching and noticed they were monarchs and they were clustering high in the trees above Chiot’s Run. I couldn’t get any photos because they were high up in the trees and it was getting dark. It certainly was an amazing site to see them clustering up for warmth and to see so many of them flying over. We may try to get up early to see them leave, although we’re not sure when that may be. These monarch will most likely we overwintering in Florida to return next spring. Here’s some interesting info about monarch migration if you’re interested.

Do you have monarchs in your garden?

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Quote of the Day: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve definitely learned patience through gardening! I believe gardening is about the process not the final product, which is why I don’t buy a lot of mature plants. I prefer to start things from cuttings and spend years nurturing them into beautiful plants or start things from seed.

Has gardening helped teach you patience?

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‘Goldman’s Italian American’ Tomato

This year I decided to grow ‘Goldman’s Italian American’ tomatoes in my garden after reading about them in The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World’s Most Beautiful Fruit by Amy Goldman. Notice her last name and the name of the tomato – not a coincidence.

They’re described as: the famous Goldman’s Italian-American Tomato has ongoing production of large, red, voluptuous (large in the hip) pear shaped, paste tomatoes with exceptional flavor and few seeds. Individual tomatoes can reach one pound each. Makes one of the creamiest tomato sauces. Named by Amy Goldman for her father’s grocery store in Brooklyn after she found this at a roadside grocery store in Cernobbio, Italy.

They’re quite a lovely tomato, perhaps one of my new favorites. The vines aren’t as productive as hybrids, which is common for heirlooms, but they’re well worth the space. Most of mine have produced huge tomatoes and the sauce they make is velvety and smooth, with great tomato flavor. They’re quite beautiful as well, almost stunning. If you’ve never grown this variety I’d highly recommend giving it a try in your garden. I’ll be saving seeds from a few beautiful species of this plant and I’m hoping I’ll have some to share.

Did you discover any great new tomatoes this year? Is there a variety you grow each year without fail?

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