Garden update

I'm a little behind on fall plantings, but I've gotten peas, dill, parsley, and spinach into containers. I still need to plant scallions, radishes, and maybe carrots.

I set up a raised bed with wheat grass for the dogs and cats.

They are enjoying it!

Although one of them has also discovered the joy of digging giant holes underneath the lillies, where there are breaks in the weed cover.

The sunflowers are happily blooming, but I discovered colonies of aphids and aphid-herding ants under the leaves. I sprayed them down with soapy water a couple of days ago - today I'll find out if it worked.

I saw this gorgeous plant at a nursery and couldn't resist bringing it home. I'd ever seen one before - it's Celosia.

The raspberries are finally growing!

And the strawberries as well!

The ferns are happy plants, too.

That's all!

Puzzle hunt party, part 3

Continued from part 2.
They spend some time discussing the definition of "paces" and trying to decide who should walk them. At this point it is completely dark.

Eddie ends up uncovering the "treasure."

But what does it mean? Someone runs the "code" through Google and they realize that it is a YouTube video ID. It shows a collie retrieving a tissue from a box.

Ray heads over to the box of tissues on my bedside table.

Inside of which she finds a big button that makes a "ding dong" doorbell noise when pressed.

The gang heads outside again and to the main door of the house, which is locked. They poke around and find a piece of paper underneath the doormat. It says, "Find it!" and then gives the license plate number of Miki's car.

Miki recognizes the number and leads everyone over to her car. "When did you hide something in my car??" I didn't get pictures since it was too dark, but she directed them to examine the license plates and wheel wells. Sure enough, there is a Nosework tin hidden in a wheel well. (I knew that Miki, as a Nosework instructor, would get a kick out of this.) Inside is a housekey, which opens the front door.

They entered the house and found a plastic easter egg in the middle of the floor. A quick search (I didn't want this part to take too long, nor for my friends to be getting into my housemate's personal items) yielded 25 eggs, each of which contained a Lindt chocolate and a tiny strip of paper with a bit of writing on it. They assembled the strips, and Allison (a horticulturalist) quickly identified "Helianthus annuus" as the name of the common sunflower. In fact, she had already noticed that one of my sunflowers had had another strip of paper wrapped around its stem, and had put it into her pocket until the appropriate time.

That piece of paper read, "The meat of this animal was the original main ingredient of canned dog food in the US." "Horse!" cried multiple people.

They headed back to my part of the house and Alex picked up a My Little Pony to find a magnet stuck to its leg.

The magnet was to be used to on an invisible maze, which had another magnet behind a piece of cardboard. Laurence pointed out that this would have been very difficult to figure out if he had not already poked at the cardboard and noticed that there was a magnet underneath. I conceded that I hadn't really thought that part through.

Miki tried her hand at the maze.

Then Eddie.

Meanwhile, other people were getting hungry and worn out from the puzzles.

Aaron gave it a try, using a marker to chart the maze.

At this point it was so late that I gave them permission to just pull the maze off the wall.

Eddie and Alex inspected the magnet that had been on the other side. There was a picture of the classic Monopoly pieces on the other side, minus one.

They realized that the missing piece was the iron, and turned over the actual iron I had sitting next to my sewing kit.

"Adorn forgo spit" turned out to be an anagram for "poison dart frog." They used a website to figure this out rather than actually writing out the possibilities, which I had expected. Agnes remembered that I had a green plush frog with magents on its feet, and it was attached to a set of metal shelves. Stuck to one of its feet was a little key. This was what they'd been working toward all along - the key was for a tiny lock which "locked" a ribbon wrapped around the cake box!

Everyone was ready to be finished with the puzzles at this point. We made BLTs for dinner and ate the cake for dessert. Then a few stayed to watch the new epsiode of Doctor Who. Props to Eddie and Alex for washing all the dishes after dinner! (And anyone else who helped - I was watching TV at this point.)

The consensus seems to be that the puzzles were enjoyable, but should have started earlier and there should be fewer per party. It took a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes to finish them. Next year I will have more experience and be better prepared! I said that I wanted my friends to set up a puzzle hunt for me next year, and they said, "Yes, and we'll laugh as you try to figure them out all by yourself!"

Puzzle hunt party, part 2

Continued from part 1.

The Firefox browser opened up to Scrabble.com. Aaron, who had previously visited my home and played scrabble with me, immediately located my game. I have a "travel" addition, which lets the players stick the letters into squares that hold them fast - convenient for setting up a puzzle.

It was not so straightforward, though. They picked out many words hidden with the square, such as "how," "measure," "man," "red," and "herring." (And also "anal," which had not been intentional!)

Alex thought aloud, "How do you measure? Measuring tape?" She looked to her left, and there was my shelving unit full of tools, including - yes! - measuring tape.

Laurence pulled the tape out and, under the 6' mark (roughly the height of a man), were numbers: coordinates which turned out to point to the French Trail in nearby Redwood Regional Park. After a bit of a false lead (what around here is French?), Allison noticed a map of Redwood Park on my wall.

On the other side of the map was a hand drawn map of the mini agility course I'd set out in my front yard. I thought that perhaps only the dog people among my friends would understand the symbols, but in fact multiple other people immediately recognized them. Off they went to the front yard, where they discovered a plastic bag filled with tea leaves inside the tunnel.

Back inside to the kitchen, they located the tea tins, and the corresponding one included a picture of Chimera.

In what was an unsettling moment for him, everyone turned to stare at the dog and a few people started to reach for him at once. He tucked his tail and moved away, and then they calmed down. Agnes called him over and he jumped onto her lap, letting her pick him up.

He turned out to be wearing a tag that said, "Prepare for a rainy day."

Someone asked, "How do you prepare for a rainy day?"

"Umbrella!" cried Laurence.

It turned out to be a stick and a small piece of plastic rain gutter hidden inside one of my galoshes.

Boy, is Ray on the case, or what?

Not pictured, because it was now dark outside, was everyone running outside and looking at the gutters. Allison pointed out that there was a small section of gutter piping wedged up above the outdoor light. Alex pushed at it and four balls fell out and bounced all over the deck! She immediately knew what to do - "The basketball!"

I had attached a plastic container to the wall along with a rectangle of white paper marked to look like a basketball board. Laurence dunked a ball into the container and was rewarded with a mass of purple glitter raining down on his arm as a hole opened at the bottom.

Chimera stared to eat the glitter, so I shooed him away and took a moment to vacuum the bulk of it up.

In the meantime, the guests went over to a piece of paper which was also covered in a pile of purple glitter and dumped it off. The writing underneath said "Sduw ri d edodqfhg euhdnidvw!" It didn't take long for someone to realize that it was a Caesar shift of 3, and the message said, "Part of a balanced breakfast!"

What's in a balanced breakfast? Eggs? Bacon?

Agnes is hungry and losing interest...

Allison finds the cereal.

And inside is a (homemade) jigsaw puzzle!

They diligently get to work taping the pieces together.

Although it takes longer than I had anticipated. I had gotten carried away when cutting up the pieces.

The completed puzzle (minus two pieces, which disappeared).

The back of the puzzle contains instructions to walk through the doorway, then "forward 4 paces, right 7 paces, left 3 paces," and so on.

To be continued...

Puzzle hunt party, part 1

Yesterday evening I celebrated my 28th birthday by arranging a puzzle hunt for my friends. It was a memorable evening - not only was it my first time arranging a puzzle hunt, but it was the most friends I've ever had come to a party at once. It was a full house! I took many pictures at the beginning, and fewer as the time went by and the sun went down.

The first people showed up at 6 pm.

I had crackers and grapes ready, and a card with a message for the adventurers. After a greeting, it instructed them to sign their names and remain on the deck for further instructions.

And so they waited for more guests. Meanwhile, Chimera posed for the camera.

And Jacques stared at this owner in confusion.

The majority of the guests arrived all at once around 6:40 pm.

So many people!

Agnes noticed that I had sent her a text stating LOOK UP.

More people realized that they'd received the same text.

And they started looking up.

They noticed a string with a tag that said PULL.

Eddie dutifully pulled (after acquiring a stool, which was a good decision).

They lowered down a yogurt container which was filled with coins.

What does this mean?? They counted the coins. They added up the total value. They arranged them in different configurations.

After some prompting (this puzzle turned out to be the hardest one), they walked through the house and noticed a few bank rolls of coins in my room.

They started to empty the rolls, and Ray found a message written inside one: "empty apple."

Off to find apples!

An initial perusal of the apples in the kitchen revealed nothing. A closer look yielded one with a hole that was covered with the missing apple chunk.

Eddie bit into the apple and discovered a yarn needle.

Everyone peered into my sewing kit and started to remove the contents. Ray picked up a crocheted ball. She squished it and then looked remorseful. "I crushed your ball," she said. "Did you?" I asked, with raised eyebrows. She smiled and picked it back up, and proceeded to pull on the string to undo the top of the ball. (A cool thing about crochet - to undo it, you simply grab the yarn and pull. It makes it easy to go back and fix a mistake.)

The ball unraveled to reveal a picture.

After an initial "WTF, a furry?" someone recognized it as a play on the Firefox logo. Ray opened Firefox on my laptop, which was conveniently turned on and ready.

To be continued....