If you've been thinking, "Man, I haven't seen Matt and Angel in a long time. Are they coming home this summer?" The answer is...Yes! But unfortunately, only for three weeks and only to the Chicago area this time.

Hopefully, next summer we'll be able to come home for a longer stretch & do some traveling outside of Chicago, but due to work this summer, we're only able to get away for a few weeks.

The dates we'll be on US soil will be from July 4 (woo, our first Independence Day in the States in 4 years!) until July 26.

Of course, we'll probably be miserably jet lagged July 4 weekend, so we're not planning on doing much except chilling with Matt's family. I hope they don't mind seeing fireworks at 3 pm because I'm usually asleep by 5 pm on our first day back :)

We're also going to be pretty busy the last weekend we're in town because my cousin is getting married that weekend (another woo!)

Other than that, our schedules are pretty open, so let us know if you'll be in the Chicago area in July and want to hang out! We may plan some get-togethers so we can see more people at once, but we're too swamped with work right now to figure it out, so stay tuned.

It's been awhile since my last update, and I'm sad to report that the fungus gnats seem to be winning in my battle against them.

All plants are covered with a layer of DE that I keep dry by scooping it over to the side when I water. (Boy, has that turned watering into an inconvenience!) But, still the stupid things are thriving and my plants are not.

We even tried getting some carnivorous plants from Taobao. The gnats love hiding in the peat moss of the carnivorous plants, but unfortunately, the carnivorous plants aren't attracting many gnats to actually eat.

The soybeans weren't improving and started harbors go more gnats, so I finally thre them out last weekend.

Everything else is still kicking but not overly happy or big, with the exception of the basil plant, which doesn't seem to mind its fungus gnat neighbors.

Oh, and I finally picked out the random plant that had sprung up in the kale pot because it started looking a bit weed like and didn't resemble anything edible.

So, this season, I think we're only going to get to enjoy the green beans we already harvested and some basil leaves. I'm going to try to keep growing them all until the fall to see what happens, but I'm not holding my breath.

Matt also suggested trying to put the plants outside on our balcony so that there are more natural predators (aka spiders...) to take care of the fungus gnats. Our balcony is super tiny, so I might try it with just 1 plant & see how it does.