Oh, Sunday

What a weekend! Lots and lots of yard work with some yummy meals and desserts in between. I'll admit it: Martin did most of the work. But I kept the kids entertained all by myself! And I did plant a few flowers too. I always hate to see a weekend come to a close. Looking ahead, the work week seems so long and gloomy. Although at least this week the rain is supposed to finally be gone... I really enjoyed it while it was here (many rainy evenings spent on the patio drinking tea and knitting/reading together) but as soon as it was gone, I realized how happy I was to see it go. Sunshine! Summer! Bare feet! Yippeeee!!

And of course the obligatory pink flamingo bathing suit. Admit it--you want one. (I know you can't actually see the flamingo, but trust me that even better than the pink flamingo itself is when Anja manages to get one foot all the way to her tummy to show that her PINK shoes match the PINK flamingo on her bathing suit... Gink uhm Gink!)

Can I just go on a little bit about how much I love summer and how glad I am that it's finally here? While I really did enjoy last week, wearing my cozy wool socks and birkenstock clogs every day, I am absolutely thrilled to wear tank tops and my Keen sandals. And shall I mention iced coffee and the fact that Martin and I were thinking of it at the exact same time!? Eating all our meals outside, watching our garden plants grow, smelling all those summery smells like fresh mown grass and asphalt. Man. I am REALLY glad it's summer.

We had dessert on Saturday night AND tonight--strawberry shortcake on Saturday and the most delicious peach cobbler EVER tonight... it was seriously amazing and seriously bad for us. The first step of the recipe is to melt a stick of butter in the pan and then pour the dough in. Wowzers. I just used a big can of peaches in heavy syrup and the stuff was ridiculously good. I'll try to post the recipe on The Cooking Blog soon.

We are going to have a garage sale soon and the motto is "everything goes." That is, everything in the Big Back Room. Almost every item back there can be replaced, save a few things... but for the most part, we would like to clear out that room and start fresh. So I felt pretty clever when I remembered this wooden bench that was back there, covered in dust and dog hair, that houses all our board games and junk we don't know what to do with. I emptied it off and hauled it outside... and now it's my herb holder! It's really cute... it's the bench in the top photo (can you tell I'm just figuring out how to use photo effects on Picasa?) except now instead of two little girls on it, it has four little terra cotta pots holding rosemary, chives, cilantro and parsley. Hoorah! My thyme and oregano are in their splendid box nearby and the basil is aaaaaalll the way at the other end of the yard, where Anja and I planted sunflowers a few weeks back that are now just a few inches tall. They live in a big, ugly, plastic pot that I got from our neighbor, who is giving us so much I feel like we need to buy her groceries for the entire summer.

Our To-Do list still goes on and on though. Now that The Jungle has been cleared (with Martin's zombie hacker... he actually wrote on the blade that that's one of it's uses) we are planning to put down some kind of rocks and plant a blackberry bush. They have baby blackberry bushes (and raspberry and blueberry and strawberry) at Lowe's for only ten dollars. When I think of living in this house for a number of years to come and NOT having blackberries growing along our fence, I get sad. So... I guess I'll just have to purchase a baby blackberry bush. Right?

To give you an idea of how much work was done and how bad The Jungle has gotten in the past three years (or more... I'm not sure how long the house was vacant before we moved in) we weren't used to seeing our neighbor's house. Martin was cutting down weeds that had grown into TREES between the houses. This was some serious overgrowth we're talking about, and he hacked it all away and now we are dreaming of fine landscaping.

Okay. This post must be fantastically boring. Tomorrow I will till the old garden plot and we will plant our melons.... and hope for the best.