I sometimes wander around the neighborhood, camera in hand. Saturday afternoon, I found myself down at Sandy’s, checking out his new deck and overhauled back patio, marveling over his hydrangeas.
Gardens of the neighborhood.
Category: the neighborhood
Breathing room.
Making daisy chains.
Pound cake and my yard sale score.
Everything in bloom! Thyme, lavendar, sage, peonies, bolted arugula, clover and buttercups in the grass
Sunlight through the dust
Dinner
Dancing to the dead coming out of the window while ‘studying’ in the front yard
Dessert.
My glorious rose bush
It was a glorious Memorial Day weekend here. The weather was just simply beautiful and honeysuckle scented. We had no where to be for three whole days – a first since a snowstorm I’m pretty sure. Pat went fishing with Cola, we had lots of girl time in the yard, gardening was done, back roads were driven in pursuit of local berries, which got jammed and frozen while the strawberries we picked from our yard garden got turned into strawberry ice cream that was shared at an impromptu dinner last night with Charles and Carol, our second dinner party with neighbors over the weekend. There was a yard sale score in the shape of a pretty new covered cake stand – the sort that you can flip upside down and turn into a punch or trifle bowl in a pinch, which I guess gets entered into both collections, bringing me to four punchbowls and eight cake stands. To celebrate, I baked a pound cake – this is my go-to recipe, one I tore out of Southern Living eons ago. Just dump everything in your stand mixer and let it go. I love those sorts of recipes. Baking the pound cake was also to use up some of the four dozen duck eggs that were dropped off this weekend, some of which might be involved in a pickling project. The pound cake was pretty divine served with the homemade, homegrown strawberry ice cream. Ambitious to-do lists were made and accomplished this weekend, although the house didn’t really get cleaned like it needs. Now that I’ve wrapped up my last PB&J Fund classes for the semester, I’ll have free afternoons again so maybe I can get that caught up. I did get laundry (mostly) caught up this weekend. One shouldn’t be too ambitious about these things I don’t think. All in all, it was a lazily productive weekend, the sort that had lots of impromptu pop-ins and visits, poison ivy, lazy yard drinks, beautiful evenings and the first lightening bug sightings of the season. Hello summer.
Blooming this week: April 16
Buddha and tulips
Brian’s tulip
First bloom
We are at the point in spring where the landscape one sees at dawn is different than the one sees at nightfall. Case in point – last Saturday afternoon, Pat & I plopped down in the front yard waiting for Edie to get ready for her soccer game. We noticed the tulips had sent up buds and wondered when they might open. After soccer, we plopped down in the exact same spot and noticed the tulips had opened up. Just like that, while we weren’t looking that afternoon. Continue reading
Off site, second try.
While it’s still too early and muddy to do much out in the garden just yet, I did spend yesterday down at the new community garden plot with Virginia. Continue reading
Awakenings.
This is what our yard looked like a week ago:
Under the dogwood
On the front proch
Find the garden ghome!
Fiesta in February
Watermelon margaritas are a warm weather staple here. Our signature party, Cinco de Mayo, is built around our serving the cocktail by the punchbowl to our closest three hundred or so friends and neighbors. Continue reading
Hanging in there.
I haven’t written much about motherhood here lately – Edie is at an age where I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to tell her story anymore. Also, she googles herself and this blog comes up and if she’s googling, then chances are her friends are googling and I definitely don’t want to post anything that’s embarrassing to her. Continue reading
In the groove.
It’s been the first full week of school, which means the return of daily structure and routine. I know it’s good to have, I know Edie craves it, but after a summer of no structure, not only does it seem slightly overrated, it’s also slightly shocking to acclimate to. At least it is for me. Continue reading
It seemed like a simple plan.
With Pat gone for a few days to a conference, I thought I’d take advantage of the beautiful weekend weather and mow the yard. It had been a bit since it had been mowed – between the weather and our schedule, mowing was a task that just seemed to fall through the cracks. With the weather being sunny and dry on Saturday, I thought I’d mow the lawn, then move onto canning all the cherries I’d picked from our tree this week. Also on the docket was a little bit of house cleaning. Continue reading
This week’s go-to potluck item.
We spent Memorial Day weekend mostly around the homestead in a blur of outdoor band concerts, impromptu potluck dinners with neighbors and a float down the river. There was an attempt to make home made ice cream that failed spectacularly when I realized way too far into the process that our ice cream maker was no longer of this world. I tried googling how to make ice cream without a maker but I didn’t realize until a few hours later it was probably too far along to really salvage. We now have a big plastic tub of frozen creamy strawberry mix in the freezer that is quite lovely with warmed pound cake or lemon cake fresh out of the oven at a potluck.
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 