Recent guests

We've had some guests to our home lately. First off is this lovely lady:







It's not unusual for us to have deer, but they're not normally this close to the house.


Our next visitors were a couple of these:




They just appeared one day, taking a dust bath in the hole my dogs dug in the backyard when they were mole hunting. We've got an adult red tail hawk that hangs out in the lower front yard and feasts on the crawdads in their little mud castles, so we're wondering if these are a couple of baby red tail hawks. Whatever they are, they're adorable. They've made 2 appearances so far.

Saturday market goodies

This was my first visit to the Saturday market in a neighboring town. There were several participants, and I found lots of goodies:

nice red onions with tops still attached
organic yellow squash
organic elephant garlic with top still attached
organic turnip greens
French bread
homemade granola


Next time I will take my own repurposed plastic bags. I don't normally use plastic bags, but my mom will give things to me sometimes in one. Normally I just take them to the grocery to be recycled, but I'll save a couple for weighing produce at the market.

The makings for aloo gobhi

This makes me smile.



Having grown the 2 main ingredients that I need to make one of my husband's favorite dishes. And the fact that they are ready to harvest at the same time.

The two faces of Gabby

Here's Little Miss Innocent, lounging on the back of my chair:




And here's The Tiny Terror, lounging on the guest bathroom floor amidst her handiwork:

Black and red beauties

I picked the first blackberries and raspberries of the year today! The bushes are loaded with unripened fruit, so in the next few weeks we will be doing a lot of harvesting. The wild blackberry bushes along the edge of the woods are a little behind, so we should have berries for a while to come.

weekend of ordinary goodness

This past weekend was a good one for our family. My husband got his bicycle back from the shop, and proceeded to ride 70 miles on Saturday, then came home and mowed as long as the rechargable battery on the mower held out. We did a few of the 'little things' that get put off all the time--hosing out the trash can, recycling containers, hampers, etc and letting them sit outside and be sanitized by the sun. Much laundry was hung on the line, in anticipation of more rain coming a couple days later.

Sunday my husband rode his bike the 30 or so miles to my parents' house, I drove over, and together we spent most of the day with them. We all spent a few hours outside, pulling bugs off the squash plants, using the hoe on weeds, digging up spontaneously-growing heirloom tomato plants to send to my house, transplanting lots of marigolds (what a stinky flower!) next to the squash plants to try and keep the bugs away. My husband again was mowing a yard, but this time he used my parents' riding mower. He managed to get in an hour or so playing tennis with his brother and nephew as well.

We came home dirty, sweaty, and quite frankly stinky, but we both felt the satisfaction of a day well spent.

Springtime goodness

Yeah, I didn't get a whole lot, but I only planted a few green peas, just to see if they'd grow. I took this whole first harvest and put it in a big pot of veggie soup I made tonight. Yum!