The garden, appropriately marked:

I actually weeded, fertilized and watered yesterday. Really. Some of those weeds are still attached to their roots and others were severed with the stirrup hoe. They’ll die soon enough.

Our first tomato:

Those beans that I transplanted out of the compost appear to be bush beans and they are flowering:

Let’s look at the fruit, shall we?

Here are the blueberries from the plants that the better-half’s mother bought and had delivered to her house the same week she moved to assisted living. I mention this not to be mean (really), but to show that I’m not crazy when I say she has the ability to drive us insane at times. Anyway, these plants are actually producing fruit this year:

I ate this raspberry:

The blackberries will be here soon. We trimmed the heck out of the bramble this year and you can hardly tell. I think the blackberries liked the haircut:

Here are some baby grapes. I don’t know if these will be white or purple grapes. Last year they didn’t last long enough for us to see them ripen (we have both but I can’t remember which is which). I think if the grapes go south that I might grab some of these leaves for cooking:

As I came around the house, Jim meowed to me. When he realized I had the camera, he declined to show his face:

Simon can only be described as a grumpy old man who loves sitting in the shade of the maple tree:

I added the egg yolk and mustard to the blender and chopped the garlic. Everything was set and then like a MORON, I let the olive oil into the blender about 5,000 times too quickly and the sauce broke. Actually, I don’t know if it was ever emulsified appropriately to begin with. I remembered that another yolk would fix it and so threw one in. Yeah, the blender is too FREAKIN’ fast for aioli.

I searched the intertubes for an answer and found this. I put a new egg yolk into a bowl and got out a whisk. I slowly poured the broken aioli into the bowl and whisked efficiently. Which basically means that I paid attention this time and damn that sauce came right back together. It was delicious with the chicken last night and I can’t wait to make a sandwich with the leftovers and slather the bread with that aioli. There will be magic in the kitchen.

I present her bed:

The bed is normally in the kitchen. The kitchen is downstairs.

Lucy is a nut.

Supplies:

I initially thought the tablecloth was pretty ugly, but taken in smaller doses, it’s not so bad:

It has a certain retro design to it, but it really doesn’t matter since we won’t see that side again. I put the vinyl side against the place mat and the flannel side should slide around on the dining room table like a dream.

I’m not sure why this last photo is so blurry and badly lit. Maybe I was high off the fumes of the spray adhesive:

Just a random thought here, but does anyone else hate the smell of new vinyl? I hate it with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. Between the spray adhesive fumes and the vinyl smell, it’s a wonder I didn’t stumble out of the garage and face-plant into the back yard.

I picked out some heirloom and a pink girl variety of tomatoes. Hopefully, I won’t end up with Frankentomatoes because I’m putting a hybrid next to an heirloom. Assuming that the tomatoes do anything this year is a BIG assumption on my part. I also bought two eggplants. I had hoped for ichiban, but ended up with the regular ol’ globes. I also purchased some peppers–a few hot and a few not. Finally, I went a little nuts on herbs: parsley, tarragon, basil and thyme.

We have an onion that has sprouted in the pantry so that’s going out there for fun. I’m going to transplant some of the beans out of the compost pile and I have to move a bunch of chives that survived the winter. All of that is for later in the week when it warms up again. The all-day rain yesterday has really made the weeds go nuts in the garden spot. I think I can finally see some of the lettuce I planted out there several weeks ago. I find it a bit dodgy to weed when new plants are coming up because I worry that a weed and a baby lettuce look too much alike. But, I’m going to give it a whirl in a couple of days when things have dried out a little.

Tomorrow I’m painting the front porch. This week is full of ambition.

Anyway, I presented the project I’ve been working on all semester and will continue working on through the summer. Folks were pleased and we generated some good conversation. One of the professors on my committee is someone I’ve had as a teacher and she was very complimentary to me about my skills and it was a little embarrassing. I thanked her as well as I could. She remembered some incredible details about our conversations inside and outside of the classroom.

At the end of my presentation, I had to go out into the hallway while they discussed letting me pass–probably more like they had to pass around my exam card so they could all sign it. As I exited the room, I found a classmate waiting to go in to talk about her dissertation. She’s in the early stages of writing so her meeting was more of a check-in type thing. It was really good to see her since I had just referenced her in my meeting. I told her that I’d just been talking about her and how much I liked working with her. I think that surprised her, but it was true. I did enjoy my contact with all of the international students. That’s a very good part of the program. I wished her the best of luck and she congratulated me on finishing.

I’m a bit curious who I will see at graduation. Because the program is so mixed with graduate students and doctoral students, I have no idea who is graduating and who is continuing on. Since the School doesn’t do a formal ceremony, I’ll just have to look for people in the large Graduate School ceremony at o’dark thirty on a Friday morning in May.

Here’s one side of the house before:

Here’s the after:

Here’s the other side of the house (the windows look into the garage):

Since those bushes weren’t as overgrown, the after isn’t as dramatic. The hostas are gargantuan and they’ll eventually take over all of the ground space:

The most overgrown and the biggest impediment to me painting had to be the area around the steps:

The acuba will either come back or they will be yanked out and something more appropriately sized will go in there instead:

Assuming the weather cooperates, the painting project will begin next week.

I don’t make brown rice, but I had to buy a bag to make this recipe. The rice took at least an hour to make and I will spend that time again because it was delicious. It had a teaspoon of dried thyme in it which sounds like not so much, but in practice it is a ton of thyme.

The other ingredients were a cup of frozen peas (I know. I say I hate peas and yet I use them in recipes.), caramelized onions and salmon. The top crust was a blend of whole wheat flour, AP flour, salt, thyme, cayenne and nutmeg. I used up the last of an olive oil the better-half didn’t like. I made the dough ahead of time and let it rest in the refrigerator.

Here’s the perok with a scoop out of it:

The little fish shape on the top came out pretty well when you consider I’m not an artist. It was probably the thing I liked best about this recipe (except for the rice). I don’t know what went wrong but it did not float my boat in the least. The better-half wasn’t thrilled either. It’s a shame because it ended up being a lot to throw away. Thankfully, there are some stray cats, perhaps I’ve mentioned them, who will eat it.