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Now the good. Even with a sick kiddo, we managed to have a pretty nice weekend. We got a lot done around here, but still had time to relax with some movies, a jigsaw puzzle and some reading.
Shane had an unexpected three-day weekend. His job site was shut down on Friday because they were waiting on materials. He took advantage of the day off by working outside all day. He tilled the soil in the raised beds and broke ground for some new beds for this year. He tilled in some horse manure into all of those areas and also added some wood chips to some of the beds to keep the soil loose.
He disassembled part of Kat's play fort, with her permission since she has never really played on it much, and will use the parts to make who knows what. Right now, a couple of pieces are positioned to make an a-frame lattice, but I don't know if they'll stay that way.
He spent more time outside on Saturday and Sunday, burning yard debris in the chiminea and re-working some of the ornamental beds in the front and on the sides of our house. Nothing was planted yet, but a lot of areas were readied for both edibles and ornamentals.
As for me, over the weekend I tackled that basket of filing, did my grocery shopping, did my weekly household accounting, and I tried my hand at making 30-minute mozzarella cheese using this recipe. That was a lot of fun. I thought it wasn't going to work out, then all of a sudden the texture of the curds changed and there was the mozzarella. I did learn that it's next to impossible to take photos while making cheese, but here is one of the finished product.
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| Homemade mozzarella. |
I made a couple of very homemade pizzas for supper. I made scratch crusts, sauce from last year's garden tomatoes, pepperoni I made from some of the venison in our freezer and topped it all with the homemade mozzarella. I had read a couple of times that the cheese wouldn't melt right, and I can confirm that now. It really doesn't melt at all, it just gets soft. But oh well, it tasted good, and that's what really matters.
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And finally, the ugly. Here are pictures of our back yard right now. This time of year, it's ugly, ugly, ugly, and that the weather was gloomy when I took these didn't help. By June, though, it will be quite pretty. Our back deck is especially ugly right now. The rails came off when we thought we'd put a sun room there, and the plastic resin lattice we had as skirting wouldn't hold paint and kept blowing down, so we took it off.
The plan is to put a new back door in our house (it's waiting in our garage) and then to eventually remove the deck and build a new one. The door will go in as soon as weather and time allow, but we have no idea when the deck project will happen. At the very least, we'll put some basic railings back on for safety's sake.
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| Eager to start planting. Can hardly wait to get the camper out, too. |
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| Wood chips and manure to be tilled in. |
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| Tilling the raised beds. |
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| Back yard in winter. Anyone want to buy our old pop-up? |
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| Junk-covered patio, wood pile, clothesline. |
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| Our big, fat, ugly deck must go. Rain catchment tanks off to the right of it. |
So that was my weekend. I actually enjoyed it this time. We struck a nice balance; I hope we can do that more often in the future.
What did you do this weekend?
