Author: doug

Lis and I spent this cool, cloudy Sunday spreading 4 yards of mulch on our garden beds. 4 cubic yards of mulch seems like a lot (and it is — literally a ton, and about 30 loads of my little garden cart). But we have a lot of garden beds, some of which are new and needed a better layer of mulch to keep the weeds down. It’s a lot of work, but the end result looks great.

 

I ordered some spices from Penzeys. I usually go to their store, but, well, you know. Anyway, they included a free trial size of one of their seasonings, which is a nice touch. And a bumper sticker, and a hug (in coin form). Because we all need a hug these days.

Here’s an example of the kind of damage done to the wiring of our solar panels by squirrels. Click through for a worse picture of a more extreme case. The solar company was out today to fix it and install critter guards around the edges. Surprisingly, the solar array worked fine throughout, except for a few wet mornings.

You may recall that Lis posted about a baby robin in the middle of our yard last week. Well, it has survived the neighborhood cats and is still with us. It’s still pretty scruffy-looking, but is being cared for by 2 adults and is able to fly short distances.

As malformed foodstuffs go, this double-long spaghetti is pretty inconsequential.

Muenster, smoked lamb, and kale grilled cheese. Not quite a mutton, lettuce, and tomato (when the mutton is nice and lean), but close.

My office mates and I are very close.

I smoked a small lamb leg roast today, It came in at about the time I expected, around 2 hrs at 250-300F, meat at 140F. First time I’ve smoked over live charcoal, and it went fine with my new probe thermometer. The result was good, but I think next time lamb leg belongs in the sous vide and it’s fattier cuts like lamb shoulder that should be smoked.

We like the sitting wall on our back patio, but just about every year it needs a few stones re-set. This is the first time I’ve had to fix one of the ones that make up the top of the wall. You can see that the original builders didn’t use *quite* enough mortar on this one.

We can’t have a real fire pit. Our back fence and our house are too close together, and both wood. But we can have a tiny fire in an old cake pan.