Monday, May 25, 2009

Memorial Day Weekend

I just had a perfect weekend. We went nowhere. No park, no zoo, no relatives, no parties. We barely left the house.

We had the goal of almost-finishing the chicken coop, and cleaning up the backyard for various upcoming birthday parties and visitors.

Our backyard has some rough spots, including a few construction-junkyard corners, but it is still like an oasis for us. It is lush and beautiful and completely enjoyable to read the Sunday paper under the fig tree or zone out on the stone steps next to the catnip, or to just mess around trimming euonymous bushes or watching the trickster squirrels prowling around.

So to spend three days back there, with baby chicks to bring out for their afternoon sun, plants to move around, and some hard and heavy work to do was really wonderful. There must be a Jonathan Richman song to go with the broad and happy sentiment I have about the perfect three days I just spent hanging with my family, spitting cherry seeds and working on my garden.

Chris did indeed almost finish the coop. This was taken on Sunday, so much more happened after this. The kids were sitting up in the nestbox by tonight with newly shucked corn in their laps but I didn't have my camera nearby, so I leave it to your imagination to picture the cuteness of that. We are slowly morphing into a mid-century Iowan family.

Today my daughter had a friend over, and in between applying scotch-tape to the cracks in our 8-year old kiddie pool and then filling it up with water (which actually worked)...

...and while I was scalding peaches to make a pie...


they made Nutella tarts.


which actually came out great.


Meanwhile, I went on to cap off our weekend with a traditional Memorial Day dinner. I'd had no intention of doing this, but while food shopping on Friday I was seized like a drunken sailor who stepped too close to a congo line. What was I thinking, shopping in the Coop on the Friday before a holiday weekend??? Mindlessly, with no will of my own, I bought red potatoes for potato salad, chicken for barbecuing, corn for shucking, peaches for pie -- visions of blaring Top-40 tunes, a sixer of brewskis and a backyard grill pit obviously churning deeply somewhere in the depths of my mind. What the hell?

But lucky me, I'm subversive. You fools can't make me cook Memorial Day food, just because it's Memorial Day. I might go through the motions, sure. But I'll have the last laugh.

I burned the chicken


and the corn



and the garlic bread



did you catch just HOW burnt the bread was?



Don't mess with me, people. I think for myself.

The pie came out great, though. Peach and blueberry. And my apple-pie-loyal son broke his trust with the honeycrisps of the world, and accepted peach pie into his repertoire.



Hope you all had a great weekend.

1 comment:

robina said...

i hope you were there in the morning! i love the coop but tend to stay away on fridays and weekends and any time after about 2 -- haha!