Happy Birthday to Me!

Couldn't go out to our favorite restaurant, Rosa's Lookout Inn, so I heated up the manicotti I bought and froze 3 weeks ago along with som asparagus I picked myself, mushrooms and their ciabatta bread with garlic butter. There was also a cucumber and tomato salad and a nice Bogle Vineyards Petite Sirah. Hope Rosa's can open soon.

There was also be strawberry cake with strawberries and whipped cream.

A Rambling Update

I've been neglecting my blog again so I will attempt to catch up on a few things.

kennebec red pontiac and short row of yukon gold

My potatoes I planted have finally started sprouting a couple days ago, I counted about 35 out of the 60+ I planted. There are 3 varieties, red pontiac, yukon gold, and kennebec. I also bought flowers from my favorite nursery, Harger's in Glennie along with some tomato plants.

almost filled the back of my car

I gave a few tomato plants to Hal's cousin along with some pea seeds and peppers and potatoes. I suspect more will be up today. Most of my snow peas are up, a whole row I planted in Spruce shows no signs though the first row is doing well, none of them are more than a couple inches high. I blame the random cold snaps, 3 nights in the mid 20s in the 3rd week of May, killed any chance of my yellow delicious apple tree flowering at all. And 2 chances for frost this weekend with lows in the 30s so I'm not planting my tomatoes in Spruce either till afterward. I will  cover the ones I have in pots here at home.

I planted a couple apple trees I bought from the Alcona conservation district behind the new house. Hal dropped a couple loads of top soil in 2 mounds to raise the roots up a bit because it's pretty wet there in the spring, they are already leafing out. I also planted 5 Saskatoon serviceberry over on the hill either side of Luna's grave. Got 5 forsythia which I planted in pots till I figure out where they are going. Need soil around the house before I can plant them as landscape shrubs. Was thinking about the north side of the house but maybe I'll put them near the apple trees, who knows? I certainly don't!

We also got the house cleaned up and listed with a new agent, the Scofield Realty in Hale that had the original listing when we bought 20 years ago. With the insanity of the pandemic going on I don't know if it will hurt sales (more than likely) or possibly help by someone wanting a place to get away from the cities. Guess we'll find out eventually. It only listed on Memorial Day weekend so it's too soon to tell.

While I deal with veggies and flowers and keeping the house clean Hal has been spreading and leveling sand into the crawlspace and starting the internal build by adding the floor joists one 12 ft square section at a time. He temporarily put up a couple pieces of OSB subfloor so we could sit in the living room and finally see what the view looks like through one of the windows.

Two 12 ft square joist sections out of 14

You see more sky than land because we were sitting on plastic Adirondack chairs and those are rather low. Real living room furniture heights will make a difference. Not too bad though.

We've had a miserable heat wave with high humidity the last few days so it's been hard working outside (and inside for Hal), and now there could be a possibility of frost this weekend so I'm holding off planting the remaining plants. It's been a bizarre spring, an even more bizarre year (I do not want to go into the idiocy going on within Michigan right now)  but I am hoping something good will occur sometime this year.