Garden is Planted

The weather finally has warmed up enough to get the majority of the vegetable gardens planted - even though we had a frost just a week ago.  We spent a good part of Saturday afternoon out in the sunshine planting our raised beds.  We decided this year to plant the majority of the beds with our favorite beans, lettuces, and cucumber (here come those pickles again).  But we also tried a few experimental items, as usual.  We planted Brussels Sprouts for the first time since Jo has come to love them caramelized and Lima Beans for me since I loved these as a kid.  Now we just need some warm weather to get everything going.  Since we were in a planting mood, we also got our front porch flower pots planted going with pansies and geraniums this year.

For the rest of the weekend, we stayed busy at a variety of activities.  Friday we went to the nursery to purchase the flowers for the front porch and then came home to make a homemade pepperoni pizza with a corn bread crust.  I was probably a bit too aggressive in my ratio of corn meal to flour for the crust, but I thought it was good anyway - Jo's opinion wasn't quite as optimistic.  But we made up for any deficiencies with the pizza by making our first homemade chocolate ice cream of the season - yum - and there was enough cream left over for a small batch of vanilla later this week.  Saturday morning had great temperatures for running so we did an extra long run before heading to the gym.  Then it was meatball sandwiches for lunch using some meatballs Jo had made a few months ago and we had frozen.  Saturday night, to celebrate our planting efforts, we biked downtown to get ribs at the Smokeshack (I told you it was our new favorite place).  Then after biking home we felt we needed to reward ourselves for all that biking and have some more of the chocolate ice cream (remember, always bike to food!).

Sunday after our morning exercising, running for me a long bike ride for Jo, we headed to Grant Park to do the 7 Bridges hike.  We enjoyed a nice 3 hour hike through the woods along Lake Michigan, with a cool breeze coming in off the lake to keep us from getting to warm, chatting about life, retirement, family, and work.  We stopped for a picnic lunch where we had a nice view over Lake Michigan, although it was a bit misty so we couldn't see too far.  One interesting fact about the hike was there is now actually ten bridges so we weren't entirely sure why the trail was named as it was - presumably there used to only be seven bridges.  After the hike we came home to do a few chores around the house and a steak and potatoes dinner with asparagus.  Then it was time to start preparing for another week of work.

Nothing very notable about our respective work weeks.  I worked on various outdoor chores, cleaning up flower beds and getting a sprinkler system going in the vegetable gardens.  Jo had meetings, meetings, and more meetings to get ready for meetings this week.