Surprise, surprise, it was not all reading all the time here at the Burrow this weekend.

This morning Rudi and I headed to the market where there were carrots, nettles, asparagus, and ramps to be had, amongst other things. We used every dollar we took with us, down to the last one that I used to buy a single yellow tulip to cheer our kitchen. It looks great atop the fridge nestled next to (but not in the same container as) the asparagus.

We spent midday up in Columbia Heights where Sarah was kind enough to invite us to celebrate her birthday with brunch and some hanging out. Everyone agreed that the food was quite tasty even if our waitress seemed a bit … distracted.

We came back home where I laid down for a teeny before we headed to the garden to dig. We weeded our plot, turned over the soil, envisioned where our square-foot garden sections might go, improved the soil, and planted cabbage babies, which despite sitting in my gardening bag for a week, did not seem to be too worse for the wear.

It’s been a quiet night at home since then with lentils and ice cream (although not together; that would be gross), Chuck and Bones (we’re still a week behind on the latter), and knitting. Shortly, we’ll be taking some ibuprofen (hoeing is hard on the back) and heading to bed.

Seems like a nice way to finish a weekend to me…

What did you get up to this weekend?

A few final thoughts on Saturday’s readathon:

After writing the last book review and leaving a few encouraging comments for fellow participants, I did take my book to bed to try to read there, but decided within minutes that it’s hard to read through closed eyelids. I turned off my book light and went to bed — probably sometime around 4 — and didn’t wake up again until after the 24 hours had concluded.

In the end I completed three books and the first three chapters of a fourth book for a total of 1,072 pages. I probably only read for 12 of the 24 hours, but it did prove that I would not like to read all the time, despite what I always thought as a kid.

Alita. Reads. invites us to this hour’s challenge:

• Pick up a book that you’ve read today, or are currently reading.
• Choose a song that goes with the book -– could be that it fits the overall feel of it or even a certain scene.
• Create a blog post.

As I’m currently reading All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew, we need a gardening song. And this one, “The Garden Song,” as performed by John Denver, is my favorite:

But since the whole point of the book is that we should not be planting “row by row,” but instead in squares, I figured I’d better add a second song to help alleviate any confusion:

That would, of course, be the ’80s classic, “Hip to be Square” performed by Huey Lewis & the News.

I am here and am hoping that regular blogging will return sometime this week. The trip to Salt Lake just took a lot out of me and I’ve been in a funk since our return.

It even got so bad last week that I took my brother’s advice and went out for drinks with friends. I ordered an alcoholic beverage — my first ever. But it was nasty, so my consumption was limited to three sips. (In defense of the drink, no one else seemed to be under the impression that it reeked of liquor. In fact, they kept telling me how sweet it was!)

But I’ve been occupying my time productively when not trying to acquire a new bad habit. I’ve done a bit of housecleaning and some laundry. I am running low on handknit socks, though, so a load of sink washing must move up on my priority list…

I’ve done a bit of cooking recently. We made a batch of Jenn’s tomato sauce last month and I followed it up with Mum’s recipe for baking tomatoes. Well, not so much baking, as preserving. Sort of… Tonight I baked an apple crisp as a follow-up to the delicious turnip soup Rudi made for supper. (Of course, I started it too late for it to be done before Rudi toddled off to bed, but I promised him he could eat it for breakfast if he wanted…) While in Salt Lake, we had a delicious pear coffee cake one morning at a cafe, and Rudi’s mom sent us home with a handful of pears (and plums and quinces and apples and herbs), so I may give that a shot sometime soon unless Rudi decides he’s going to start eating them.

The garden continues to give us petite tomatoes and the pepper plants all have flowers covering them. I planted a rather late crop of squash, so although the plants have come up, I’m not convinced they’ll make it to vegetable stage. Although our frosts come pretty late in the year, so who knows. A volunteer lettuce popped up from the spring’s harvest going to seed, and our chard remains ever faithful.

I’ve been knitting quite a bit, but not finishing an awful lot. I have one mitt and one sock done, so either half of me will be nice and toasty or I’ll have to switch it up and go the right sock/left mitt route and hope that keeps either side from too much shivering.

Reading has been more successful, although I think I failed to finish any of the three challenges I took on over the summer. Plus, I have gotten so behind on book reviews that I need to figure out a new way to handle them. Or just suck it up and crank them out and inundate you with reviews. Any thoughts on that? And I missed the National Book Festival while I was in Salt Lake, which just makes me crabby to think about…

I try to get out on the bike each weekend, but my progress is slow when I go on my own (and Julia and I have not been coordinating our schedules well lately…) Bike D.C. is coming up in two weeks, so maybe I’ll see if any of our friends are interested in signing up with me. I also should sign up for that yoga class I keep telling Elspeth and Julia I’m going to take. Maybe when I get back from our long Connecticut weekend. I have done more commuting on the bike this year than ever before, helped by the delays caused by the Red Line crash earlier this year. (They were completely necessary and understandable, but I had a way around them, so why not take advantage of my two wheels?)

Anyway, that’s my version of a catch-all catch-up. Maybe tomorrow I’ll offer you my reflections on the baseball season…

Today, I clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed because all sorts of things are making me mad.

However, we will look for the silver lining in what’s annoying me:

• The man who couldn’t be bothered to move his gym bag so that it would stop hitting me on the Metro did not get his toes “accidentally” trodden on when the doors finally let us both out.
• I thought to put my lunch in a plastic bag so it wouldn’t leak all over my purse.
• I removed my lunch from my purse before the plastic bag filled with chili “juice” started leaking.
• When the plastic bag leaked all over the outside of my purse, I was able to quickly wipe it up.
• The used mystery I bought that turned out to have the ending of the book ripped out? That’ll just prolong my enjoyment of the book, right?
• I was able to move my rosemary from where it was sitting on our steps inside a little railing outside our door before whoever helped themselves to my aloe and chives stole it, too.
• Whoever stole my plants will be able to use my aloe for relief after they burn their hand cooking with my chives.

Hmmm… nope. Didn’t work. Still filled with vitriol.

Anyone want to delurk and give me something cheerful to think about in the comments? Good news? Anything?

Happy Earth Day!

To celebrate, here are some pictures from a few weeks ago taken in my garden:

I’m always eager to hear of ways to help the planet. The best one I came by this year was to switch to recycled toilet paper. I’ve used the recycled, industrial-strength tp before — particularly back in college — but have never been a fan of how rough it was. Now, though, I’m delighted to report that recycled toilet paper has improved dramatically and is way softer, cheaper, and easier to find than it used to be. Plus, using recycled tp is a huge boon to the environment. Rudi forwarded me an article earlier this year that got me thinking about where my priorities ought to lie. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council,

If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees.

Scary, eh? So I’m thinking that buying less lovely toilet paper — which I’m going to be getting rid of immediately upon use — is worth saving a few trees.

Honestly, I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but when it was pointed out, making the change made sense. I’d be happy to consider other ideas to cut down on my negative effects on the planet. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Rain is good for a garden. It keeps things green and lush.

It is also good for the gardener, because then she does not need to lug water from home. However, nothing comes without a price because it also means that she’s supposed to do this thing called weeding.

Clearly, this is a foreign concept to our intrepid gardener. (Don’t click on that photo, Mum. You’ll disinherit me.)

Ahem. Obviously you can guess where some of my long weekend will be spent.

Since last month, my peas and beans have grown a bit. The peas have mostly gone by for the season, but my beans are thriving. It was a mistake to plant them all together as the beans overtook the peas, so next year I’ll have a series of tee pees.