WEEKEND UPDATE

It was a good weekend.  It was odd for sure, and maybe not the perfect weekend I had imagined in my head but still good in the long run.

We got there early Saturday morning.  It was misty raining when we left so I thought that would put, no pun intended, a damper on the weekend.  The first thing I noticed when we drove up was the grass was out of control.  Thankfully the John Deere (Big Green Zen Machine) was back and ready to use. I was trying to beat the rain but managed to get it finished in time.

So after I finished mowing, I decided to take work on the inside with a few projects, one being a new shower head for the shower.

I removed the old one and cleaned up the pipe.

Got the new one installed and it is great.  But while I was testing it, I kept hearing a strange noise from the water heater.  So I checked it out...I looked in the cabinet and saw water spraying out in a stream from the cold water inlet pipe.

I pulled back the linoleum to find wet wood.  Arrrgh!  I knew that plumber was not focused.  Anyway, I went down to 2nd Family's house to ask R for advice.  He does plumbing work on the side.  He came up, knew how to fix it and came back about 15 minutes later with the tools and pipe pieces and fixed it!  He is AWESOME.

Meanwhile, 2nd Man was busy preparing a great meal for us.  He had problems  however with his bread not rising.  He tried two loaves and neither came out, it just wouldn't rise.  Still now sure what the cause was.  We're thinking that the yeast was bad (but it was newly purchased and not near the expiration date).  He put on a pot of bolognese sauce to cook all day and it sure smelled great.  He also made some pasta but we ran out of flour (after the two loaves) so I had to run to the grocery store after driving back into town to feed the cats at the house in town (they are old, need special food, and don't travel well, so they stay in town and we make the drive to take care of them).

Here is the bolognese sauce simmering on the stove.  It literally simmered for about 6 hours.  Pork, beef, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh herbs, garlic, etc.

Freshly made pasta, made with farm fresh eggs that 2nd Family gave to us when we got there.  This takes a bit to make but of course, only about 2 to 3 minutes in boiling water to cook.

So dinner was a big bowl of pasta bolognese, a salad, topped with freshly shaved asiago cheese, and a glass of our favorite white wine, Gazela Vinho Verde.  Since 2nd Man's bread didn't come out, we fell back to some New York Brand garlic cheese bread baked in the oven.  It was a delicious meal.

After dinner, we sat on the porch with another glass of wine and relaxed. It was later than we had planned, but it was a nice evening.  We decided to share our dinner with 2nd Family as a thank you, so we put some in a container and walked it down there.  It's about 1/4 mile walk down the driveway and in the dark of night it was interesting.  About halfway down, we heard this strange scream that sent chills down my back as I envisioned all manner of creatures, of both fact and fiction, jumping out of the shadows of the trees.  Turns out it was a bull on the property next door.  Damn cows.
Nosey AND loud.

We walked back up to the house and decided to go in for the night.  We closed up the doors and windows, and changed into some warm pj's and relaxed the rest of the evening.  It's refreshing to be away from the TV.  We just had music  to listen to and lots of books to read.  Oh, because it was still warm (the cold air hadn't arrived yet), we had some Blue Bell ice cream for dessert.  By the way, these are the individual serving sizes, not entire half gallons, LOL.

We have no heat in the house yet and so it got cold during the night with the front's cold air finally coming through.  It got down into the 40's by about 3am but it was warm under the quilts and blankets and by morning, I can assure you I was NOT wanting to get up.  But of course, I awoke to the smell of sausage cooking and found that 2nd Man making his wonderful  sausage gravy and biscuits, so I somehow managed to drag myself out of bed for that.

I went outside to try to capture the sunrise but it was rising behind these trees and it was so cold and windy outside, I didn't linger.  Meanwhile inside, 2nd Man finally got to use his marble top table for the reason he wanted it originally:

Using the cold marble to roll out dough.  They were, of course, delicious, and we ate our breakfast on the porch.  It was still cold and VERY windy, but sitting on the porch in the country, eating a steaming hot plate of biscuits and sausage gravy made that all go away.

We wanted to stay longer but really, there was nothing I could do outside, it was just FAR too windy and the house was a bit too cold inside for 2nd Man to be Spring cleaning.  One thing is for sure, we'll have to get heat of some sort before next Winter.  We had put it off this season because we knew we wouldn't be out there overnight until the water heater was replaced.  Now that it's been done, we didn't anticipate a late season cold blast, ha. 

SO it was a weekend of ups and downs, mostly ups so that was good.  I didn't get to work on the raised beds because of the rain on Saturday, the wind on Sunday, and now, believe it or not, we have a freeze coming!  It's a late season freeze for us but a freeze is not good for any seedlings.  We're leaving that project for Easter weekend.

We are so happy to have the house and property.
It truly is a dream come true and I'm glad we can share it with all of you
(the good AND the bad).  I'll catch up to all of your wonderful comments from the last few days later on this evening.

Stay warm wherever you are!