a restful weekend

I'm still not quite believing the semester is over....I don't give any exams tomorrow but plan to go in in the morning to do some office cleaning and maybe a little research.

Friday after I came home and ate lunch and practiced piano, I edged and mowed. Did a pretty extensive job of edging, hopefully I will not have to do thesis again for at least a month. Yesterday, I trimmed back some of the hedges and removed a lot of weeds (including some poison ivy) from the front garden.

(I also saw two young female cardinals hanging around, so I'm assuming that's what became of the nestlings - the parents moved them somewhere and they continued to mature).

What I need to do is put in an hour or so every couple days until everything is under control, I don't want to have to deal with the City again, though I have no idea if they were being overzealous last summer and have dialed it back. I know a number of people who have told me lots of people were ticked off at them for being too pushy about landscaping stuff.

I also FINALLY got the rest of my tomatoes - Lowe's finally got in some Arkansas Travelers, which do well in this climate and also make delicious tomatoes. And the semi-obligatory marigolds to confuse the nematodes.

(I have vague plans to get some kind of bedding plants for the front gardens but I want to think about what might be especially drought tolerant, it tends to get dry there as it gets the late afternoon sun)

I also worked on the current quilt top - it is almost together now. And the New Pony (Folio) has a head, body, and most of a front leg, and I'm going to go back and work more on that this evening.

(I mostly ignored the news. I checked in in between episodes of Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, and yeah, things are quieting down a little, but there's still a lot of messed-up-ness in the world)

Dinner is going to be something a little different. I thawed out a frozen salmon filet and poached it in some leftover cider I had (I had bought a 6-pack of the hard cider for some soup I was making, used one bottle of it, and the rest has hung around for over a year). I figured, people poach salmon in wine, and people also sometimes do maple-glazed salmon, so cider-poached salmon might be good. I'm going to eat it cold, with a little mayonnaise. (My mother tells me "that's a Scandinavian thing" - she grew up in a part of the country that had a lot of Swedish people)

I'm trying to eat more salmon - I can get good wild-caught salmon frozen at the natural-foods place, and I know the omega-3s are supposed to be good for you.

I had thought of maybe rewatching one of my Miyazake movies (maybe My Neighbor Totoro) this evening, still might do it.