Good and tired

I'm really blessed to have some really awesome neighbors. I'm also cursed with some really terrible ones, too, namely the ones that have had a white leather couch in their driveway for the greater part of a month, but I try not to think about them.

I'm lucky that they have the cutest baby boy, little Hank, and that they enjoy sourdough bread and hummus, that they are just as giving with their time and company. I love people like that. I could hang out and have cocktails with our neighbors until time catches up with me.

We had drinks with our neighbors on Friday, and then Saturday morning Dave dropped off some biscuits with them in exchange for a crowbar. We were doing a major cleanup of our backyard, which meant disassembling an ugly excuse for a water garden that came with the house.

More about the biscuits:

Easy recipe for rolled biscuts: 1 3/4 cups unbleached white flour (I like making them with half whole wheat pastry flour and half unbleached white flour, but to each his/her own) 1 Tbs. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt, sifted in a large bowl. Cut in 4 Tbs. butter until pea sized. Add 3/4 cups milk and stir until dough leaves sides of bowl. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead 6 to 8 times until dough is flexible (It may be a little lumpy in some spots, but that's OK).

Roll dough out until it's 1/2 inch thick and cut with cookie cutter. I like to use a 1 1/2 inch cutter, which makes the cutest little two-bite biscuits!

Serve with jam and butter, or maybe even gravy and bacon!

We had our biscuits with jam and butter, served with eggs and turkey bacon. It was a great, hearty breakfast to prep us for a long day of working hard in the back yard. My big mission on Saturday was to compost and prep our garden beds for tilling. That meant hoing up old roots and cultivating the soil with organic humus and manure. Maybe weekend after next we'll rent a tiller and get the garden going in earnest.

We also cleaned up our paths, which I love immensely. They are made of old recycled bricks that have "DALLAS" inscribed on many of them. It's a wonderful homage to the history of my adopted city.

The chickens had a field day just watching me work, and even helping sometimes by scratching around in the composted beds, picking out centipedes and other pests. How thoughtful!

Our chickens have been very exciting lately. We've been retrieving about 5 eggs every day from the coop! We've finally had enough left over to give away to our fabulous neighbors. Our messy ones are going to go without until they get the god-awful couch out of their front lawn and put some pants on their little girl (I swear she's like, 5 years old and still wearing diapers and no pants!).

On Sunday I made more biscuits and pretty much just hung around the house making chicken barley chili and sourdough, watering plants and watching movies. We watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which is juvenile and ridiculous, but the soundtrack is great.

I started on my February Lady Sweater and I'm trying to get it finished in a month. Very ambitious, I know, especially for my first sweater, but we'll see. I might actually be able to do it!

We're getting ready for our house sitter to come and play with our animals for a few days while we take a trip to the Texas Hill Country. I'm pretty excited! :D