Spring Monday

Matt's going to harp on me, I know, for bitching about the weather, but it's EFFING RAINING, again. As if we need more. I suppose I should be glad that it isn't torrential as it was last time, and it's just getting the gournd wet enough, but not flooding our backyard. What? Don't believe me?



That's me and Dave, making the best of the weather.

I totally forgot about blogging on Friday until The Very Last Minute, and I forgot to post about our excursion on Thursday to see Centromatic and have pupusas at Gloria's. First, a little about pupusas: It is a traditional Salvadoran dish, most like a tamale, in that it's stuffed with pork and cheese, but instead of being rolled, it's flat, and often baked between two banana leaves instead of corn husks.



Very tasty stuff. Best if washed down with a mojito. I was silly and ordered a margarita, which Gloria's often serves with a wash of tequila. That's a lot of booze!

We then walked down Greenville to the Granada, which is a very cool venue with pretty crappy acoustics. It's definitely one of those places where you want to wear earplugs. Good on the management for providing them for free!

The show was really great. Will Johnson lead the band through a charismatic 2 hour set, full of favorites and a few new songs. Lot's of devotees were in the audience, which is usually what you get when you play on a weeknight: a small but dedicated crowd. It was super fun.

I'm glad the weather held over the weekend. We had some major stuff to do. Like, Saturday I had a lot of data to compile and we were watching our neighbors' 2-month-old son, Hank (who is, by all accounts, a very good baby), then we had birthday/mother's day dinner with Dave's family. In there somewhere I had to go chicken-sit for a friend.

For dinner on Saturday we went to Dodie's. Good cajun seafood. We started with a plate of oysters on the half shell, and I doused mine with quite a bit of Dodie's house sauce, which is spicy, but not too vinegar-y like Tabasco (I'm sure to be smited for maligning Tabasco, but I just don't like it). I had the crawfish tails and fried oysters with a few schooners of Ziegenbock, which is pretty tasty when your only draft beer alternatives are Bud Light, Budweiser and Red Hook.

Good thing we rested well on Saturday night, because we had a helluva day on Sunday. I had to go chicken-sit for a bit, but then I had several chicken and garden-related issues to address. If anyone tries to tell you that having a garden is not too much work, they are LYING. Especially if you are doing it organically.

What was really hard was shoveling the manure from the chicken run. After all that rain we had last week, well, let's just say the manure situation was not pleasant. It was also time to hose down the inside of the coop. Next time I'll likely put some sand underneath the coop. I may even get some more cinder blocks and raise it up another level to make it easier to clean under. In any case, yesterday I had to harvest compost to make room for all the manure (it was probably more manure than you imagine six chickens can produce) and then transfer the compost to the garden beds.

When I was pulling bedding straw from the hay bale to put down in the run, I must have shaken a garden snake loose. In any case, he thought that the best place to hid was my sandal (!). Holy crap did I jump. This, however, was a boon to the chickens. Do they ever love to eat some garden snakes. And worms. And grubs. They had a regular gross-out feast on Sunday as I was digging around in the dirt.

Honestly, after all that, I was never more appreciative of a hot shower and some simple knitting. Right now I'm working on a mohair cowl for a friend of mine. She'll appreciate it come winter (which, let's be honest, that's probably when I'll finish it).

Also, thanks everyone for the e-mails and the comments after the last post wishing me good luck with my project. I was working on a City Council campaign for a very worthy candidate, but we didn't make the runoff, which is incredibly disappointing. I do hope it doesn't discourage this man from running again. Our city could really use his leadership and non-divisive attitude.

Well, here we are, another (rainy) Monday in Dallas ...