Mr. N's Birthday Weekend!

Mr. N told me yesterday that he'd had the best birthday ever. That was really nice to hear. We tried to make it special for him. We borrowed our neighbor's plow and finally plowed up his gardens. He made two. He's loosely following the Square Foot Gardening technique, but the one garden is bigger. Above is Mr. N holding a big tree stump he and my dad extracted. It was a beast to get out. I can't imagine doing a really big one!

This is the larger of the two gardens. We lined it with some Belgium stones (I think that's what my dad called them. Supposedly they were brought over on ships from Europe and then used to make streets here in the US. It's a cool bit of history.

This is the smaller garden. I think Mr. N would have preferred to have 3 4X4 gardens, but he's really happy with what they have!

We lined the gardens with fencing to keep the dogs and children out. Mr. N was so happy out there making his garden. Half the day we worked in a light rain, but it was still really really nice. My dad and Mr. N made fun of my feeble farming techniques. They did the hard stuff. Mr. N and my dad went and bought soil at a nursery. We're planning on planting tonight for Family Home Evening.



Here's the small garden!

This is Bagosha (I know I butchered that). She lives behind us with her son and his wife and their children. She stays home with their kids while her son and his wife (Mark and Ana) work. She held Baby L for me for a bit and fed her chocolate chip cookies. I wasn't too fond of Baby L eating all those cookies...but oh well.

Notice there are two now. I went back and bought Fauna's sister, who hadn't sold. We named her Flora. Fauna is the one in the top picture and Flora is in the bottom picture. Fauna is smaller and has funny ears (they don't lay right). Flora is a much better looking rabbit and is much calmer. Fauna is the dominant one and usually tries to attack us (very mildly) when I feed them and so forth. I'm not really sure what to do to get her to stop that. I know rabbits are territorial and that she's defending her turf...but she scratched M the other day and it really scared her. We'll figure it out I guess. Otherwise Flora will be the one we handle and Fauna will be mostly left alone. How do you train a rabbit?

Anyways, Sunday I surprised Mr. N with this Raspberry bush! He was so excited. It was the perfect gift for him.



For dinner I made Fillet Mignon, and it was fantastic! I'd never made that cut of meat before. We wrapped it in bacon, which added a lot. Mr. N was very happy with his birthday dinner.



And for dessert we had Mr. N's annual birthday cake! This year we tried pouring the ganache on rather than spreading it like frosting. It turned out okay, except we poured too much on, so it looked a bit like a snow avalanche. It tasted great though.

Here's my dad waiting for cake.

Baby L just had ice cream, which was fine by her. Being a second child seems to have a lot of advantages! She's eaten a lot of things (cookies, ice cream) that M never had before age 1. Oh well. I don't give the girls sweets that often.

Doesn't it look delicious!!!

It was a very happy birthday.