Sowing, Not Sewing

It was such a beautiful day yesterday, but hot in the sun. When we'd finished our afternoon comings and goings, we checked the temperature.

And it was even hotter in the valley. I haven't checked the local newspaper, but it might have been the hottest day so far this year.

We spent the morning and a good part of the day putting in our vegetable garden. We have a large garden plot, but we only planted half of it. We're growing corn, green beans, beets, and zucchini here. In the greenhouse, we'll have lettuce and tomatoes. We broadcast wildflower seeds on the back half of the garden, there where Farmer Mike is in the photo below. It'll give the soil back there something to do while the front half grows vegetables.

I posted that picture to social media, and then took no end of grief for saying we were "starting small" for our first garden in eight years. But you'd have to see our previous gardens to understand...really, this seems small. Here's an image of our garden back in 2007.

Yeah...who needs a farmer's market when you have one in your own backyard? A garden this size is a lot of work, and I gave up trying to tend it myself. Now that Mike is home full-time, we may get back to that some day. Of course, we're older now too. So...maybe not.

By day's end, the fence was complete. Mike is still working on getting the automatic sprinkler system set up. For the time being, we'll just set a rainbird and turn it on and off manually. (Oh, the humanity!)

It was nice to get dinner at a restaurant after working in the heat all day. Seated at our table, this was our view. There were other diners seated around us, but we were upwind of everyone else. It felt very safe. All wait staff were wearing masks.

We were at the historic Joel Palmer House in Dayton, Oregon, a small town, about half an hour away from where we live.

I've written about the Joel Palmer House in previous posts, but here'a  little blurb from the menu about the house, Joel Palmer, and the restaurant. Mushrooms are their specialty.

Dinner started with this little "amuse," a carrot tartare. It was like a pickled carrot relish...so tasty. And that's a little grated morel mushroom on top.

No visit to this restaurant is complete without a serving of their wild mushroom soup. It is delicious.

And then, to cleanse our palates, this was a little shot glass with two flavors of gazpacho. We were told we could sip it or take it as a shot. We sipped ours to make it last a little while.

For our main course, I had the Angel Hair Pasta with langostino and dungeness crab. The little red fibers on top are chiles. Delicious.

Mike had their beef stroganoff. We tasted one another's. They almost look like the same dish, but they tasted very different.

For dessert, I had a melon curd tart. That's a little piece of candied bacon on top. It might seem strange until you realize that the Italians like prosciutto with their melon. The two go together beautifully.

Mike had a chocolate and peanut butter mousse. I'll admit the mousse was tempting to me as well.

And then, as we were getting ready to leave, they brought us a couple of little mojito truffles. Yum.

Before coming upstairs to write my post, I held my breath checking on the peony. Nope. 

Now it's a race to see which of these will open first.

Bringing up the rear, the lavender is getting ready to pop open. It's already smelling so good. Lavender is one of my favorite fragrances.

We're expecting more warm weather today. I'll have a few outdoor things to do, wetting things down and filling the bird feeders. Also, I need to make a quick trip to the grocery store. We have food to get us through the weekend, but I need to pick up a couple of things. After that, I'll get back to my sewing.