pastry, gardening, and duck

[da]

melted_snowball's pastry post last night reminded me of a discovery I made yesterday- City Cafe makes awesome chocolate croissants! Yesterday was the first time I've been there early enough in the day to actually eat one. It was a fluke that any were left at 2pm; apparently they're usually gone by 10am.

Later in the afternoon, I stopped by to talk to our neighbour A., across the street. She loves Rover, and actually repeated her offer (of a while ago) to watch her when I'm visiting d. next weekend. I'm gonna take her up on it, and I think Rover will have a lot of fun with her.

She's a hobby gardener, and we spent a while talking about replacements for grass. She was enthusiastic enough about the topic to drive us over to a friend's house over on Victoria, where she helped them replace their entire front yard. Also on the way back, we stopped at the house of a second person she knows who did the same, a few years earlier, to see how it looks over time.

Perhaps I need 3rd & 4th opinions (tbiedl being the 2nd opinion), but it makes some sense to me to make our front yard into pretty ground-cover. I've talked with d. about it, and his concerns make sense: how much money and effort it takes to put in and maintain. A.'s opinion was that both are reasonable; they're supposed to be much less work than a grass lawn.

So, for me laziness is one motivator; another is that I think they look cool, and a third is for environmental reasons; though it's not like we watered during last year's drought, or blasted the lawn with chemicals (yet, at least). But yeah. A little education is a dangerous thing, and right now I've got a little education about gardening. At d's suggestion, this spring I'm putting some energy into learning what we've actually got in our back yard, and if I can be that much of a gardener without getting bored, I can probably handle some front-lawn stuff as well.

So, expect some more gardening posts from me. I'll keep 'em behind a cut to avoid inflicting gardening on the uninterested, since I've previously found the topic as boring as... well... dirt. (sorry).

I intend to include photos, because I have an awful time remembering plant names, and maybe I can use my own journal to remind me what the hell I'm talking about, in addition to maybe being interesting. Maybe.

Last night's dinner was finishing off the duck that d. cooked while he was here. Duck-thighs and asparagus, yum. I've put some fat in the freezer, stock in the fridge (ready for some sort of soup tonight; if I can find matzo meal it'll be matzo-ball soup), and a couple of duck-burger patties in the freezer too. Duck is such a good thing.

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

*sigh* how quickly they forget.

I'm sure I've bought you a pain au chocolat from City Café at least once.


I hope you have fun with the gardening stuff...

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Urm. It's possible that you did, of course. I didn't remember the distinctive shape (which might not be so distinctive to me after all...)

I suppose the only solution is to eat more of them, maybe the memory will return.

[nobodyhere.livejournal.com]

If or when you decide to switch your lawn over, I'm happy to help with digging up the sod or anything else for that matter! I'll even bring my own spade :)

I don't know if I've told you this (or if you've read it in a post), but my plan for moving away from grass is to do so very slowly, planting test patches of different ground cover before committing to anything. It'll take years, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm constantly looking at other non-grass front yards, but I haven't actually talked to anyone about when they made the switch, how much it cost, or how much work it's been since then, so that's a good perspective to get.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

hee hee. Thanks. :)

My neighbour's approach is actually to leave the sod where it is, cover it with layers of newspaper, then a lot of mulch. I'm sure there are other details, but that's what she's done with her front yard.

I'll try and snap a photo this afternoon to show what it looks like.