Happy Easter, Do You Wanna Dance?

L's Easter/Spring Break was eclipsed by my illness and her Spring Musical.  We had to cancel our weekend in Toledo with J due to illness, and L had 4 hours of rehearsal every day except for Good Friday, so that was that.

I did try to do some Easter-y things, masked of course.  Having binge watched an entire season of "Great British Baking Show" over the previous 2 days, I decided to make Hot Cross Buns for Good Friday.  This involved 10 minutes of kneading dough, which was actually quite therapeutic.  They were delicious and I will definitely be baking these again, although I might cheat and use the bread hook on my KitchenAid instead of all that kneading.

I also boiled some eggs, and I expected L to help me decorate them, but she was much too busy.  I ended up using paint pens to paint them, which was not actually a good idea, because I could only paint about 1/3 of the egg, and then I had to let it dry before moving on.  They looked ok from far away.

For Easter brunch, I made beignets, which we enjoyed hot with fresh berries.  Yummy!

We have had some lovely weather, in fact, it has been a bit warm and dry!  Midweek, I ended up watering the peas that I planted, and just discovered yesterday that 2 of them have come up.  I'm hoping for better germination than that!

In the meantime, my asparagus has been sprouting, and I'm guessing that the rain over the weekend may really get it going.

JP spent a few days last week DIY-ing a 100 year old sink that we scavenged from our public library before a renovation project over a year ago.  The library is housed in a mansion built between 1900 and 1905 and gifted to the library by the previous owner.  The sink is now part of an outdoor sink/potting bench, which I think is wonderful!  I will stain the wood once it dries a bit...perhaps this fall.

L's show opened on Friday night.  I spent Thursday night and all day Friday washing, mending, ironing and steaming costumes!  They did a wonderful job, and it looked like they all had a fun time!  The show was titled "Do You Wanna Dance?"

I started back to work last week as well following the bout of COVID.  I am still getting tired sooner than typical, and my chest gets really tight when I exercise, but otherwise I'm doing fine. Yesterday and today are my days to recover from the show.  I ended up grooming and bathing the dog on Saturday, pushing the lawn mower out back yesterday, and I have to clean house today as well as attend the library Board meeting this evening.  Sigh.  Will life EVER slow down?

April Fool

I am home sick today with COVID.   I thought perhaps that I would make it through this pandemic unscathed, but apparently not.  Luckily, I feel like I simply have a bad cold and am fairly hoarse, otherwise not feeling too poorly.  Mostly I'm just feeling a bit of a fool for not wearing a mask to L's County Chorus Concert on Friday evening.

Today is also the warmest day of the year so far - in the 70's, and the sky is a brilliant blue.  I have all of the windows open in the hopes of blowing the nasty germs far away.  I'm glad that I got the screens put back on the windows over the weekend so that I can have them all flung wide!

I did finally get the peas planted over the weekend as well - we are a few weeks behind the St Patty's Day deadline, but not too shabby!  The other plants should not be too far behind - they are currently hardening off in my new tiny greenhouse purchased at Tractor Supply Company a couple of weeks ago.  And just in time too...some of my squash plants have wee squashes on them already!

I made some other purchases at Tractor Supply Co. a couple of weeks ago as well:  10 little peeps.  I started out with 5 black sex-linked pullets, and 5 Rhode Island Red pullets, but one of the black ones died the following day.  I was able to replace it with a Buff Orpington pullet (this is the breed of our stupid rooster, NumNuts) - she is the little blond one toward the center.

Outside things are greening up and doing their thing as well.  The pear trees are blooming, and were swarming with bees over the weekend (if you enlarge the picture you can see the bees more clearly.)  The weeping cherries were also humming full of bees.

The swing set is also greening up.  JP and I bought stain for it last week, and it was so beautiful outside that I decided to start using it today.  You can see that I didn't get any higher that I could reach on a step ladder since I'm scared of heights and home alone.  Guess I'll do the high stuff later.

Unrelated to outside and green and peeps, but slightly like growing things, I made pasta over the weekend.  It's been a while, but it turned out delish.

Well, I'm coughing rather violently again, so I'm going to go back outside - that seemed to help earlier!  I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful season!