Breaking Ground on the ZGW

Screw spring! Here in Northern Virginia, we're apparently fast-forwarding right to summer. Yesterday it got to 90 degrees (that's 31 degrees Celsius for my European readers!) and today and tomorrow the forecast is in the mid-80's again. After a long streak in the 70s, it really does feel like summer!

Of course, at the end of this week, it's supposed to dip back down to normal (in the 60s)...just in time for them to FINALLY come do some work on our pool.

Yes, you read the right. THEY'RE FINALLY GOING TO COME DO SOME WORK ON THE POOL!!!

Or so they say. But I have been led to believe that by the end of next week, we may have a completed pool. Holy crap! Pictures will be posted, trust me.

I've been making lots of new things from scratch recently: ravioli, baguettes, gnocchi, and danishes. (My kitchen is heaven for carb lovers!) I didn't manage to get a photo of the gnocchi but you'll just have to trust me: they look like gnocchi. Here are some photos of the ravioli and one of the baguettes, which I made with two of my lovely friends, Sara and Eliza:

 The wine is from a Virginia winery, too! So yummy.

And here are the apple and golden raisin danishes that I made for my friend Amber's Easter brunch:

Nooooo, absolutely no butter was used to make these at all. None.

I had made the dough for the danishes a week ago and froze it, so on Sunday I "only" had to roll it out, shape the danishes, let them rise, make the filling, fill them and bake them. But other than that, recently cooking has taken a back seat to working outside the house.

I took Friday off of work and between Friday morning and Sunday night we:

• planted the dormant plants we had purchased at Meadows Farms
• had something like 4 tons of rock and rock dust delivered to our driveway for the walkway I designed for the back yard
• started the aforementioned walkway, which we have named the ZGW (Zen Garden Walkway)
• stained the entire deck (two coats = ugggghhhhhh torture).

The entire time, I could only think about two things:

1. How I'm wearing my crappy Working Outside Clothes while covered in dirt/paint/sweat all weekend while other people are enjoying the lovely weather doing lovely things like riding bikes along the lovely W & OD trail path or sipping refreshing drinks while sitting on lovely patios; and
2. This had all better be worth it.

But really - life is good. We are incredibly fortunate to be able to create this little bit o' back yard paradise and I'm really excited to see how it all turns out! It's a lot of hard work but it's rewarding when we see the progress we're making.

Check out the photos in the side bar to see what we've done so far...