Sunday started out with making a loaf of bread.
It ended with making a sort of stroganoff with leftover flank steak, cream and Worcestershire sauce.
In between I mowed part of the lawn. Talk about a jungle out there. We've had a lot of rain, causing a burst of growth and also an inability to mow said growth. Phlox and weeds are competing with one another for garden takeover. The iris and lilies cannot even begin to put-up a fight. I plan to finish mowing today, in the afternoon when it's dry enough and my Monday (mundane?) laundry duty is finished.
The son and wife are coming here on Saturday for lunch. I'm planning a pasta salad with an olive oil dressing to accommodate the vegan. I'll need to do a little fluffing inside the house to make it visitor acceptable. With tomorrows expected rain there won't likely be any weeding. We have the worst soil known to humankind.....black clay. Until moving here I had no idea such a thing existed. Saint Paul is on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, this has some relevance to the wonderful sandy loam I was used to. This stuff, boot sucking, tendon popping when it's wet, hard as cement when it's not. Weeding has a short window, not when it's soaked, but don't let it dry. Trials and tribulations.
The sun is shining, the washer is washing and I am grumping. Happy day everyone.
26 comments:
Think of the wonderful ceramics you could make! Like the Maria pottery. Well, more or less.
Is my comment in spam? It was so valuable, too.
Boud, it did go to spam and it is very valuable! That stuff is muck.
We have clay soil too. Our home was in the area of glaciers thousands of years ago. The top our street is sand from the edges and we are the clay bottom of the lakes. We have lived here for over 40 years and found that we had to build raised beds and fill them with mostly composted soil. And every spring (after snow and winter) it all sinks down to China and we have the hard clay again. It doesn't drain well (right?) so mowing is a challenge. And when it dries out - the sun turns it into concrete and our yard is full of cracks until fall.
Our previous house was on clay. Farms has to be tiled. We are on rock in this place.
Nothing like fresh bread straight out of the oven.
Yuuummmmm. I love stroganoff and now I need to make some. Hopefully you will have good enough weather to mow the lawn....ours is growing like crazy and I have to mow again tomorrow. Gary spends part of every day trying to get our gardens together. He's about half done and pretty soon, will be planting his tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. I'm just not interested in gardening, but do a little weeding once in awhile. Enjoy your Saturday lunch!
The bread and the stroganoff look absolutely mouthwatering!
I have not heard of black clay, either. Sounds like it can be a royal pain in the patoot!
Enjoy your lunch this weekend. :)
We had clay over in North Dakota when we lived there, it would grow great tomatoes and gourds! Yup hard as a rock when dry...boot sucking when it is wet...and slippery too:)
I think I drooled on my keyboard. The bread and stroganoff look wonderful.
Now I need to make some, too. Not until the weekend, though.
I understand the difficulty of keeping up with the mowing! Once again I had to go mow at 7 inches, this time on another hill. I actually stretched another hot wire across 'the lane' and let the girls do the steepest part.
Now we are in for another morning of heavy rains.
Yum with the bread and stroganoff.
As for soil, we have it all from deep black soil to sand to clay and rock.
Miss Merry, you know the misery! When it's dry you need a jackhammer to break it. We use composted horse manure and have to add it in every year.
AC everything is tiled here. We also need a sump pump in the basement.
Dora, you got that right! I love making bread.
Lori, you and Boud inspired me to make spaghetti and meatballs today. It looks so good. Gary's gardens are fabulous. He has a true green thumb. Mark likes to weed so he helps with that. We had rain overnight. I got most of it mowed.
Rita, that is a good description! I hope to have a nice day with them, thanks.
Far Side, you know clay! Now that you mention it, tomatoes do thrive.
Mine was not a classic stroganoff, Ami, but a simple toss-together to use leftovers. But it was close enough!
Val, you've been having the same weather as us. We had rain overnight. I hope the pastures are growing as fast as the lawn. Hopefully the good soil is where your house sits.
I have clay and lots of rocks. You start digging a rock and it turns out to be a boulder. Yesterday, 16 inches of snow fell this morning 6 inches. It won't stay around long. It will prolong mud season, which you have, too. The good news is the extra snow fall will help the Great Salt Lake in the valley. It makes me happy that you are feeling invigorated.
Take Care,
Kaye
The bread looks delicious.
www.rsrue.blogspot.com
Kaye, I would imagine that in a mountainous region. 16" of snow, wowza!! Mud season, the bane of our existence.
Thank you, R's Rue.
I missed a couple of previous posts, Sandra, but then found this one with that wonderful loaf of bread and stroganoff as well. Perhaps I forgot to visit more often because I get so envious of your bread making ability and that makes me hungry for some. The problem is if I bake it...we eat it and tell ourselves not to...but we do not listen at all.
Moderation, Dorothy! I'm going to eat bread whether I buy it or bake it. So I may as well bake it. I don't bake cookies for that reason. It's really the baked good I can sit and eat in on setting.
I this blogger hates me. I commented yesterday and don't see it today. Bread looks wonderful. I'm going to try spelt bread in the pressure cooker. See how that goes.
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