Picking asparagus while the sun shines

It's been a couple of weeks, but in my defense, it's hard to follow up a post on the excitement of vacation. This past week was also rather full of unfortunate and non-blog-worthy things (mostly regarding some of the darker sides of home ownership). That said, I'm starting this week on an optimistic note because it was a glorious weekend. It was the type of weekend where the weather was so nice that I felt guilty every time I went inside. In my efforts to stay outside, I managed to get some yard work done, along with plenty of ice tea drinking on the back porch.

We have a table now, which makes porch sitting nicer.

On Saturday, we had a much-looked-forward-to picnic with friends. Franklin BBQ is a restaurant in Austin that people get up at 6 am to wait in line for. They cook up 1,800 lbs of meat per day, open at 11, and sell out by around 3 every day they're open. I'm not someone who waits in line for food if I can help it (Shakespeare, yes; food, no). I discovered it was possible to skip the whole line business if you were willing to email your order in advance. They still had very precise ordering deadlines (had to be at exactly 9 am on a certain date more than a month out), but in the end we got about 12 lbs of delicious meat to-go. Since Sam and I cannot eat 12 lbs of meat, no matter how delicious, we had organized to share it with friends while also potlucking together some sides. All and all, it was a delicious meal. I'm not sure I would ever wake up early for it, but rather waiting in line or waiting passively for a month and a half, I do think the anticipation helps it live up to the hype.

That's some good brisket right there.

On Sunday, before doing some more gardening, we checked out my new favorite place in Austin: The Natural Gardener. It's this awesome nursery that has everything you need for organic gardening, plus a bunch of things you don't. A labyrinth, fields of wild flowers, chickens, goats, and a couple of donkeys, to name a few. You can save money by shoveling and bagging your own garden soil and mulch, which has the advantage of making me feel somewhat more hardcore. They also had at least 30 different types of heirloom tomato plants. We now have an entire bed devoted just to tomatoes. I don't even like tomatoes! That's the power of the gardening store.

Not found at your average organic gardening superstore.

My garden so far. Herbs in the front right, tomatoes and peppers beyond that. Carrots and beets (seedlings) in the front left and assorted vegetables behind that. Also, my newly built compost heap!

So far the thing that's growing the best in my garden is the asparagus that some previous owner of the house must have planted. Somewhat is survived my raising of all living things from the beds and laying down fresh soil, because we're getting a few new shoots a day. Unfortunately, a few shoots of asparagus is kind of useless in terms of eating it, but it's still given me some joy to actually harvest something.

Hopefully we'll have more photos of the backyard once we can afford to buy plants and stuff again. Til' next time...