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Working and playing at the farmette

It's a dull though very warm day (20C) for the end of September. How did we manage to get here so quickly and so slowly at the same time? We had a busy-ish week - mostly at home due to COVID-19, but we did manage to get out in the Miata yesterday.

The farmette renovations continue. There's s a spot right next to the deck that has bugged me since we moved in. It's kind of a dead zone where the garden hose hangs from the back of the toolshed. It's under the gigantic maple that shades the house so there's no way to plant anything due to roots the size of the worms in the movie Tremors. (If you haven't seen it, do - Kevin Bacon when he was a young pup.)


Anyhow. I got ambitious and decided to tackle it last week. Using leftover flagstones from when we fixed up the front stoop, I cleaned up the patch, put a layer of dirt from what we lovingly call gramma's grave (a pile of fill that we've had beside the garage for two years), smoothed it out as much as possible and laid out the stones.

Calvin thought that the patch of dirt was the bomb, as you can see. Kitty litter heaven - although to be fair, he didn't attempt a deposit.


It was bloody hard work and I ruined my gardening pants in the process. Positioning the stones and laying out the limestone screenings was a bit of a bugger to get right. But the result is pretty spanky, I think. It'll be a nice spot to place our 20+ year old hibiscus next spring.


There's still a bit of settling to take place and I have to clean up the stones, but not bad, eh?


Yesterday, it was a really sunny summery day as we rumbled out with our 30-year-old Miata. Yep. It's vintage 1990 - we've had it since 1996 - and it still runs like a well-oiled sewing machine.


We top-downed it over to Paisley where one of my internet friends has opened a restaurant. Bonfire on Queen is owned by Jen and Chris, and it's a great little place if you're looking for fantastic pizza, sandwiches and luscious desserts. It's licensed, too, so you can grab a beer or, in my case, wine to go with the meal.

We opted for the charcuterie board, which was loaded with lots of goodies including porcetta, smoked cheese (Chris cold-smoked it himself) and yummy pickles - all eaten by me, because certain Scots don't like pickled bits.


We followed it up by splitting the special pizza of the day - sausages, mushrooms and bits of locally sourced (Jen's parents farm) puffball, along with tomato sauce and mozzarella. I told our waitress Barb that I hadn't had puffball since I was a kid.


All in all, it was a good week to work really hard, get something accomplished and then treat ourselves to a tasty (and large) lunch in a beautiful setting that's just an hour away from the farmette.


As you can see from the look on his face, Rob enjoyed it quite a bit. Until next week.









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