the perfect food???

 According to the latest food pyramid, a healthy diet should consist of vegetables, meat, fruit, dairy products and bread.  Just coincidentally the pizzas my spouse and I finished off for supper this evening, after having some for supper last night and lunch today, contained all of these elements except fruit, although technically tomato is a fruit.  My spouse likes Hawaiian pizza so his absolutely has fruit.

 

So, does this make pizza the perfect food?  When you consider that it's delicious eaten at home or at your favorite pizza place (we like B'Antonio's), it's reheatable but also fine eaten cold, and seems to keep for a long time in or out of the fridge, I think the answer is obvious. 

Is it a coincidence that the new food pyramid is shaped like a slice of pizza?  I think not.

about those relatives...

 Today, according to my Page-a-Day Maxine calendar, is Parents' Day.

It is also, according to my west coast brother, "Aunt and Uncle's Day" and "Savvy Auntie's Day."  In my life time I have been blessed with wonderful parents, a loving parent-in-law, a loving step-parent, four fine uncles, four wonderful aunts, two loving grandpas and one honorary grandma.  She was a good friend's grandma, but she lived next door to us and we called her grandma.

Now it's my turn.  I am, by age, the matriarch of my family.  I think I was a good mom, my children have turned out just fine, and my adult grandchildren, who are also doing well, love me.  I have also tried to be a good aunt to my three nieces and three nephews and their spouses and children. 

I'm not sure if they consider me savvy (probably not) but I think they know that I love them all.  

Yummy...

 I hope you ate well today.  According to my west coast brother today is "National Hot Fudge Sundae Day" and "National Wine and Cheese Day."  You're bound to find something you like somewhere in those choices.  

My wonder spouse and I managed to find something to our liking.  This evening we went to dinner with my son and his family.  We were celebrating two birthdays and a new job, so lots to be happy about.

My daughter-in-law, one of the birthday people, selected Red Robin as the site for dinner since she had a coupon for a free 'birthday burger.'  The reason and the destination both sounded good to my spouse and me, and so we went to Red Robin for the first time in at least three years.  I used to go there fairly often with my son and his family but the granddaughters have grown up and their tastes have expanded.  Dinner there today brought back some sweet memories.

I had water instead of wine, but I did have a generous amount of cheese on my bacon cheese burger.  It was served just the way I like it with cheese and bacon of course and sliced tomato and mayo.  No lettuce.  I am not a fan of lettuce.  Happily it came prepared exactly as I had ordered it.  This does not always happen in restaurants.  

I am glad to be able to report that the Red Robin onion rings and sweet potato fries are just as delicious as I remembered.  

Sadly, after eating our fill of burgers, fries and onion rings, my spouse and I decided that we had no room for hot fudge sundaes.  That treat will have to wait for another day.  Happily tomorrow is another day.  

Eureka!!

 The new system works and we have water flowing to all of our flowering plants at the front of the house.  Around the other three sides of the house we have bushes, lilys, hostas and similar plants that have been coming up and thriving (or at least surviving) for years.  They do not need a special watering system.  

But now we have a watering system on the front side of the house that my wonder spouse assembled with a little help from me.  He designed, organized and installed the whole thing, following diagrams and directions, and putting all the little pieces together.  My help was of the 'standing by to hold things or hand him things' variety. 

Here you can see one of the larger hoses and the little ones that run off from it to the individual plants.  If you look closely you can see the aqua top of the water spike in the pink plant and the red top of the water spike in the lily. 

Each plant has a small hose running directly to and attached to a little hollow spike which is inserted near the roots of the plant and carries the  water to the roots.  The whole system is on a timer which is scheduled to turn the water on for an hour beginning at 6:00am.  Tomorrow morning will be the first test of this part of the system.  Sometime in the next few days I will cover the exposed hoses with mulch and sometime in August I will post a picture of our flourishng flower beds.  If you do not see a picture sometime in August you can assume the worst, but I have high hopes.

A simple system..

 When the landscaper finished her work yesterday she recommended a "simple" above ground irrigation system, with all black hoses so it's practically invisible, that we could install ourselves. All for under $100. It could be set up to come on with a timer every evening. This sounded great so my spouse ordered the product from Amazon.  It was delivered this morning.  As advertised, the kit contained miles (I may exaggerate a little) of quarter inch and half inch black hoses, attachments to allow lots of different installation arrangements and nifty suggestions with diagrams, lots and lots of diagrams. 

As you might expect, it wasn't quite as easy to install as advertised, so we didn't finish the job in a day.  Happily, I do know how to water plants the 'old-fashioned' way with an ordinary garden hose.  Hopefully the plants will still be alive tomorrow and by tomorrow evening the new system really should be installed.

Stay tuned...

a face lift..

 No, not for me.  I'm well beyond the age where a face lift would do any good.  If I could figure out a way to get a full body lift I might consider it.  But this isn't about me. 

Way back before my spouse and I went on our cruise in May, we had contracted with Flower Princess Plant and Lawn Care, a local landscaping company to do new landscaping all around our house.  The agreement was that the work wouldn't be started until we were back from vacation so we would be here to water the plants.  

Two days ago the 'princess' (it's a one woman company) started work on our lawn.  She finished today.  I wish I had thought to take some before pictures but I didn't. However I did take pictures today. 

You can't really tell from the pictures but she trimmed all the bushes, cleared out and put fresh dark brown mulch under all the trees and all around the house and planted several new flowering plants in the front flower beds. 

Here's the front view.  Note the neatly trimmed bushes and the mulch around the light post and across the front of the house.

A closer view of the (soon to be) flowering plants.

Doesn't this look spiffy?  A face lift indeed. Tomorrow my wonder spouse and I will install an inexpensive watering system that the princess recommended.  Every morning the automatic timer will tell it to gently water the plants.  I will let you know how this works after we give it a trial run.

Feeling sheepish???

 My west coast brother and my excellent sister-in-law raise sheep and goats on their hillside farm out west.  I think it's because of their lifestyle that he suggested I read two books about sheep.

A recent movie "The Sheep Detectives" is based on these two books. I will, I think, try to see the movie sometime after I finish the books.  

The books "Three Bags Full" and "Big Bad Wool" were written by a German author Leoni Swann and translated into English by Amy Bojang.  The first one takes place in Ireland.  I have always enjoyed reading 'cozy mysteries' and you can't get much cozier than cuddling up with fluffly fictional sheep.  Real life sheep can tend to be smelly and sometimes nasty, but we're talking fiction here.

Having sheep dectectives try to solve a murder (with a few people here and there along the way) is a fun twist on traditional murder mysteries. They have unusual skills, like a keen sense of smell, to help them in their detecting. All of the sheep have names of course.  My favorite is Miss Maple, a wise old sheep who figures things out.  Shades of Miss Marple?

If you're looking for a uniquely entertaining read, I recomment these books.