My First Mother's Day

What a lovely day - err, weekend, I should say. We had to make it a mother's day weekend because there are just too many people to celebrate with to fit it all into one day. Especially with Bayla. We had a lovely brunch with my grandma and aunt, we visited my mom, Zvi visited his grandma, and then we had Zvi's parents over for dinner. And of course there was our very own little breakfast party for me. Zvi made the most amazing oatmeal pancakes for me. Since we switched away from quick oats (for both health and taste reasons), we are both really loving oatmeal for breakfast on weekends. And this recipe took it to a whole new level .... oatmeal = great, pancakes = great, strawberry sauce = great ... so what's not to love? :-) The only problem, as we both unfortunately discovered later on Sunday night ... is that we both truly are lactards and using butter, no matter how small an amount, in the batter, on the griddle, and later on top of the pancakes just does NOT work for us. Oh well ... lesson learned. Small price to pay for such deliciousness.

Despite all the hustle and bustle of the weekend, Bayla was such a good girl. She often gets overwhelmed by going to lots of different places and being surrounded by noise and people. I was really proud of her. Here's a picture of her relaxing on the couch with her saba before dinner last night. Oh how she loves tv.

"Bayla" made me the cutest card too. It really made my day.

And I got these lovely Japanese Forged Flower Shears. I can use them to cut flowers from the garden and also to thin my veggies.

We gave everyone a framed portrait of Bayla. It was such a cute photo that we made one for ourselves as well. I'm hoping Brian will scan a copy for me so that I'll have it online as well. The studio wanted $100 for a digital copy so I decided it wasn't worth it.

Unfortunately we weren't able to get much done in the garden this weekend, or even get to the regular garden chores like raking and mowing because we were busy with mother's day and because despite the fact that May 9th is supposed to be the last frost date in this area - the temperature dropped dramatically and we had SNOW! Zvi had to cover up the veggies with some landscaping fabric and a tarp to keep our veggies safe. We took it off yesterday in the day time but put it back down overnight. I think we may have to do the same again tonight ... but hopefully that will be the last of it.

Zvi did have a bit of time though to go pick up some more stuff for our garden. He's got everything he needs to build the next raised garden bed. Hopefully he'll have some time for it this week. He picked up the landscape fabric and all the soil stuffs to fill the bed. And ... this part is very exciting ... we've got 12 asparagus plants and 2 rhubarb plants to go into the bed once it's ready. Since we got the plants this weekend and since I'm so excited about them, I'm just going to count them as part of my mother's day present :-) They're all happily hanging out in my kitchen by the patio door for now. I'm amazed at how quickly the asparagus is growing ... why just yesterday I was fawning over two very cute little mini asparagus spears and now one of them has shot up at least 2 inches and another 2 have popped out of nowhere. If you look closely in the pictures you should be able to spot them ... and if not, I'm happy to show them off when you come over!

Oh! And how could I almost forget about this ... Zvi and Brian went to pick up some free maple and walnut stumps because Zvi wants to make stools out of them for the backyard. I'm still really not sure how I feel about this.... especially now that I see they're not all the same and are even different heights.  Are we really going to want to sit on these??? Anyway, apparently the walnut stump weighs about 100 lbs! Crazy. Nice of that man with the house on Dufferin to give them away for free.

Mostly everything that I've planted so far has started to sprout ... still waiting on the carrots, and two of the lettuces. While I was uncovering the bed this morning I took some pictures of the cute little sprouts that you can see here.  Looks like it's almost time to thin some of them out.