March is coming to a close

Things we've done this month:

• Went to far too many basketball watch parties at Park Tavern and are officially over "bar food" until 2011.
• Got on a first-name, sometimes "no name" basis with Phil at said Park Tavern.
• Watched Duke win the ACC Tournament and make it to the Final Four (GO DUKE!!)
• Hosted my father and his wife for a fun 2-day whirlwind trip that included three delicious meals out, a walk around the lake with Lola, some basketball and a trip to the Mill City Museum (phew!)
• Started adding cardio back into our routine, enjoying brisk walks around the lake, added in some jogging and continued with the elliptical, bike and treadmill at the gym
• Enjoyed a near-80 degree day in MARCH in MINNESOTA!!
• Started reworking our patio for spring: plants are ordered, plans are in place for what goes where, the grill has been used several times and the furniture is out and ready to go!

I'm especially excited about our plant plans for the year. The past several summers, we've used our window boxes to house a variety of colored, glazed terra cotta planters. Well, after leaving them outside for the winter, they are no more and we don't want to spend the few hundred $$ on more, so we're improvising.

Our planters should work with hemp fabric or some other coconut fabric as a liner kind of like hanging planters (at least that's our hope!). We have two 48" ones and two 60" ones.

For the 48" we're looking at one with two current tomato plants, basil and parsley. The second one will have a cherry tomato plant with a "one ball" squash and an "eight ball" swuash along with oregano.

For the 60" we're looking at one with thyme, globe basil, "fairy tale" eggplant, and mini-pearl cucumbers. The second one will have dwarf bok choi, mini yellow sweet peppers, jalepeno peppers and cilantro.

Finally, we have two nice planters on the ground. One will have runner beans, morning glory and oregano trailing up our deck wall. The other will have a laurel/bay "lollipop" and a couple kinds of trailing rosemary.

Does it make you hungry just thinking about the delicious veggies and herbs we'll have this summer!

Oh, we'll also replant our "improved meyer lemon" in a large planter so it can continue to grow and hopefully produce fruit in the next 12 months.

Photos, of course, will come as soon as everything is planted!

So it's been a while...

It's been since last summer when we updated. We're trying to grasp onto this whole blogging thing a bit more to get into the habit for when we have more news to share (no, we're not announcing anything).

Since we last updated, our garden flourished throughout the summer, we brought many healthy herbs inside for the winter - they promptly died. This summer, we're looking to replant much of the garden, so I've been eyeing a couple of new items from Territorial Seed Company. My interest in gardening gives me serious house envy for several friends who have recently moved into some great houses (with nice, sunny yards!).

We've slowed down our traveling after some great trips in 2009 (I will add photos this weekend): Hawaii in August, family in NYC for my "big" birthday and San Francisco/Carmel Valley in October. In the coming months, I'm going to Miami to visit family and friends and we're heading to NYC again (who can say no to loving, fun uncles?!?). Our plans for a Europe trip this summer are on-hold, although we hope to be able to travel overseas this winter (maybe Asia).

Finally, we've been trying out some new restaurants. Some highlights include Northeast Social Club for Restaurant Week (menu: beef carpaccio, arugula salad with peas and bacon, braised short ribs with chevre potatoes and spinach, honey rosemary panna cotta) and Burger Jones for the new Summitt Brewery launch (Rye-style IPA). Burger Jones has actually improved their menu quite a bit - the new preparation for the bison burger was great and the new patty melt (+ jalepenos) was quite delicious.