Monte made a beautiful dessert tonight: tarte aux pommes. Right out of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Fantastique!
My niece, Rachel, arrived today for a few days visit. We made cedar plank salmon and leek & mushroom risotto for dinner. The apple tart topped off the evening.
Julie’s birthday is tomorrow, so we’ll have to celebrate in style.
When I planted the carrot seeds, I put them way too close together. They really need to be thinned out. This is the first batch of carrots from the garden. They are small, but this will hopefully help thin out the bed, allowing the others to grow bigger.
They’re small, but they’re tasty!
I was hankering for a salad for dinner. Monte was too. After a brief tactical evaluation, we decided on BB Rover’s.
This is a pic of the suds. The salads disappeared pretty quickly.
Nite nite!
Tonight was my third foray into painting at Painting with a Twist, this time with Jen. The shot above is the palette we used.
And…. VOILA!! I give you…. Wildflowers at the Park:
Please hold your applause.
The one the teacher guided us through didn’t have any bluebonnets (!). Well, i simply couldn’t paint a hill country scene without bluebonnets, so we improvised.
I’m just realizing that the clouds look a bit like hats. Oh well. I’m sure Picasso had to work at it a bit before he got the hang of it, too. 🙂
Today is National Marina Day. Coincidentally, we were headed to the lake anyway because our good friends Teri and Jim were in town for the weekend. What a great day. We had lunch at Shades, then went for a sail on Cupholder. Then floated for the rest of the afternoon with friends off of B-Dock. Dinner at Flore’s. Then home before we turned into pumpkins.
It was great to see Teri & Jim. We miss them and Island Time. But….once a b-docker, always a b-docker! We’re looking forward to seeing them again, whether by land or by sea.
Our friend John has been working in the shop all week on a desk for a client. Monte’s been out there making tables. It is a magnificent shop, if i must say so myself. 🙂
The material that John is using to make the desk sides and top is a plywood made out of bamboo, called plyboo. Pretty cool looking.
While it was possible for us to see the transit by looking through our welder’s glass. It really wasn’t useful for taking a picture – it was too small. Monte mounted a pair of binoculars on a tripod and used that to focus an image of the sun and the transit of venus on a piece of paper. That’s what these are images of.
The transit started right on time. If you look just to the right of the top of this image, you can see Venus just starting to show up. You can also see 4 or 5 sunspots in each image.
A little while later, Venus is clearly visible on the face of the sun.
This was one of the last images, taken shortly before sunset.
The moon is full today – the Strawberry Full Moon. This morning there was also a partial lunar eclipse. The sky was covered with clouds, so I didn’t think I would be able to see it. But when I walked out a little after 5 AM I was pleased to see that there were several brief breaks in the clouds through which I could get a glimpse. This is one of the few shots I was able to take. Not great, but you can see the little bite taken out of the moon.
In honor of the occasion, I’ll leave you with Grover Washington, Jr’s Strawberry Moon.
I drove down to Julie’s apartment this morning to pick her up so that we could spend the day together. We came back home and watched a bit of the boat parade for the Queen’s Jubilee celebration on BBC America. Before too long we were at the marina. Lots of the usual B-dock suspects showed up at some point. We saw Marty, Sue, Joe, Kurt, Wally, Kevin, Robert, Tasha, Jay, Mike, and Dave. Summer is here! But the day was pretty overcast. We put up the shade and floated for most of the afternoon.
Afterwards we opted for dinner at Jardin Corona and then we deposited Julie back home.
Twas a nice day.
The shot above is a swatch of my official “bound-for-the-lake” backpack.
Today flew by. We took some time this evening to celebrate a friend’s birthday ( happy birthday Dave!).
These flowers caught my eye.
I encourage you all to enjoy what is left of the weekend. It’s hard to believe, but June is here!
A block or two away from our house is an empty field belonging to one of the neighboring lots. From early spring to summer the field is lit up in different colors, depending on the wildflower in bloom at the time. In late March to early April it is a brilliant blue, brimming with bluebonnets. As I drove by on my way home from work today, this last day of May, it pops with bright red and yellow. It is full of gallardia…a nice treat at the end of a long day.
On this Memorial Day, we spent several hours with friends at the marina. We are actually just starting to look at boats for sale. We looked at 2 sloops on E-dock today. Time will tell how long it will take us to find a successor to our beloved Cupholder 🙂
Speaking of Cupholder, we sailed the slip with Marty, Sue, Joe and Wally, and then headed home.
We had just enough energy left in us to buzz downtown for dinner at Taverna, and stopped by to see Willie along the way.
One of the shy turtles in the cove today.
We headed to the lake today to raft-up with Marty & Sue on Caribbean Hug, Lori, Dave & Jake on Camelot, and Mike and Kathy on Soul Healer. Julie joined us for the night, and Laura dropped by for a couple hours, too.
I paddled the kayak to shore to tie a stern line and saw these pretty little weeds growing in the rocks on the shore.
Mike had a pair of military grade night vision goggles, which everyone passed around for a while. This is a shot I took through the goggles. Just thought it looked cool.
And, finally, this is a shot off the stern, of the last moments of dusk.
A good time was had by all.
Sheila365 