A series of weekend activities

Yesterday and today were both exhausting but fun days. Yesterday, Aviva was competing in a small horse-jumping competition so I spent a couple of hours sitting in the sun watching the show. She did a great job, winning two first and two second place ribbons. I took some lovely pictures of her on her horse and she looks pretty impressive. Aviva kept insisting that they are "very small jumps," but I'm impressed nonetheless. Mind you, I've only been on a horse a few times in my life so I'm still afraid to stand next to them let alone trust them enough to carry me over jumps.

We also had our BBQ party on Saturday night and that was a big success. About twenty of our friends showed up and we cooked a huge range of stuff: Boca burgers, honey-glazed salmon, grilled vegetables, corn brushed with garlic and rosemary, portabella mushrooms, steak, chicken, you name it. We told everyone to bring their own meat or meat substitute and we kept the grill going for hours. Two of our friends who always come ridiculously prepared for every party brought their own mini-grill, marinated vegetables, Iranian spices, and several different kinds of veggie burgers. I made portabello mushrooms that were marinated in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then stuffed with pine nuts, rosemary, garlic, and Romano slivers. They were delicious and so easy to make. I served them on burger buns with a slice of cheese and each bite tasted a little different because you'd bite into a bit of Romano or garlic, etc. I highly recommend giving them a try next time you fire up the grill.

Today, we spent about four hours in the garden, weeding, sprinkling grass seed, and planting the annuals I bought from the community organization. The flowers were sort of over-priced and I was more-or-less roped into buying them by our next-door neighbor. I tend to be a bit skeptical of the very involved, almost meddlesome tendencies of the neighborhood association but the funds were being used to send inner-city kids to camp so gave in to the pressure. We spent a good portion of our gardening time tearing out this ornamental grass that is literally taking over the lawn and choking out all the other flowers. It has a root system from hell and since we were trying to accomplish the task with nothing more than a set of basic gardening hand tools, it took forever. We both have sore, blistered palms and stiff legs. I enjoyed myself nonetheless. All the neighborhood folks who were coming from the church next door stopped to praise our work and admire the dog, and I must admit, the yard looks really nice now, though the lawn is still recovering from my attempt to kill the dandelions. I used this weed killer that Aviva's father bought last year and I wasn't quite sure how to use it. And even though I followed the instructions to the letter, the stuff killed the weeds (sort of) and the lawn, leaving these horrible yellow spots. It may be the first and last time I use chemicals to kill weeds. I usually resort to the old-fashioned method of pulling dandelions out by the roots but, as you can imagine, that takes a tremendous amount of time! Anyway, once the lawn greens up a bit, I'll have to take some photos to show off all our hard work.