Garden Clean-up and Mini Pond Feature

These last couple days Anthony and I have been busy trying to clean up the garden and get it ready for the winter. While we have done a lot there is still more work to be done! Believe it or not I still have most of my herbs from this spring, Basil especially! This is Anthony's favorite herb and I am hoping to keep it alive throughout the winter. Since we are just renting the house we live in there is not a greenhouse in my future, unfortunately. So plants are coming inside the house and will be put throughout house, hopefully Maddie and Fannie will not eat them.

However, after some SERIOUS begging I did get my mini pond. Someday I would love to have a large pond with fish and plenty of plant life, I currently have 4 plants and 4 goldfish in my mini pond. This will be my experimental pond to see if having a big pond is really with it! So far so good.

After reading my friends' blog I decided to order Garlic off of one of the websites she recommended. After all, living with a chef you eat a lot of Garlic. Hopefully it will come soon, so I can get it in the pots and ready for the summer harvest. I am hoping to keep a garden journal this year, in all my books, the authors say it is good to do this to help keep track of veggies as well as to learn from year to year.

Simple Weekends!!

These last couple days have been rather uneventful. Anthony had Friday and Saturday off and I don't think we did a single thing on Friday. Oh......well....we made bread! While it looked beautiful in the book it wasn't so good in reality. Actually, Anthony said that, that is what it is suppose to taste like but I guess it was just not what I had in mind. Saturday we went to the State Botanical Garden. Although it wasn't as good as the one we go to in Atlanta it was ok. They are having a plant sale next saturday and I just might go.

Winter time is coming, it happens to be here today! Rain!!! It makes me sad, I can't garden, the dogs don't want to go outside and all any of us want to do is lay on the couch and cuddle. BUT I can and have already started to plan for next years garden.

I will make sure to post pictures of our bread and some of the botanical garden when I get a chance.

Pointer National 2009

This week has been the week of catching up! After being gone for most of the month of September my garden was a mess, the dogs were crazy and I don't even want to talk about my house or the laundry!!!

This past week Anthony and I drove to St. Louis, Mo. It was a long 10 hour drive and making it even longer we left Wednesday morning at 2:30AM AFTER Anthony got off work. YIKES!! It was rough but we made it. And thus began the extravanganza of the pointer national. For you non-dog people this is a dog show that is only for pointers and where breeders and exhibitors come from not only all over the United States but also from countries like New Zealand, Brazil and England.

The first night, we decided to go to dinner at this beautiful restaurant in St. Louis called Niche. Howard, Karen, Anthony and I all piled into Howard's surburban and headed into rural downtown St. Louis. The streets were very narrow, Karen and I sat in the back and held our breath as Anthony and Howard with Jill's (Jill is my GPS, she is a sister to Emily, my parents' GPS, however Emily is English complete with accent and Jill is american, go figure) help carefully and accidently found the restaurant. Niche (http://www.nichestlouis.com/) is this adorable restaurant tucked in amongst old buildings and narrow streets. As we sat down Howard insisted on us trying the chef's tasting menu WITH the wine pairings! It was 5 courses and was a little intimadating to me but Anthony was all for it being the chef that he is, so I figured I would give it a whirl! The food was AMAZING, complete with the Executive Chef coming to our table to explain one of the dishes that happened to be our favorite! The wine was equally as nice but was alot for me to take in!!

Alright enough about food, on to the dogs! Thursday was going to be Fannie's debut with Anthony. I was a little nervous, I have to admit as he had not done all the training I would have done, but this is his dog and I have to let him do it his way! Suprisingly she did beautifully! Although she did not place she atleast didn't embarress neither Anthony or I! Thank goodness!! Friday was a solid day of watching........the weather was beautiful, thankfully, and it was nice to relax and just watch for a change. Towards the end of the day we headed back to the host hotel and visited with some more friends and then went to the DREADED annual meeting! Can I just say it went so SMOOTH, there wasn't even any fighting, which was so NICE!! Once that was over we headed to the bar where we ate St. Louis pizza (don't bother) and drank cheap wine! After sucking down the last of the wine, we headed back to our hotel.

Saturday.....the final day!! It was Fannie's turn again and this time she got 4TH!!!! I was so proud. As girl judging was finishing up the skies decided to open up and pour down on us! Not to be over shadowed by the thunder and lightening that reared its ugly head also. As I jokingly said to Anthony, 'well this should be a great temperment test....' I thought to myself, wonder if my dog will pass! Sure enough I got Ms. Princess Emma out and she was thrilled it was raining and the thunder just made her more hyper and crazed (in a good way)!! The more it rained the happier she got! I should have known since getting dirty is her most favorite thing to do in life!! While she showed beautifully, she did not do anything, nor did her father Skye. Instead both Anthony and I got wonderful comments on beautiful she was and how well she showed! As soon as judging was over we walked the dogs one last time and loaded up the van and headed south. We made it home around 2:30AM, I don't know what it is with us and 2:30AM but we seem to like that time! It was nice to sleep in our own bed and the dogs were happy to be home too!!!

Which brings me to today, with some more catching up to do, I atleast have the most important things caught up. Anthony has the next two days off and who knows what kind of trouble we can get into.