Saturday in Pictures

This morning there was a damp chill in the air and heavy clouds, ill omens for our planned first trip of the year to the farmer’s market. But we hurried through breakfast and hustled the girls into clothes and into the car just as the first drops began to fall. Within minutes a steady rain was falling, but it abated by the time we pulled up to the parking lot. The farmer’s market was right on the water, literally in the beachfront parking lot. Even with no rain the wind was chill and I wished I’d worn another layer under my paper thin cotton skirt.

There weren’t many vendors this early in the season, a few farmers selling flowers, herbs and potted tomato plants. A trio of bakers. And various booths with jams, tapenades, salsas, smoked fish, jewelry, and baby hats. The poor girls selling frozen lemonade looked bored. The coffee stand was doing a decent business.

We got two tapenades: roasted red pepper and kalamata (Sophie was a big fan of both, much to the vendor’s delight), a smoked tuna and kalamata pate, smoked salmon, a couple of jams (hot red pepper and orange peach ginger marmelade), a couple of loaves of bread (honey whole wheat and sundried tomato, basil and mozzerella), some pastries, Italian cookies just like Dom’s grandmother used to make.

Bella insisted we go and stand by the water. I insisted it be a short visit and shepherded her back to the car posthaste. Dom snapped a picture with his cell phone:

We took a circuitous route back home, driving through a state park and stopping to change Sophie’s diaper at the visitor’s center. I want to go back and take a walk on some nice day. While we were in the park, the sun broke through the clouds.

By the time we got home the day had become lovely. We immediately headed for the back yard and began to transplant our tomatoes into the raised beds Dom made.

I’ve got much more patience with delicate stems so I did all of the actual planting. And took over with the staking at the end. (A couple of stakes got lost on the way home, so Dom improvised with one of the driveway reflectors.)

Once the tomatoes and peppers were planted, I did some weeding in the front beds. Said hello to a couple of dog-walking neighbors, who live on the street behind us, that I met the other day when they were out walking their dogs. They remind me a bit of the dog walkers I knew at the park in Salem. That’s a side-benefit to gardening I hadn’t thought of previously: being in the front yard more and getting more chances to meet the neighbors.

When Bella woke up from her nap she was cranky and needed soothing so I let her watch some videos on You Tube. Sophie joined her in the chair and they had a great time.

Italian sausages on the grill for dinner. Along with spicy collard and beet greens, and slices of the sundried tomato bread. Very yummy indeed.

My camera didn’t quite understand what it was about the sunset that made me gasp. Still, I tried to take a shot of the golden light peeking through the pine tree over the back fence.