Back in the South Week in Review

This week has been all about catching up on various tasks at work and home. I won't bore you with work, but at home there have been a few small but pleasing developments.

Garden. I moved all my plants (again) because they were still getting baked in the shady-ish site where I had placed them a few weeks ago. I'm beginning to wonder if most of them are permanently dead (sounds redundant, but you never know). There's one spot that's shady all day and I've placed them all there, in a long line along the driveway to see if they'll recover.

Kitchen. I started cooking again. That was the odd thing about traveling -- I only cooked twice! Something I haven't mentioned here before is that for all of this year I've been keeping a cooking diary. The librarian in me was curious about how much I cooked in a year and what I made, so I've been [mostly] taking photos of every meal I make -- and when I forget to take a photo, I write down the meal.

This was the first meal I made after getting home. It's a mushroom pie with a spinach crust (you may have noticed I've been obsessed with savory pies for the past few months) and a salad made with locally grown organic mixed greens and lots of toppings, including feta, currants, coconut, green onions, toasted nuts and seeds, and sprouts. Oh, and tahini-watercress dressing. It was taaaaasty.


Living room. I still have some straightening up and cleaning to do, but I've been missing fresh flowers in my house, so I cut a fresh magnolia off our backyard tree. I picked off all the leaves, except three, ikebana-style. It smells like heaven.