Super, bountiful

This weekend is the Super Bowl.  Ali invited several people over but so far we only got a positive response from one couple.  So our Super Bowl party may be more like a Super Bowl gathering instead.  Oh well.

Last night I had a nice harvest from the garden that included lettuce, beet leaves, swiss chard and a perfect head of broccoli.  Ali created quite the tasty salad from our home grown ingredients.

Yesterday two more raised beds I bought off Ebay arrived, the exact same type as the one we have out there now.

This is definitely the way to go.  Stuff we have planted in the raised beds have done better than what we put in the bare ground.  The raised beds are filled with pure, high grade garden soil.  The rest of the garden is amended dirt which unfortunately is mixed in with the crappy sand fill that was used to raise that area.

Plus the raised bed hardly ever has any weeds in it, again because it is pure soil that has not ever been contaminated by weed seeds.  We will have a total of three raised beds when the new ones are set up.  Eventually I would love to have the entire garden filled with them.  I bet we could get 8-10 of them in the area.

Yesterday my step mom sent me pictures of their snow covered property in western PA which included several pics of their two dogs having a blast in the snow.  Later in the evening I asked Ali out of left field if she would have any interest in driving up to dad’s place just for a long weekend to hang out.

She said she thought it would be fun however our weekends are pretty booked for the foreseeable future.  The one opening we did have was President’s day weekend.  I happen to have that Monday off as a holiday so it would mean one less vaca day I would need to use.

I envision this as a  2 day commute up and back and two or three days at dad’s place.  Of course all of this has not even been brought up to dad yet.  They have been in the middle of some extensive renovations to their new place.  They were supposed to be wrapped up in late 2010 but as in most projects dad contracts out for, this one has run long.  I don’t even know if the house would be ready for guests at that point.

So anyway, we’ll see what dad thinks.  It could make for a fun little trip.  I know our dogs would have a blast.  It would be a an opportunity to see how the party van does in winter driving conditions which could be useful if I ever get to make that trek to Yellowstone during non-summer months.