Sunday, May 29, 2011

Memorial Day Weekend & The Outdoors

It's Memorial Day Weekend.  You have to have a picnic.  Just go to Martha Stewart.com.  See all her Memorial Day recipes? Tuna nicoise sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, portobello and tomato sandwiches on ciabatta bread, etc.

But some people will not eat so much as a piece of fried chicken outdoors.  

My husband refuses to eat outdoors.  Yet he is outdoors ALL THE TIME on Memorial Day weekend.

Early morning:  Tinkers with his bicycle in the back yard.  One of his bicycles.  I don't know which one.  

Afternoon:  Bicycles 100 miles or something.

Late afternoon:  Mows the lawn or digs up a new garden patch.  We have quite a few fenced-off places and a scare owl to scare away the rabbits.

Here is my day.

Early morning:  Am I awake yet?

Mid morning:  Loll around reading Bleak House and as usual wish I could be Esther.  She is my role model.  If only I had read BH when I was young...

Afternoon:  Put the barbecue beef in the slow cooker and attempt to cook it on low, as it says.

THEN I HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH MY HUSBAND.

 "It's Memorial Day weekend.  Let's have a picnic."

No interest.

"We can eat our barbecue beef sandwiches outdoors."

No interest.

"We can get new garden chairs and sit outdoors."

Interest.  So long as eating isn't mentioned, he's happy outdoors.

I told you the Adirondack chair fiasco.  We left them out all winter and they cracked.

So we thought we'd get cheap plastic Adirondack chairs at the hardware store, but alas they do not fit in our out-of-date energy-saving car (long may it last). We got the other chairs through the mail.  We realize we will have to order the chairs.

Or shop.

We accidentally shop.  We go to the garden center to buy some flowers.  The ground has been so wet that I haven't been able to plant them yet (though the veg garden is in).

We found folding lawn chairs for only $19.99.  They're quite comfortable. 

We got some flowers, too.

Then I came home and realized that the barbecue beef was never going to cook on slow.  I ended up cooking it on high.  Do you have this slow cooker problem?

It was delicious and tender by six.  And my husband brought in some lettuce from the garden.

No picnic, though.  No eating outside.

Memorial Day Weekend.

2 comments:

Ellen said...

I was in NYC this weekend (Friday around 2 until Sunday around noon). The great outdoors in the city is seen best in its artificial parks :)

I wrote about some of it in my EandJ blog.

Ellen

Frisbee said...

I read your blog and loved the part about Central Park.

We see the outdoors from bike trails.:)