Honk, Hounds and Hand pies...

    One of the reasons we love our neighborhood so much is that we host all manner of cool happenings in what Husband and I call "the Heart," which is the retail core of Georgetown. All City Coffee, 9lb. Hammer, Via Tribunali, The Mix and many more interesting establishments are there for one's shopping and dinning and drinking pleasure. The latest took place last Friday, Honk Fest West! Honk is what high school band geeks do after they graduate, gather together awesome musicians to rock out the songs they were never allowed to play in class while letting their freak flags fly. In short, it's a party. Part circus, part gypsy caravan, part pirate convention, Honk is a blast and the energy and enthusiasm is contagious and gets yer feet a movin'.

   One of my favorite parts of Honk is the people watching. Many of the spectators dress up in their freakiest most fabulous finery to play the night away!

   And party, of course. We met one of our hard working co-workers at the festivities taking care of the important stuff. Woot! Woot!

    They're are a ton of kids that come down too, like this rad little dude hula hooping around his NECK! My favorite was this one little boy grooving to a samba inspired group while wearing a mini blazer over silver stretch pants and a tall yellow dome shaped fur hat. I can only pray that my future children are that cool.

   One of the highlights for Husband and I was watching the Titanium Sporkestra which features our neighbor Richard on trumpet. They were awesome and their rendition of Iron Man by Black Sabbath was fantastic! The festivities lasted til early the next morning, but Husband and I left well before then to get our beauty sleep.

 
    Really Husband had to get up for work at 4:30 am and I had a baking and doggy play date with my sister-in-law Karen and her dog Gus. Gus loves to come over and gallop around the yard and eat grass and Ruby loves to chase after him and tell him where he can and cannot go.

    Oh yes, and then there are the hand pies. We had started this project about a month ago and got bogged down in all the chilling and waiting time required for the dough. The recipe came from Smitten Kitchen a well known baking blog which does have some amazing looking projects, but we were not so sure about the final product on this one. They look great but came out a little doughy in texture. Nonetheless we ate about three each after they come out of the oven and with Husband's help there are only three left today. Definitely not disgusting!

A taste of things to come

    

   Oh yum. I made this salad last night from thinned out seedlings and I must say it was delish. two kinds of lettuce, tatsoi, and teeny tiny French Breakfast radishes. We ate it with a sweet ginger honey poppyseed dressing and oh boy was it goood! Our first taste of the freshness from our new raised beds.

    Sooooo... I thought that I told myself and Husband NO NEW PROJECTS! Yet here we are on the verge of yet another, yes you guessed it, project. I can't help it! The urge to morph our yard into the best yard ever is so strong! At least it was relatively simple and strait forward. Plus I can always blame it on Dr. Doo.
   Who is Dr. Doo? He is the ringmaster of the Woodland Park Zoo's compost program  here in Seattle. Every year they hold a drawing to see which lucky Seattlites have the privilege of purchasing for a very reasonable price premium composted exotic animal manure ( Zoo Doo) and mulch ( Bed Spread ). We won! A truckload of each! But, the window of opportunity to get it was very small so we ended up only collecting the Doo and we will get the Bed Spread in the fall. So here we were with Bobbie sitting full of Doo and not enough places to put it. So my dream of a new bed came true this year.
    I laid out a hose in the curve that I wanted the bed and scored it with a shovel. Then I scored the entire space to be cleared into shovel width lengths so it would be easier for Husband to muscle out. I dream of someday renting a sod cutter which I dream would make the process of  removing sod easier. Someday.

    Husband rocked this out like a champ and I took the rolls of sod and placed them in the area in front of our raised beds that was just bare dirt. It was hot sweaty work but it got done and we shoveled the Doo out of Bobbie ( a relief to her creaking shocks ) and forked it into the new bed. I have decided that this will become our Pie Patch and have plans to relocate a bunch of raspberries that are creeping into our yard from the neighbors yard and get some blueberry bushes and a Rhubarb plant. Yum! Hopefully it will be ripping in time for Opening Day of Pie Season next year.