How do you spend a rainy Sunday?

Try sticking your feet out (similar to putting your feet up) and taking a snooze like Sam.

Make a delicious Salad Lyonnaise for lunch. (Made with fresh croutons from bread baked on Saturday.)

Simmer a tomato sauce that will be used in your dinner.

Play Alan Wake on the Xbox 360 and finish it.

Enjoy a fireside (and much needed) massage. Sorry, no photo of that ...

Sit down to a dinner of braised lamb shanks with parmesan polenta, just right for a rainy day! Yum, yum, yum!

Mother Nature is a fickle sort. She’s been toying with us. Saturday was a pretty nice day for a change and I was able to get out and do a few things in the yard that needed to be done.

Yesterday and overnight we had 2.6 inches of snow-melting-get-rid-of-that-damned-old-snow rain. The weather was warm-ish yesterday, topping the chart at around 58 degrees F, but still we had a fire going to keep the dampness away. Sometimes it was just a gentle rain, but at others it was a downpour. The dogs did not want to go out. Every time they went to the door and I opened it, they just turned around and looked up at me as if to say I am NOT going out in that and turned around and walked away. This morning I awoke to a covering of snow and it was still lightly snowing at 29 degrees F. Just when we were looking at bare ground! Our new little white cover won’t last, but still, forward progress was temporarily thwarted.

March can never seem to make up its mind.

Fresh covering of snow on my deck this morning with morning shadows and dog prints. Yesterday was the first day it was completely clear of all snow and ice.

We are enjoying our second batch of lettuces from our AeroGarden. The first batch we started kept going and going and going for several months. Every time we picked some it grew back so fast we could hardly believe it. It’s so nice to have fresh lettuces to eat whenever we want. We “planted” three arugula, one mesclun, and three salad greens. In just one week from the time we started the seed pods we were picking lettuce!

Who needs soil?

Today it’s raining. Over one inch has fallen so far. I just realized that one year ago today was the day of our “snowicane” and here we are one year later having another large-ish storm, only this time it’s rain instead of snow.

Even stranger is the fact that in that blog entry I talk about just having made pork chile verde which I made this morning too without realizing I had made the same dish one year ago today. Very weird! You can’t plan things like that!

Looking out the window at the rain something looked off to me in the back yard. The trees were tinged with color! Wait. It can’t be. I ran for the binoculars and sure enough, one species of tree has popped! Lots of them! Little droopy catkins all over the place! I think they are beeches but I’m not sure.

What can they be thinking? We still have snow on the ground. Silly trees.

Hurrah for spring!

The sun coming up in our woods the morning after our snowfall this week.

We’ve had snow on the ground now since the day after Christmas. First the blizzard snow of 20 inches, then last Friday’s 5 inches, and this week’s 7-incher that fell over Tuesday night. We never got rid of the first snow even though we had one warm day and a little bit of rain that helped melt some of the snow pack. Still, there’s an awful lot of snow still on the ground.

The temps hover in the 20’s during the day and at night plummet to the single digits and teens. The wind has been blowing quite nastily too so I haven’t really been taking the dogs for their daily walk. Today the wind is calm, so we did manage to get a walk in.

Bella likes it when I shovel and throw some snow her way. She thinks it’s fun and she hops around and barks. She’s bored because she can’t find any dirt to dig holes in. Thank God.

I haven’t been anywhere since Tuesday! At least not in a car. Only in the yard and a walk down our street today with the dogs. I’ve been reading, knitting (birthday present for neighbor Kim but I don’t think I’m going to finish in time) and watching my TiVo’s shows.

Rick has been on a bread kick lately. We recently bought this book:

So far we’ve made the french baguettes (last weekend) which turned out pretty well, and this whole wheat pizza dough. The pizza had a delicious wheaty flavor but the crust did not get crispy like we like it. It was really good though! Don’t you think it looks good?

And, he has another dough for a ciabatta resting in the fridge for this weekend. So far that’s our only plan for the weekend. It’s supposed to snow a little tomorrow so we’ll probably spend the day sitting around the wood stove while the lovely aroma of baking bread fills the house.

Hope you have a great weekend no matter what you have planned (or not)!

... but not in December! Sigh. No snow and none forecasted. We’ve had over one inch of rain today and of course we had our annual festive dinner at Blue Hills at Stone Barns today. Also an annual event is, unfortunately, the rain. Last year the same thing happened. We had really cold temps last week but no moisture. The minute we get some moisture, the temperatures rise and it falls as rain instead of snow. The East is so strange. More tomorrow, but I just wanted to capture the rainy event today and as you can see by the photo I just took of our radar (see the blip?; that’s us in northern NJ) and the rain is moving south to north, we are in for a lot more rain tonight before it’s over with.

Geez I wish it would SNOW.