Painting, Strawberries, and lunch with Nancy

 It's been pretty busy around here working on painting, landscape stuff and food management.  The weather has flip-flopped between gorgeous, warm sunny spring days with a nice breeze and cool, dreary, grey days with rain. At least that rain is good for the landscape and water levels in the lakes.

So we all put our "painty-clothes" on and started the deck paint job with me cutting in around all the railing and up next to the house, and the head honcho rolling on the grit-laden Behr Deckover paint, which is a LOT harder to do. Thanks Honey!  It turned out very well and we're happy with it.

From start on the north side to finish on the south side.

Additionally I put a fresh coat of paint on the staircase that runs from the deck down to the dock and we are planning to paint the dock during the next weather window. It's looking good around here!

While painting by the deck railings I spotted a freshwater monster in the lake, a huge grass carp, (I had to ask my neighbors, lol).  A few have been introduced into the lake from time to time to control weeds on the lake bottom.  

These pics aren't that great as I was on the upperdeck and had to zoom in
quite a ways to get the shot but you get the idea.

Apparently they can live fairly long lives and get pretty big.

This time of year is one of my favorite's because it's strawberry season - YAY!  Florida has some large growers just south of our area so we are blessed with fresh, affordable berries for a couple of months.  I usually keep a baggie of them all sliced & diced and ready to top a fruit bowl or some yoghurt.

We have had a few nice sunrises lately. It seems I can rarely get my coffee juggled and get out back before all the beautiful colors are gone, but I try.

Another fun thing I did this week was to go to lunch with my friend Nancy. Again, we brown-bagged it to a riverside park and enjoyed a big gab-fest and the beautiful day and scenery. After lunch while heading back home I got to see a drawbridge opening for a sailboat. Love boats and water so much!

Downtown Jacksonville skyline photo taken from the
neighborhood of Ortega, a lovely, lush, old neighborhood
that's great to ride through. Lots of big oaks, and stately houses.

We're counting down the weeks before heading out west for a few months and that means cleaning out the freezer. We've been working our way through the "easy" stuff, but yesterday I tackled one of the more challenging; a big, ol' turkey thigh. I had moved it into the fridge a couple days before and it was ready to be ground.  

I got out my trusty (and old! I've had it for 40 yrs 😄) Bosch Food Processor. Love the German precision and quality.  Years ago I always made our bread and did tons of other stuff with this Bosch, and it has really held up. The meat grinder attachment was the tool of the day.  In German it's called Fleischwolf, so I always call it that (with my best German accent, haha). With the partially-thawed thigh cut into 1.5" strips I started feeding it in and voila, beautiful ground turkey comes out!

Almost finished with the mound of strips.

Made most of it into tons of meatballs but kept a portion
separate for other purposes.  Meatballs had carrots, celery,
onion, green olives, egg and breadcrumbs along with spices.

Last night's dinner is meatballs simmered in a
cumin/tomato/onion gravy with plenty of onions,
mushrooms and 1 chipotle pepper served over
yellow rice sautéed with onion & corn.
Ed sez YUM!

Well, that about sums it up for the latest around here. Thanks for dropping by and hope you were entertained to some small degree!  😊