Who am I and what have I done with me?!

[sarea]

I have been crazy productive this weekend. Well, for me.

The weather's been cold but not rainy, so I finally took the opportunity to clean out my raised garden bed, which was full of weeds and crap from the previous season. This summer I basically did no gardening, unlike the previous summer, which ended up being a good thing since I was away for most of it anyway, and a garden was the last thing on my mind. Besides, it didn't really even start to get warm this summer until August, so it would have been another exercise in frustration. BUT! I've decided I'd like to garden again next season, so in preparation I cleaned out the bed and planted some cover crop, which will hopefully infuse the soil with some nutrients. That is, if the freaking birds don't eat all the seeds; I saw half a dozen of them in/around the bed today, merrily poking away. Hopefully there were just some seeds on the surface that they were eating; most of them should be buried in the soil. Birds don't usually dig for seeds, do they? Wouldn't most gardening be impossible if they did? Then again they do dig for worms... and if a tasty seed should happen to be there... SIGH. Birds!

The other thing is ... I mowed the lawn! Well, the half of it that's considered my "backyard," anyway. It wasn't that long, but I figured I'd do it, as it'd be good exercise and also prevention from it getting as bad as it got before. It remains to be seen whether I will do the other half, which is also dependent on weather.

I also cleaned out my AeroGarden, in preparation for another round of herbs! This time I'm going to try to make my own pods, rather than purchasing their overpriced seed kits. We'll see if that ends up being a big fail or not.

I actually watched last night's Merlin! Though this was because akscully emailed me just saying "oh my." I had to find out whether that "oh my" was "oh my, we got to see Gaius naked" or if it was actually something good.

OK, the thing that bothers me sometimes about this show is how RIDICULOUS (in a bad way) it can be. Like ANYONE wouldn't take issue with the crown prince being the subject of a knife-throwing show?! Much less Uther?! I mean, who cares if this TOTAL STRANGER is a good shot or not? Just the RISK that something could go wrong and, I don't know, Arthur could take a KNIFE TO THE HEART would have prevented ANYONE from allowing that to go forward. So. lame.

I can't believe how there was like, no A/G and it was a Howard Overman episode. OK, so the events made it so that A/G is going to be accelerated, but still.

The whole thing with Dragoooooooon was hilarious. Props to Bradley for playing that so straight when IRL he's a giant goofball.

Morgana is looking more and more like Bellatrix Lestrange. :)) In a good way. She looks awesome!

I thought Uther was just dead, when he got knifed... but then it was like, oh he's just on his deathbed. Now they're going to save him, etc. It was weird, the way it happened. It was like, he's dead! No he isn't! Yes he is! No he-- oh wait, yeah he really is. I think it would have been better for it to just have happened outright, but I guess they had to set it up so that both Morgana and Merlin (and magic) had a hand in the death, which I must admit was done well.

All that said... YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ARTHUR IS KING! FINALLY! The coronation was lovely.

OK and as far as the scenes for the next episode go... first, lmao, is that Gaius Baltar?? Gaius meets Gaius! Also, is the wedding happening sometime in between all the fighting and stuff? Cuz there's no reason for Arthur and Gwen not to tie the knot immediately, amirite?

And finally, I made banana bread with the three overripe bananas I've had sitting around for a week.

/collapses

My reward for all this hard work is that tonight is the first night of Restaurant Week! Poppy is up first. Meeting K in about an hour!

Starters:
Me: poached oysters with sorrel sauce and bacon
K: grilled white sausage with quince and mustard greens

Main course (Thalis):
K:
neah bay coho with lentils and black pepper lime hollandaise
pumpkin-cardamon soup
leek, tomato and black olive salad
sprouting broccoli with oregano
corn basil spoonbread
nigella-poppy naan

Me:
lavender duck leg with pomegranate red cabbage
tomato, sage and vanilla soup
grilled radicchio, fig and pumpkin seed salad
marina di chioggia squash with green chili and coriander
corn basil spoonbread
asian pear and fennel pickle
nigella-poppy naan

Dessert:
chocolate orange caramel torte with cocoa nib crunch
coffee avocado ice cream sandwich with mocha rum dipping sauce

We also got an order of their eggplant fries with sea salt and honey.

I didn't actually get to eat that much of the duck, because M (a 2 year old) was with us and he took a liking to it. >< The coffee avocado ice cream sandwich was AWESOME. So was the caramel sauce in the other dessert. The duck and the salmon were good, but everything else was just kind of meh. We've been to Poppy once before, for their late-night happy hour, and I wasn't crazy about it even then, though K has always wanted to go back. After this I think I can safely say that I won't be back of my own accord. It just doesn't do much for me. I might be okay with it if it were just happy hour type food -- naanwiches and the eggplant fries (which were good), but even then I'd probably prefer casual bites at another restaurant.

Here's to hoping the other RW experiences are better...