Supper in the Back Yard

Nice Spring weather enticed Tricia, Benjamin and I to serve our bowls from the stove and eat supper on the back porch. Right after driving in from work, I moved the portable electric fence in the back yard.  Prior experience has taught me to be sure to position the fence away from the shrubs and trees.  Cows don't just like grass.  They'll eat the leaves off of most any plant.  Once I had the fence set up and the wire unrolled from the spool, I hooked up the solar charger, ensured it was "hot" and then went and retrieved the 3 lawnmowers so that they could mow down the back yard. As you might recall, they finished mowing the side yard last week.

These mowers don't emit the loud, obnoxious noises that a regular mower will give you.  You hear a "Crunch, Crunch, Crunch" as they stick out their tongues, wrap their tongues around the grass and pull.  It adds a nice pastoral, slow-paced atmosphere to supper time, hearkening back to a simpler time.  We need to try to do this more often.

Here's Rosie comin' around the corner now

We had harvested all of our cabbage and maybe I'll post about that tomorrow, but Tricia made a new dish for us to enjoy using some of the cabbage.  It is along the same lines of Cabbage Rolls, if you've ever had that, but these are not rolled up.  It is essentially rice, ground beef, cabbage and spices all cooked together into a delicious casserole.  When Tricia was recovering, this was one of the meals dropped off to us by some friends at church and we got the recipe.  To add some panache to the dish, we put some steamed fresh asparagus from the garden on top.  I know it may not look appetizing, some casseroles just don't, but this was a mighty fine meal!  It tastes good and sticks to your ribs.

Cabbage Rolls - Deconstructed

We ate and talked and enjoyed the nice view and weather.  Spring doesn't last long in our parts.  The amount of time that you can sit outdoors enjoying cool, dry, mosquito-free weather during the year is best measured in hours, not days, unfortunately.  We were soaking it up while we could.  We've found (through experience with teenagers) that if you ask yes or no questions, that's all you'll get.  As I've gotten older, I like meaningful conversations.  To spark conversation, we've begun asking open ended questions like:

• If money were no object, and you could go whereever you wanted to go on vacation, where would you go and why? or,
• If you could improve one thing about yourself, what would that be? or, 
• If you could wish for anything, what would you wish for and why?

It makes you think and you learn things about other family members in the process.

Daisy's comin' round the corner now

The cows were mowing down the grass in the backyard, the hens are foraging out in the pasture, and if you look closely, you can see Big Boy napping in the shadow that the chicken tractor is casting.  Daisy's tongue is out-stretched in the photo, exhibiting the process of eating I described above.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

It doesn't take long for the lawnmowers to have the backyard manicured.  As we ate, they ate, and in three shakes of a Billy Goat's tail, we were all done eating supper.

The ambiance of a nice meal at Chez Sonnier 

There's only one drawback to our 3 "lawnmowers" in the back yard.  That would be their EMISSIONS!:

Watch your step

You must watch your step when walking in the back yard after the yard crew leaves. While mowers powered by the internal combustion engine have emissions, so do ours. Both are foul in their own way.