Memorial Day Weekend

I wasn't really anticipating that great a weekend. There was work to be done, but most of it got done on Saturday. So a 3 day project turned into a 1 day project followed by several little projects with some fun mixed in for good measure. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I really enjoyed the weekend.

The big project was digging out a basement door, putting in a drainage pipe, putting lots of stone in and then leveling everything off again. Now, I don't know if you know anyone with a tractor, but I highly recommend making friends with someone that has one if you are going to be digging a 7 foot deep trench. They really help.

Against my better judgment, I was actually down in that hole. The excavation and the stone placement and back filling took up most of Saturday. Thankfully, the kids pretty much occupied themselves during the construction. But digging this hole meant removing a lot of roots to be dealt with on Sunday.

Two very exciting buckets of these roots. Exciting roots = Fresh horseradish. A quick scrub...

A lot of peeling...

Another rinse and some drying...

Then shredding and grinding...

Quick little not on the the food processor: if you were withing 3 feet of that thing when the lid came off, your sinuses were instantly cleaned and occasionally temporary blindness was experienced.  It's one of those "hurts so good" things. A lot of the ground horseradish was packed in bottles, topped with distilled vinegar and frozen. A bunch got sealed into vacuum bags too. I kept some unfrozen to go into a mustard when I get a chance.
 

After the horseradish, brakes got put on my sister-in-law's car. Now my brother-in-law and I put brakes on one of my cars last weekend. Under the watchful eye of someone that actually knows what they are doing, of course. Now having successfully put on those brakes, we were actually looking forward to putting on these brakes. Same year, similar model. Piece of cake. We were on the case. I didn't actually get to participate (I did lunch for all the kids), but our automotive expertise was no match for this car. The rotors were totally rusted on. I would have had no idea what to do. And the clips were different, everything was different. I am still not a mechanic. Just some guy that knows how to get himself into trouble with cars. We spent some time at the lake in the afternoon. Had steak for dinner (a porterhouse, 2 rib eyes, and a sirloin). I like a steak dinner like that - it compares a bunch of cuts side-by-side.

On Monday morning, we helped put in a large part of my father-in-law's garden. I forgot to get a picture of it. There are a bunch of tomatoes, a few kinds of peppers, the fence for the cukes to climb on and a few rows of corn so far. Then, we were off to the lake.  We brought down all the stuff that stays out for the summer. Felt good to set it up. It means that summer is just around the corner.

There's that grill I love and the lake front pit on the left. The last project of the weekend was fixing a board on the dock. Once that was fixed, the dock got wheeled into the lake. Once again, the tractor came in handy. The water is still pretty high so the first 10 feet or so of water was a little cloudy.