Sitting on my back porch this chilly morning and as I look out into the pastures dotted with black cows, the beautiful green grasses and the little yellow flowers make a gorgeous backdrop. But as I look just outside my door it looks as if a bomb went off and blew up the ground and sent chunks of dirt flying in all directions.
The horrendous cold snap we had just a few weeks ago played havoc with our landscape. I have had the most lush, succulent green shrubs for over 20 years, and every year they put forth an abundance of green leaves and beautiful flowers. My red tops were so pretty sitting next to my olive trees for contrast. Now, I have all brown and gray bushes, bare of any leaves and flowers or berries. My monkey grass has the tips showing a white tinge and my daylilies are slowly recovering. The knock-out roses planted at the back of our garage had already set forth it's new growth, and I had to take my scissors and cut the very tops out of each one. And, our peach tree that gave us an abundance of ripe juicy peaches two years ago was once again relieved of all the tiny little peach settings. I had one of my favorite trees growing at he end of my porch, a beautiful banana tree that would cover several feet of ground given to me by a friend several years ago when it was just a sapling. Yep, another compost pile. I had potted several pots of blooming flowers and my big bucket of herbs on my back porch, thinking that the really cold killing weather was over, and several of them also are now compost. What's up Mother Nature?
I really can't directly blame the bad weather on my "bombed" backyard. My husband can take full responsibility for this mishap. You've heard the adage, "The difference in little boys and big boys are the size of their toys?" Well, one of my big boys toys is a big excavator and he loves this "toy". After waiting for a few weeks to make sure the greenery was truly not going to revive itself, he 'walks' the big machine over to our back yard and jerks the big bushes out of the ground along with lots of dirt, roots, and foot stones. So now we have big holes filled with water and mud.
In fairness to my husband, I will have to add that we are getting ready to extend our back porch out several feet and the shrubbery would have been forfeited anyway but, not right now. The rains and storms we have had have caused this to be a big muddy playground for our little Emmie. And, for me too as I try to get out to load my bird feeders and fill my humming bird jars.
The shrubs in our front yard, right outside the porch are also expired but I have begged him and his machine to please stay away from this for at least this year and let me recover from my back yard. Maybe we will just cut them off at the big "tree root" and set a yard Gnome on top of the stump.
We get tired of the same old breakfast foods. Here is something different and really delicious.
BACON AND CHEESE QUICHE
1 bought pie crust
1 cup of milk (I use Pet milk)
4 beaten eggs
8 slices of cooked crumbled bacon
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon chives
salt and pepper.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add the bacon and cheese to the bottom of the crust. Mix remainder of ingredients and pour over top. Bake for 45 -50 minutes.
Let set for 5-10 minutes before cutting.
