Team Burke

cherries. strawberries. chocolate.

cherries are in season...

strawberries, also in season...

chocolate is ALWAYS in season. (thanks Kim for the Cadbury yum!)

chocolate dipped cherries and strawberries. its really easy although can be time consuming. at one point I was grasping a cherry with a short stem and accidentally dipped my fingers. that hurt. PSA - only use the cherries with the long stems!

complete with white chocolate drizzle. tastes like summer!

Ruby Snacks

the last flyball tournament I went to, I won a big raffle prize. it was allergen free treats from a company in Oregon who makes custom treats for your dogs. Ruby has especially bad allergies and she did really well with these, so I placed my order. I chose chicken liver, potato flour and blackberries.

of course, she's not picky when it comes to treats, but I have to be, or it's bad news for poor Ruby.

surprise - they put a little Boston Terrier on the label

and named them Ruby Snacks!! if you need special dog treats, go to Grolaini's Healthy Dog Treats. good stuff.

yard improvements - week 3

the grass is really coming in now. you can even see lighter areas, where the green is so vibrant that it's an entirely different color - that's the new growth. which is still too delicate to walk on. it's still a little patchy in places, but it's getting better every day. now the older, established grass is really long. so the whole thing is a strange combination of too long and too short.

the front yard, you can see the patchiness is starting to fill in. the edging still looks good but since the grass is getting really long it's starting to look scraggly

getting better, but not quite there yet.

the back yard, where you can see the different colors of green where new and old grass meet

more of the back yard

the first of my rhododendron's is in bloom

another view of the back yard - the white rhododendron is in the right corner, hiding behind another tree.

my seedlings are starting to look healthy. the long ones are morning glories. the short wide ones are white eyed susans. the ones that haven't sprouted at all are cilantro.

Sushi and Danger wrestle a lot. it's noisy and toothy

Danger at 8 months

mmmmm....mole

dear Charlie & Sarah. thank you for the delicious mole. yummy yummy yummy. we will repay you in kind with your choice of dessert.

yard improvements = week 2

we can see some improvement in the yard. there's tiny sprouts of grass coming up where it was once dirt. He told us 3 weeks - so hopefully we will see a big improvement next week.

Here's the difference between our and Kate's grass once again. still a big difference. patience... patience...

looking a little greener.

the back yard it much better. considering that the dogs are not keeping off the grass I'm happy with the results.

however the dogs like eating the grass. hopefully they are eating mature grass and not new grass!

the edging still looks great, although can use a bit of a trim. the landscaper isn't returning for another 2 weeks so I'm sure it will get a lot more scraggly before then! that tiny sad looking plant there is the daylily that Andrew mowed over. it's coming back!! YAY!!

cheesecake pops

I tried to make these because they looked so great on the online recipe site I like to go to. they were WAY harder than they looked. here's what I did:

make a cheesecake. cool it over night

form into balls. you're supposed to use pop cycle sticks, but I couldn't find any at my grocerys store, so I used plastic spoons. this was my undoing. I had to make them HUGE to cover the spoon, and so they were heavy and hard to form. next time, no spoon, no stick, just a ball.

then I froze them in the deep freeze to see if I could make them prettier. cheesecake seems like it would be easy to form. it's not. but the colder, the better.

the end result, dipped in chocolate. I used melting chocolate, and added 4 Cadbury bars to it because there's nothing like Cadbury chocolate. NOTHING. I wasn't happy with how these looked, but got rave reviews for how they tasted. guess you can't beat cheesecake, even if it's not so pretty.

for Kim - Salsa recipe

Kim asked Mom to ask me to give her my salsa recipe. I got this recipe from my friend Lee in Dallas. When Lee makes it, he uses habanero peppers. fresh ones. the first time I ate it I cried. but it was so tasty that I had to keep eating it, so I cried and ate and cried and ate. when I make it I use canned jalepeno peppers, but if you want it hotter, add more peppers or use fresh ones. if you're crazy, use habaneros.

chop up and throw into a bowl:
3 tomatoes (I like to remove the seeds and pulp so it's less runny)
1 small sweet onion
2 large cloves garlic
1 large bunch of cilantro
10-20 jalepeno slices (from a jar = nice, fresh = hotter)

combine this in a bowl. then add the juice of 2 limes, 2-3 pinches of salt, some ground pepper.

the end result - I like a chunkier 'pico' style salsa, but if you like a smoother saucier style salsa then ues a food processer to chop your tomatoes and onions. yummy!

new and improved yard

Our yard was a mess. The lush greenness in pictures disguises the fact that it's 1/2 moss and 1/2 clover. So we hired the people who do our neighbor Kate's yard. Kate's yard is gorgeous. Now the yard doesn't look so great because they thatched it (removing moss and clover) then added soil. it's kinda brown and dirty looking, but in 3 weeks we are told it will look immaculate. here are the pics:

here's the little flower bed by the street light. it was a funny looking square box. they made it bigger and gave it a shape. The beautiful green grass to the left is the neighbor's yard. her yard is awesome.

it doesn't look like much right now, but give it a few weeks. it's weed/clover/moss free! the rhododendrons need to be pruned back after they are done flowering, and I want to thin out some of the shrubs.

this is the little shrub area that hides the meters. I planted some of my pink (yellow) daffodils here.

the back yard didn't need quite as much work as the front - it had a lot more real grass and a lot less moss and clover. it needed work in the flower beds though. we had a lot of weeds.

Mom helped me put in a few clematis to grow up the gazebo around the hot tub. this one is my favorite!

a nice thing about having a gardener work on your lawn - he was able to identify the plants we had - since we didn't put them in we didn't know what most of them are. this is a plum tree. we have 2 of these.

this one is a pear tree. they are all too young to make fruit yet.

in the far corner - the one with the red leaves - is a cherry. the two little green ones below it are Japanese maples.

Mom really liked the edging. they were very precise.

I started some morning glories in the kitchen. hopefully I have better luck with them this year than I did last year.

for Andrea

I think Sushi is about to pounce, not sure if it's Ruby or Danger she's after

he's so fast!

this pic really shows how his markings have changed. I was asked if he was a shepherd mix at the last flyball tournament.

Ruby is as toy obsessed as ever

mmmmmm... pvc pipe

so I ordered these pink daffodils last fall. they just bloomed. on the left, the photo of the website of a beautiful pink flower. on the right, what I got. yellow. not pink, yellow. pretty though, but not what I wanted.