Grills, fests, & house plants

A weekend recap

It's been one of those weekends that feels full of activity and also full of laziness. So really, the best kind of weekend. On Friday night we braved the storm moving through Southeast Wisconsin — the type of storm that makes my dad say "It's a twista! It's a twista!" 

At the end of the storm lay a bonfire/barbecue hosted by Fritz and Tim. Lucky for us all, Tim has a finished garage with plenty of room for circling up some camping chairs and even moving the grill inside. I tried a new pasta salad recipe just for the occasion (recipe to come this week!). Eventually the rain cleared and we were able to have our bonfire — and we had it until 4:00 AM. Newsflash: My body didn't thank me for that one. But it did thank me for pasta salad.

After sleeping in and taking naps on Saturday, Adam and I joined my family and some friends at Irish Fest — the best fest! It's my happy place, and I know that there are a lot of local folks with Irish blood who would agree with me. As always, we ate McBob's rueben sandwiches — yummy, but soggy on the bottom. And consulting last year's blog post, we went for the Irish nachos again. Mistake. Maybe it was just the person who made our order, but there wasn't enough cheese sauce. Nachos sans proper cheese saucing are just a dry plate o' chips.

We went to see Scythian, and as always they tore it up. The fiddling skills knocked our socks off. They brought out the Trinity Irish Dancers for part of a song. They played "If Ever You Were Mine" — a tune that made my friend Shea and I turn to each other and say simultaneously: "THIS IS SO PRETTY." We followed up Scythian with Gaelic Storm, but it was such a madhouse and a little hard to handle. I like that Scythian is manageable and every bit as entertaining. 

On Sunday, Adam and I slept in as much as possible in our sweltering hot apartment and then headed out on a mission: house plants! We have a few colorful cacti already, but Adam's been itching for some greenery. We bought a few small plants for the windowsill and a Arboricola — commonly called Dwarf Umbrella Tree. How cute is that?

A lady at Stein's says she's had her Arboricola for 30 years — so welcome to the family, miss! We may or may not have named her Pamona after Professor Sprout from Harry Potter. Yep, we suddenly became those people who name their house plants. Anyway, she's not potted yet, or pruned — apparently you can't move, repot, and prune all at once or you'll shock 'em. We don't want to shock Panoma! Wow I love naming plants, and I don't care who knows it.