Son's happy birthday

The menu was chicken cordon bleu, with pasta in red sauce, followed by chocolate walnut cake decorated with chocolate icing and half walnuts

Topped with butter, ready for the oven

Table laid ready, flowers, like all the best restaurants. Fresh grated parmesan, hot peppers. Sun tea with lemon.

 This went over handsomely, and there are few leftovers. In fact more chicken was called on,  keeping warm in the oven.Really successful. First dinner together since February 2020. This is a restart. 

We'll do it again in September. I don't have the energy to pull out all the stops more than once a month! But this one, along with the nice check beside his plate, was a very good event. 

This year his birthday, aside from being 08/08, auspicious, is a multiple of 18, very auspicious, so with a multiplier factored in, it made a substantial gift. Which tickled me and pleased him.

And I have several dinners to reheat now. This chicken works very well that way.

All in all a good time.

Signs of Spring, at last

Today was full of hopeful signs of spring, after it seemed to have retreated again into cold, windy days.

It was near the first of the month, so time for a little bunch of cut flowers.  And iris were there, tightly furled, but very promising, with chrysanthemums.  True to form, as I picked and sniffed, sniffed and picked at the store, I had to have flowers with more than one purpose.  

The iris will make a beautiful dye next time I work on silk, which will be soon.

Then on the way home, the joyful sign at the farm for asparagus, first day of the year, was up, and I swerved into the farm and started scrabbling through my purse for the cash, not carrying much.  This was an honor system, no person there, just leave your money in an open box.  So I got my first asparagus and took the celebratory bite off the raw top of one, perfect.  

That will be on the menu today. Handsome Son will be here for dinner to help eat it.  And other items, jasmine brown rice cooked with Chinese spicy sausage in it, served with mixed vegetables and chicken on it.  Cake with mango yogurt cheese.

And a sudden wildflower burst out on the patio, must look it up and see what it is.  

Something about my camera doesn't like bright orange, and will only give a blurry yellow instead, but this flower is a wonderful brilliant color.  

Then there's henbit, I think, growing everywhere particularly in the pots I had put soil in for other purposes. 

And the couple of remaining branches on my wild cherry, blooming away, full of bees when the sun comes out, and with all kinds of birds pecking at them, too.

All in all, a good spring day, even if I was back in a winter coat to enjoy it.