April Showers and Flowers

We have all, human and animal, been enjoying the spring flowers around the yard. These pansies came up near our cold frames.
I believe these flowers, growing on the west side of the house, are called bleeding hearts. (Thanks to Mick, who identified them as "similar to Dutchman's breeches", and Google filled in the rest.) I hadn't realized the flowers were heart-shaped, but it is a very fitting name for them I think.
Gerard loves to sit right among the flowers. One day, Mick came in and told me I should go out and follow the trail of his leash. His meandering reminds us of the Family Circus cartoons.
We still have birds coming to our suet feeder too. The most faithful visitors are a chickadee and a hairy woodpecker. One cold day, we had kept the living room curtains closed to keep the house warmer. But that didn't stop Gerard, who had stayed inside that day because of the cold. He spotted a bird at the feeder, and you should have seen his tail twitch!
The crabapple tree in the front yard looks beautiful since Mick pruned it.
Then right in the middle of all these April flowers, we were very surprised last weekend by April showers that felt a whole lot less like spring.
Yes, that's snow.

Which was followed up by wind-blown sleet.

Not the sort of showers we were expecting, that's for sure! But now things are returning to normal. After the coldest spell, Gerard was determined to be outside, even though it was still quite windy. He very cleverly found a spot in the sun but sheltered from the wind.
And he defended his territory from curious intruders!
The crabapple tree flowers have survived their icy showers, and the tree looks pinker every day.
We are certainly looking forward to the final arrival of Spring!

Squash Pie and Scrapple

Ma (Heidi), just thought you might like to know that we are using and enjoying the squash you helped Sarah can. We made two delicious pies with one quart, and we used your no-cutting pie crust, which is so easy to make, so flaky, and it isn't that much less pleasant than a butter or lard crust. Thanks! We used Spice Islands cinnamon, which is different from the others we've had. It has a stronger cinnamon flavor, and a great heat to it.

Also, the liquid in with the canned squash is intensely flavored and deliciously sweet, with a beautiful color

We used the liquid to make a hot buttered rum drink, which was also delicious. Sarah recommends it

And Mom and Dad (Laurel and David), we performed our scrapple extending procedure with the scrapple you gave us. First we diced an onion

and boiled it with some wheat bran

Then we cubed the scrapple to make it melt faster (yes, scrapple melts...weird) and tossed it in along with some wheat germ and herbs (mostly savory)

We boiled everything until it was homogeneous, then added some wheat flour and stone ground cornmeal to adjust the consistency,

greased some "molds" and poured the slop in

Sarah thinks they look like banana breads or something

We figured out that the scrapple before we got to it was 1/7th fat by weight. We extended that one pound block to three pounds of scrapple, increasing the fat only through the grain we added. Not bad! It slices up great with a cheese slicer

And it looks great in a skillet (thanks Ma!)

We had it with some eggs scrambled with the stem portion of a mess of leeks, very nice. And thanks, Amie, for the stein/mug, and thank you, Nancy, for the placemats.

It was good! As usual, Gerard wanted some.


Also, Gerard has taken to finishing Roscoe's meals...

...which distresses the puppy

...who expects me to do something about it.

Later that night, after the humans had a beautiful anniversary dinner, Gerard gave most of his dinner back, but Roscoe wasn't interested in it this time around.

We weren't either.

Yuck.