Some random pics

We've been working in the garden a bit and have had our first ripe tomato already! We would have had more, but the mocking birds beat us to the punch. We have since put up nets to try and deter them. They're cute birds and all, but I prefer to eat the tomatoes myself!

The beans are doing well. A second row has been put in about 2 weeks after these fellas so we should have a nice steady crop.

Oh, and there's always time for lounging in the pool! :)

Our latest little visitor! Apart from scaring the dickens out of me everytime I uncover him, this little fella is a welcome addition. I hope he eats as many insects as he can! We also have 2 gecko's/lizards living in the front yard but they are elusive. I am determind to get at least one half decent photo of them though!

Some maintenance on the front beds. We took all the border stones away, cleared out all the grass and then replaced them making sure to leave a nice gap between the grass and stones. This will (hopefully) make it easier to keep the two separated. We also put the stones back closer together - a professional Australian gardner told us this would help too. ;)

That's not a bird! THIS is a bird. We had a flock of these Black Vultures hanging around for a day recently. They are massive birds and at 4.5pounds you know when they land on the roof!

Egg-cellent

So we (and by "we" I think we all know who I mean!) have been cooking up a storm on the new Big Green Egg (BGE). We have been taking advantage of the 70degree evenings and grilling every night!

One new thing we tried, that I was very skeptical about is the ABT - Atomic Buffalo Turd. Sounds delicious!! Well, it's a jalepeno pepper, stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. (below)

Here are the ABT's ready for eating and I must admit they are fantastic. I can eat 6 without blinking! Our neighbor is also a fan but she adds sausage meat to the cream cheese filling for some extra bang! We will be trying that .....

A very large hunk o'porky goodness (above)! This was on the grill for 15 hours - low and slow. And boy, we had no problems eating it! Pulled Pork left overs for a week but oh so yummy!

One particular person is very happy to be at the Egg-Fest. It's a festival where all the food is cooked on the BGE. There is nothing but pork, pork related products and beef on the menu :) No foo foo salads here. The unlimited beers also helped ...

After the Egg-fest we came home and tried our hands at a spatchcock chook. Above is the fella before and below is after it's been expertly deboned.

The spices are put under the skin and a little on top and onto the grill!

MMMM ..... yummy chook!!

Next we're going to try baking on it. At the festival they baked a pie and it was *really* good. Soon we wont need an oven!

Water - kids love it!

We recently went to the opening of the 'Riva Row Boat House' here in The Woodlands. It's a lovely new building were you can rent kayaks and paddle along the River Walk (the section is blocked to the River Taxi's!) and into Lake Woodlands.

Our neighbor took these lovely shots of us coming back in to dock.

Who's doing all the paddling here?

We had so much fun that we went back this past weekend and rented a kayak each and paddled our way to the north shore of Lake Woodlands. We spent about an hour paddling around - we could have stayed out longer but our arms were about to drop off!

We saw so many birds - loads of Great Blue Herons, Cormorants, ducks and a couple of Egrets that I could identify. Next time I'll take the camera. We also enjoyed chatting to the fisherman along the way.

All in all it was a fantastic morning :)

Holiday eh?!

We are back from our holiday to Lake Louise/Banff and can not wait to go back! We had such a wonderful time. We had no idea how spectacular it would be!

Even though the temperature didn't manage to get above 33F/1C for our entire stay and the lakes were frozen, that didn't stop us from hiking!

I can't imagine how cold it must have been for waterfalls to freeze ...

This is a frozen Lake Louise with our Chateau in the back ground :)

And finally on our 3rd day we saw the infamous Elk! We were starting to think the Canadians had made them up as a tourist trap.

And if there is a hike that goes straight up a mountain then we will do it! This is the top of "Tunnel Mountain" in Banff - and yes we went as far up as we possibly could.

And it was worth it - the views were amazing. Everywhere we looked we were in awe.

Now we have to go back in summer so we can do all of the hikes and proper winter for my snow shoeing!

It's a squirrels life

The squirrels have found us and it didn't take them long to figure out the feeder! They have to climb down, sit on the little ledge and then open the top of the box to access the seeds.


This little grey one comes every morning around 7am for breakfast. He's quite shy and if we're in the back yard he'll wait for us to go inside and then sprints down the fence to the feeder. He's wary and eats his seeds while sitting on the fence so he can keep a look out. He's up and down to the feeder every 30seconds, but he seems to like being able to see everything.

This fella comes in the afternoons and stays for about an hour - soon he will break the little sitting ledge. He doesn't seem to care what else is going on, as long as he has some seeds he's happy! He takes no precautions like the smaller grey one, and just hangs out gorging! :)

Some afternoon excerise maybe? A few pull ups to keep in shape?

And a drink afterwards. The pool is salt water so he would have been even thirster after his couple of sips but he doesn't seem to care.

Barbies

Luckily for us, Texans LOVE bar-be-cue. In California, the season would begin usually Memorial Day weekend. Here, it has already begun! :) Over the weekend we went to our neighbours place for a barbie and it was just lovely. Hamburgers, hot dogs, beans, devilled eggs and iced tea. What more you can you want? (Well, beer or wine but that's another story).

In the spirit of the season, we have a new grill aptly named the "Big Green Egg". It's a grill and smoker all in one and we can even bake on it apparently! Our smoker didn't make the journey to Texas and as those lucky enough to have tasted them, MM does a mean rack of ribs on the smoker.

We will keep our Weber (in the background). It's a great barbie and we have the rotisserie attachment that comes in very handy.
And here is our first Big Green Egg meal -

Veal chops with asparagus, fingerling potatoes and a La Crema Chardonnay. mmmm - finger licking good!

Spring has sprung!

Thank you to Zoe who helped with the planting. Just waiting on the blue bonnets to show themselves!