E is asleep on the couch...and on top of her phone, lol. i can hear her alarm going off, but she doesn't really have to get up just yet, and she's been up since 5am. another few minutes of sleep won't hurt.

it's been a productive few days at Chez Dragon! yesterday, after work (three clients! yay! starting at 9am on a saturday - ugh!), E and i went shopping for boards to build two raised garden beds. they will be 5ft by 5 ft, which gives us 50 square feet for corn, squash, cucumbers, you name it. one of my blueberry seedlings looked a little sketchy (it's only just now getting warm enough to plant them), so we picked up a third variety, along with...wait for it...some asparagus crowns!!! my dream of an asparagus patch is coming true!

things fell apart a bit when we got home, lol...we forgot to buy screws for building the beds (but i remembered to charge the drill battery), and the Kentucky Derby was on, and we were hungry and tired and mostly spent the afternoon on the couch. but i did find the energy to deal with the bacon:

this is cured, rinsed, dried, skinned, and ready to hang out in the fridge overnight. today i basted it with a little Liquid Smoke and baked it in a 200 degree oven for...almost four hours, i think, until the internal temp hit 150 degrees. it's cooling now, and tonight i will slice it into smaller portions for freezing. except for that curved bit. that's going to be chopped into chunks for breakfast!

step by step, our little homestead is coming along. today we cleared and burned brush from the mint patch, planted the blueberries, and watered everything else. the peas and radishes are doing well, and the tomatoes and basil are getting bigger every day:

i'm especially proud of that center row of tomatoes - they're Cherokee Purples, and they were my first seed-saving experiment two years ago! oh, the tomato sandwiches that will be ours in just a few short months...