eating and weeding

Some fine eating this weekend, first at the new Vietnamese restaurant, Saigon Grill on Friday night. We had a lovely dinner with D. and S., and Phil and his friend Laraine. I had lemongrass beef with vermicelli noodles. Really really good. Saigon Grill is clearly the place to be, as we kept seeing people we knew all night. In fact we hadn't planned on eating with D. and S., just ran into them there.

Then tonight we tried La Vaquita, the taqueria in the cow store on Chapel Hill Road. Georg had lengua tacos and I had pibil (pork slow cooked in citrus and achiote). Both so good! They just opened La Vaquita II on Hillsborough Road, right near us. I think we're going to be eating there a lot. No cow on the roof of the new location, alas.

Even with everything going on we managed to get some good yardwork in too. We weeded almost the entire blueberry bed. It was overrun with vines and wild brambles, both of which have long woody roots, and this evil weed that grows a root the size and shape of a daikon radish. So there was lots of digging to get all those deep roots out. One of the blueberries had brambles growing right in the middle of it. I had to dig the poor thing up, set it aside, dig the brambles out from under it, and then put it back. Lucky the soil was so wet, that made it easier to pull out the deep roots.

Georg also dug up several volunteer saplings that are growing right under the chain link fence. It's hard to dig them out from under the fence so we had been taking the easy way out for the past few years, just cutting them back over and over. Which unfortunately encourages them to grow stronger, deeper roots, making the job harder when we finally get around to doing it right. Well Georg got a bunch of them yesterday. And between the two of us we mowed the yard. First time this year!

I wanted to but did not get around to planting the seedlings outside. It's supposed to get down to the low 30s in a few days so maybe I should wait. The tomatoes are growing fast & will need to be transplanted again soon. Each time you almost the whole plant under the soil, leaving just a few leaves exposed. That helps them grow stronger root systems.