Happy Easter!

I made hot cross buns again this year, with a few tweaks. Instead of using storebought candied citron, I candied some lemon peels and then used the resulting syrup to glaze the finished buns. I also cut the x's before the second rise, which worked better than cutting them after the second rise. I think next time I might try candying orange peels instead of lemon, since these had a little bit of a bitter flavor. Not bad though--I've happily eaten two today!

Aside from a quick stop at Susan's to deliver some baked goods and check out Pearl's awesome Easter basket (Susan is the master of making cute things with felt, pinking shears, and rick-rack!), our day has been pretty normal. After much deliberation, I decided not to do the Bunny on a Bike ride (I couldn't motivate myself to sew bunny ears yesterday). Hopefully I'll do it next year! Instead, we spent the afternoon doing garden projects.

I worked on pulling out the vinca alongside our house (Patrick made a good start on it a few days ago). Although the purple flowers are pretty, it was getting out of control. We're going to replace the vine with some bee- and butterfly-friendly PDX Habitat mix.

Before:

About halfway done:

Patrick busted out his woodworking skills to build a cold frame for our tomato and rhubarb seedlings. He used a $2 single-paned window and some hinges from The ReBuilding Center (apparently double-paned windows don't allow the full spectrum of light to pass through, resulting in leggy plants), plus some wood from a free pallet from Ecohaus. Patrick says it took more work than he expected to break down the pallet (and yielded a lot of rusty nails!), so I think next time we'll spend a few dollars more to get some ready-to-use lumber from The ReBuilding Center.

I think it's so cool that Patrick can just build something like this in a few hours. It's definitely a good skill to have. Next up: raised beds!