Spring threatened to finally arrive this weekend, hitting us with incredible hot days and lots of sun, but it has already vanished again–today is grey and cool. Between trips to Boston on Friday and Tuesday, and Ben taking a business trip Monday and Tuesday, I feel like we’ve barely been home (or seen each other) in ages. As a result, I haven’t been cooking much, since evenings at home alone don’t inspire me to cook anything worth taking photos of. Last night I had a delicious but hardly impressive dinner of fried eggs, a toasted english muffin, and some salsa.

I am vowing to be better, though. This weekend Ben’s brother and a friend are visiting, so I’m gearing up to feed some extremely hungry 20-year-olds. A big pan of lasagna should work… We have a couple dinner parties in the next two weeks, as well And when it’s just me and Ben, I’d like to branch out a bit, get my hands on some nice spring vegetables, maybe cook with fish and chicken for a lighter change of pace.

Over the weekend while it was hot and sunny, Ben got a bee in his bonnet to plant flowers in the beds and window boxes in front of the house. It’s a pretty grim sight right now—heavy storms pulled hundreds of sticks and branches out of the ugly trees out front, and our grass is barely existent and full of tire tracks from various trucks pulling onto the lawn. Still, we went to Home Depot and stocked up on pansies and violas, and then I spent the afternoon sanding and painting over the ugly stencils on our porch table while Ben planted the flowers.

The violas are particularly charming:

And though it’s hard to tell from this photo, the house does look a little happier now:

That evening our friends Ann, Chris, Brian and Liz came over to help us break in the porch and welcome spring with margaritas. Liz is from Milwaukee, and suggested a bratwurst barbecue, so she made caramelized onions and we grilled the sausages and ate them with a big salad and a succession of tasty, tasty frozen margaritas. The power of the margarita is such that I completely forgot to take any photos. Oops. We got the call from our broker asking if we wanted to grab the apartment midway through the first round, so the dinner was very celebratory!