First bison burger BBQ of 2023, plus GREEN!

So once upon a time, which is a nice stand-in for 'I don't remember when', our old stove died and we had to get a new one. I was busy with something and Linda does most of the cooking and we knew the counter footprint it had to fit within, so she was off to the appliance store. They delivered the new one, hooked it up, and took away the old one. Gotta love that.

I'm really not going to go off on a rant about the overly complicated way to use it to time how long the coffee has been brewing. Let's see, press the dial, press another control, press the dial once to get hours, twice to get minutes, then turn the dial to select the desired number of minutes, then press the dial to start. On my phone I can do that with a couple button pushes and twiddling a wheel or two, depending on how I last left the countdown thingie. Then again, the stove controller has to do lots more than that.

All that is a digression. It came with a griddle attachment to go over the big middle burner. We've done pancakes on it a few times, but we're more waffle people than pancakes. It's been a long brutal winter with lots more snow and fewer chinooks than usual, so the the BBQ got to the state where shovelling a path to it was more than I wanted to do. 

Except that we started jonesing for burgers. Lamb or bison. So we tried the griddle. It worked ok the first time, but we practically needed a steam cleaner to get the grease spatters off the top of the stove. Next time we laid down some foil, and that worked really well, except that I started worrying about inadequate airflow and incomplete combustion. At least the noisy alarm didn't go off. Then again, we had the hood fan on high.

We've had some actual warm weather recently. Today is 14 in the back yard, and the sun feels warm. In a sheltered area you could probably lay out on a lounge chair and start working on a tan. The ground is still gross. 

The BBQ is embedded in a couple inches of ice, but I can get to it with only a bit of shovelling and a willingness to walk carefully on ice. We had bison in the fridge. Guess what was for lunch. Yup. MMMMMMM!!!!

Linda was out looking at the front garden, which until a week ago or so was under a mound of snow, and found some plants thinking it's spring. They are probably deluded in this, since it's only mid-April, and it's entirely likely we will get at least one more big dump of snow. It wouldn't surprise me to learn the plants are better prepared for it than I am. So sick of winter.

So here's the post lunch photos.

1. Front bed, I think these are daffodils.

2.

3.

4. This is the white peony, looking kind of sad. However all that dead material will be cleared away to be composted, and fresh growth will tempt the ants again, and you'll have a new series of photos to enjoy. I'm thinking about ways to make the photos interesting, so you guys aren't all 'ho-hum another white peony photo. Zzzzzzz.'

5. The back yard standing beside the back door. Still lots of snow, and even with temperatures in the mid-teens, it's going to take a while before it's gone.

6. There's probably 5 or 6 cm of ice all around the BBQ. The cover is like that because the back of it is frozen into the ice, but I can pull it over the top to protect it.

7. More of the back yard.

8.

9. This might well be the last of the ice to go away. It's probably a good 2 feet thick between the fence and the house.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

I've only a half dozen or so more peony photos from last year, but then soon there will be more.

Tombstone

Film (new)

Film (old) Sebastian.