Time with my celebrity dogs, time in the yard, a visit to the nursery, planting in the vegetable garden, dinner at a friends' yet-to-be opened restaurant and lunch with all siblings, Mom and various sisters in law at my brother's in Montevideo. All in all, I had quite a full and pleasant birthday weekend.
In the gift department, the first was the surprise of stumbling on a picture of Oso, Collie, Tulu and Lunes in the NYT. I had submitted the picture a few days before, but after seeing they were up to 16,400 contributed pictures, I had absolutely no expectation of running into our brood.
The second gift of the day, of a more material nature, was a "nursery voucher" from my Mom, giving me another unnecessary excuse to visit my friends at Proverde, resulting in an additional green gift, this time from them, in the form of a crate with seedlings of red and white cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, already planted and hopefully happy in their new home. Plants, the gift that keeps on giving...
For my "gift certificate" I chose 15 poligala bushes, to add some softer foliage and color to the area nearest to the road, where now there's just some formios and some ornamental grass that I plan to move over a bit to the left, in order to bunch them together and make room for the poligalas, while making them more of a single-looking bush, rather than separately identifyable plants. Of course, while I was there I decided to add a few more oleanders (we never have enough, it would seem) and formios to existing patches, with the same philosophy of "safety in numbers" against the brutal winds here.
Back home I ran out back to plant the new winter veggie babies. We've resumed weeding and clearing the vegetable patch, which is now about 50% clean and planted in various stages of growth, and 50% a filthy jungle.
On Saturday night we went to Vida Devagar, our friends Alex and Cecilia's restaurant/bar in the making, in Playa Verde, next door practically to Terra Nostra (they who refused to seat us on Mother's Day) and the sadly closed Carumbe... I believe that independently of the merits of Alex's cooking and the charm of the place, they can develop a business just from aggrieved guests rejected by Terra Nostra, who apparently are doing too well to care about serving regular customers. In any case, the Japanese salad of cucumber and carrot with sesame seeds was delicious (I skipped the calamari dish) as were the home-made ravioli with mushroom sauce.
At the risk of exploding the next day we had amazing ricotta tortelini alla Carusso, a typical Uruguayan sauce of cream, ham and mushrooms. Followed by strudel from former Hamburgo, now panaderia Del Museo.
In a carbo-fed stupor, we arrived home early in the evening and treated ourselves to a double feature, a satisfying Clive Owen vehicle with the most fantastic photography and interiors, where he destroys the Guggenheim (The International), and a contrived Mexican auteur indie film with typical great cast, confusing editing and a depressing aftertaste: "Burning Flame" or something like that.
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