Garden Wars: Revenge of the Roses

 You may remember the great rivalry that Bo & Chicken have had over their vegetable gardens.  The previous two years of garden wars have been filled with strategies, blisters, and jalapenos... lots and lots of jalapenos.

Now that Bo has moved to the city, 

and both Chicken and Bo live together. . . 

they've decided that this year's garden war will be fought as a team! 

One for all and all for one!

We've decided to get started with the flower beds and work our way to the garden.  Now there's a few things you need to know about Bo's new yard...

1. It has a crap-ton of flower beds.  Seriously.  No one else on the entire block has a single flower bed, and we have a total of 12 flower beds and gardens.  

2.  The yard is huge!  Not anywhere close the size of her previous yard, but still it's huge.

3.  For some $%^#&@*! reason every single leaf in a 10 mile radius finds itself into one of those dozen flower beds and gardens.  I can not even tell you how angry I am over this.  We both spent hours in September and later in November raking up these rouge leaves and yet this spring. . . they were back!!

That being said, here are some before pictures...

Despite the fact that we have completely different styles when it comes to landscaping and gardening. . .

 And drastically different thoughts about wildlife. . .

Well, despite all of those reasons and more, we were able to work extremely well together.  

We were determined to make our yard shine like the top of the Chrysler building.  

Well, basically that. . . but in a green nature-y way.  

Any who. . . it took 2 days, 5 trips to Lowe's, 2 trips to Garden Ridge, 32 bags of mulch, 4 bags of dirt, 6 piles of sticks/ brush, and 50+ bags of leaves, old mulch, and here are the results.  

(P.S.  I threw in some inside photos too 

because I did some spring decorating inside too.)

Our new sunny bird bath!  

Lowe's accidentally gave me a box that had 2 in it when I only wanted 1

 (and paid for 1).

When I returned the other one, I thought I'd get an "Oh, thank you,"  

since it was a $40 bird bath and would have

been a bad day when they took inventory and found it missing.  

But, no. 

 Instead the lady was more concerned about 

finding out who gave me the box so she could punish them.  

Really.  

Like working retail isn't enough of a punishment,

and I should know (I worked at Lowe's while I was in college!  

You're talking to the Employee of the year here.)

Karma will come back on her someday.  

But, 

I couldn't remember who had brought out the box for me, 

so she had no one to punish.  

For shame (insert winking face here).

The picture to the left may not look like much, 

but it took for #$%&%*ing ever!

Plus, cars kept coming down the alley, 

so my life was slightly in danger the entire time. 

 I also kept getting attacked by a rose bush.

And I was a source of entertainment for a

little girl who kept riding her three-wheel

motorcycle closer and closer, because

her and I were the only 2 active

members in my neighborhood, seriously.

Good Morning Daffodils!

Me-wow!  That is one cool cat!

This may look like another happy flower bed, but it's not.  

That rose you see in the right picture (on the left side of it), 

yeah that rose, 

I've nicknamed it Voldemort 

a.k.a the flower that will not be named. 

I swear, whoever came up with the idea that giving your sweetie pie a rose, 

must have originally thought it up as some kind of revenge 

because those things are horrid!  

I ended up getting poked, scratched, and basically attacked by that thing. 

 I don't know how, but I found a way to get injured by nearly every thorn on it.  

Later, 

when I was passed out on the couch from exhaustion, 

I noticed that my stomach really hurt, 

along with every other part of my body.  

Upon closer examination,

 I had a part of the rose bush caught up in my shirt 

and it had scratched the ever loving hell 

out of my stomach, making it exceeding painful 

to wear clothes for about three days.  

Every time I pass the rose bush I still give it the eye.  

One day rose bush, one day, I will have my revenge!

The trees have buds!  Spring is actually here people!  

Full of seed and waiting for some feathery friends!

Ahhhhh, spring!  My favorite time of year.  

Though, I honestly have to say, this was not my favorite spring cleaning.  

Plus, we only finished the front and side yard.  

The biggest challenge of all is yet to come.

Our next challenge. . . the backyard!  

God help us all.

Fine Dining Without Class: Gradkowski's

Alysia & Stephen visit. . .

Hello all, I figured it had been about a million make believe years (2 years in real time) since I wrote an entry for Bo and Chicken’s blog so when Stephen told me he was elected Treasurer of the Graduate Student Association I first said “So, what I work at a BANK and WE deal with MONEY all day every day!”

After a confused staring contest Stephen said “….Anyway I was thinking we should go out and celebrate!” to which my mind registered “CHA CHING FOOOOOOOOD!!!”

Now Stephen and I don’t get out all that often, but we do try to go out once a month to a nice place for what we like to call “date night”, but should probably be called “go to a place with big portions so we can stuff ourselves silly and still have leftovers for lunch tomorrow”.

Anyway, we got all gussied up and decided to try a new place called Gradkowski’s since one of Stephen’s Professor’s recommended it. My initial thought on the name was “We’re going to Gradkowski’s and you’re a GRADuate student!” (A real knee slapper I know, I’ll keep the laughs coming!) 

After my tomfoolery was over Stephen explained that Bruce Gradkowski was a Quarterback for the University of Toledo and is currently in the NFL and just got drafted by the Steelers. (Thus ends the extent of my NFL knowledge).

Gradkowski’s is located pretty much on the University of Toledo’s Campus in a newly built strip mall-ish area. There was ample parking to be had and I managed to make it to the front door of the restaurant without tripping on my heels (I saved that for INSIDE the restaurant, so I had an audience).

We had been wise enough to call ahead and make reservations and after we had been seated I was glad we did! The place wasn’t very full when we got there, but it soon filled up completely! We had a great waitress that didn’t even bat an eye when I asked for a glass of water and  a glass of soda. They do serve every drink with 2 small straws so I was double fisting with double barrels! (Insert laugh track here.)

The menu here isn’t large by any means, but it does offer a good amount of selections. 

We decided to splurge and get an appetizer of Pesto fries. 

They came out very quickly and were delicious!

(Pictured above, my stomach was faster 

than my hand to reach for the camera, 

hence the partially eaten plate)

There were a couple of dishes on the menu that involved Pesto so it was easy to eliminate them as choices since we didn’t want to get pestoed out. (Fun Fact: Urban Dictionary defines Pestoed as smashing something in a brute sexual manner). [Memo to self: do note site Urban Dictionary as a source for a fine dining review].

After we had snacked away on the delicious pesto fries we finally made our minds up for dinner. Stephen selected the Parmesan Encrusted Salmon. (So classy!)

And I selected the Seafood Sicilian. (Not Pictured is me triumphantly thrusting my fists in the air for not only selecting a classier sounding dish, but a cheaper one at that!)

                                                                                   It’s gotta be classy…it has capers in it!

Of course we bypassed ordering the $20 burger that was on the menu and included foie gras and a fried quail egg on top of it amongst other ingredients that were too classy* for this couple (*by too classy I mean too expensive and it had mustard on it and I DO NOT do mustard, no matter how fancy it is).

Poo on YOU Grey Poupon!

While we waited for our food we enjoyed the ambiance of the restaurant. There were several flat screen TV’s broadcasting the latest on the Final 4 and décor was very tasteful. It was almost a mix between old and new Italian. The only thing that was weird was the 20 era’s music that was playing.

How can you listen to that type of music and not picture people dancing like this??

We received about 15/20 minutes after ordering and it was still steaming hot when it came to the table. They say we eat with our eyes, and my eyes were thoroughly nourished!

Iron Chef America judges might critique this plate for the butter ball being slightly askew, I consider it a very delicious and artery clogging form of  avant garde art.

Ring, Ring! Hello eyeballs? You’re welcome!

Dinner was a heavenly feast. I didn’t realize the pasta was going to have some heat but it was a delicious surprise! (P.S. DO NOT DIRECTLY BITE INTO A CAPER just so you can “see what one tastes like” they were not made for that!'

The portions might not look very big from these pictures or we underestimated how many fries we actually ate, but we did end up with leftovers from our meal.

One of my favorite things about this restaurant is that they box up the leftovers for you and bag them up. They even marked the containers with the date. One more thing about these containers, they are dishwasher safe and microwave safe, seriously they are the nicest take out containers I’ve ever had. I actually washed mine out and plan to re-use it they are THAT GOOD!

 WHAT’S THE FINAL VERDICT?

We would definitely visit Gradkowski’s again in the future! It’s not an everyday place to eat since our entire meal was about $50 for the two of us, but it offered us a pleasant night out with a great atmosphere, wonderful food and we got to steal glances at Bruce Gradkowski himself! 

All in all a great place to visit and the staff couldn’t have been friendlier (well they could have, but then it would have been borderline creepy). For sure stop by and check this place out and make sure you save some food to take home so you can use the wonderful containers. (I should be a spokesperson for these things seriously!)