Weeds, Gardens, BBQ!

Weeds.  Stupid weeds.  This house was the motherland for weeds when we moved in.  Mike and I spent every weekend of the first 6 weeks on our hands and knees pulling out these suckers.  And that was only for the front lawn (which of course isn't very big to begin with when you're living in Toronto).  Now it was time to attack the back.

Actually by the time these photos were taken (6 weeks ago?) Mike had already done a beautiful job of removing the weeds on right side of our backyard in what used to be a garden. He planted a variety of flowers we had randomly picked out at the local garden store and they have been doing amazing despite being in constant sun and despite the suffocating heat we're experiencing this year.  In the next photos Mike is taking on the left side of the backyard, where the weeds starting growing to be almost as tall as he is!

   

Perhaps if we're lucky we'll be able to get the left side of the yard as pretty as the right side. Here are some photos of that garden looking nice and healthy.

  

Finally, the bbq.  One of the things we're enjoying most about the new house is having our own bbq in the backyard.  Here is Mike (on arguably the hottest day of summer so far) making salmon on a cedar plank and asparagus with prosciutto.  The asparagus was first marinated in a tasty lemon-mustard-peppery-olive oil mix - Yum!

The only minor snag was when he got wrapped up chatting with our next-door neighbour and the cedar plank caught fire!  Luckily the food was still delicious but you'll see the plank is pretty charred in the last photo below :)