Back to School

This week, school started. The Duchess began her junior year and received her class ring this week. This week was also the hottest week we've had this year. It was almost too hot to do much of anything outside. We managed to break two lawnmowers the same way on the same day, sort of.
We start off with The Duchess selfie just before she started back to school.

We assume she's just that excited to be going back?
On the first day of school it was cloudy and threatened rain, so we decided it would be a good day to do some lawn mower blade sharpening. Big Man took each mower over to Pop's garage to take the blades off and sharpen them with the grinder. When he took the blades off of Cupcake's new mower he found one of the blades had been bent, which would explain why it wasn't mowing correctly. When the blade came off, the spindle was rounded as well.
We ordered new spindles and blades for her mower, the blades came first so we installed the blades and gave it a try. It mowed well enough that we finished the yard, but we will need to replace the spindle in the coming week.
Big Man took the zero turn mower over and sharpened the blades on it. When he returned the blades to the mower deck, he always takes a pass in the grass on the way home. He noticed that one side/blade was mowing lower than the other. He thought he may have put the blade on upside down, so he took it back off, put it back on, and tried it again. Still mowed lower. By this time pop had joined the team, and we gauged the tires up. Still mowed low on one side. So we changed the blades from one side to the other to see if one blade was bent. Still mowed lower on the same side, so we adjusted the deck until it mowed level. Five minutes in to mowing, it began to "dig potatoes" . We took the mower back to the shop and upon closer inspection, two of the bolts that hold the spindle in place had broken off. So another order for spindles were placed. The coming week will be all mower maintenance all the time.
One day Cupcake wanted spaghetti for dinner, so we made a trip to the garden for fresh ingredients.

We took everything for the sauce fresh from the vine and put it straight in the pot.

We cooked it down until everything softened, then smoothed it out and added fresh herbs from Cupcake's herb garden on the deck.

We cooked it low and slow all day, letting the moisture cook off until it got thick and happy. The only store bought items we put in this meal was mushrooms and meatballs.

When it got too hot to do anything outside, Big Man picked two batches of rhubarb on two different days and made jelly.

We fixed salmon for dinner one night. We have proof that we can eat healthy, we just choose not to.

We again used fresh herbs from the deck planter. We don't know why everyone doesn't have an herb garden. We had fresh from the garden corn with the meal.

On a heat related note, we have a maple tree in the back yard that is starting to turn colors. We hope fall is just around the corner.

And on a tree related note, we noticed that all the pine trees in the area have heavy pine cones on them this year, but only in the tops. This is folklore of a sign of a heavy snow coming.

And on a karma related note, Cupcake wanted this to be added for documentation. Big Man pokes quite a bit of fun at Cupcake for getting distracted (shiny squirrel syndrome) but this week the Big Man was rinsing out the breading do-hicky we use to bread the squash when we fry squash for dinner, which is most nights.
Anyway, the Big Man went back to his squash frying duties and left the water running in the sink.

We ended the week with wings
K&K