Garden Gnomes

It was a dreary weekend, which called for a nap on Sunday in the middle of the day. We were not able to do too much yard work. Just spread a little more mulch around the flower beds and bushes. Everything is so early that I keep going to the garden center and looking for my annuals then realizing it is much too early.
I am not one of those people who put a lot of what I call knick knacks out in the flower beds, but for some reason for the past few summers I have ended up with six garden gnomes. My mother in law had three made for me by a women she knew that did ceramics, somehow I ended up witnh one that is made out of heavy metal, a plastic one that has a lantern that lights up at night and another plain plastic one. For the last few summers we have had them in t he front flower garden and every time we got another one it was added to the rest. My husband use to get a big kick out of telling people that the gnomes would sneak out after dark and go to the local bar and get drunk because in the morning a couple of them with be fallen over in the garde, probably the result of some wandering wild life but to my husband a drunken night out. This summer they have been relegated to the back yard flower bed. They have begun to loose their looks. One of the ceramic ones got stolen out of the front garden, my husband insists he went out and never came back, probably hooked up with one of the "women" at the bar. The other two ceramic ones need a face lift and the lantern doesn't work anymore on the one of the plastic ones. The look kind of sad back their but I am sure they will adjust. Once they find their way around from the back of the house I am sure they will make their way to the local bar. I am very happy with this decision to move them to the back, as I said I was never one for knick knacks in the house our outside of the house.
I finally got to have my brother over for his birthday dinner. His birthday was April 16th and he was invited to a friends house for dinner that Sunday so I had to put my invite off for a week or so. Last week my daughter was not in town and after I had set the dinner for this week she had a schedule change at work and couldn't make it anyway.
Growing up in an Italian family most of our Sunday dinners and many of the weekday dinners and especially special occasions were filled with Italian food. This birthday dinner I changed it up a little and ask my brother if he wouldn't mind something non Italian. He said he would love to step away from Italian food for his birthday. So I made a pot roast. I don't think my mother even knew what a pot roast was. I learned this from my husband's family. Meat and potatoes and a vegetable was their staple as was pasta for us. They grew a lot of their own vegetables. When my husband was growing up they had cows and sold the milk. So his early years were a great contrast to my city living. So we had pot roast, mashed potatoes, carrots and gravy of course. It was nice change. I made pound cake for dessert with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. I would have made my brother's favorite cake for his birthday dinner but I made it for him to take to his friend's house when he went their for his birthday. He loves my carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and so did his friends. We had a local butcher shop in our neighborhood where I grew up and my brother even worked there part time while he was going to school. That butcher shop closed as did many local mom and pop corner stores in the city, but one of the butchers went to work at the local big supermarket which is so great for me. I don't really know how to buy meats and the different cuts of meats just totally allude me. So when I want a cut of meat for a particular recipe I just go to Bob and tell him what I want it for, finish up my grocery shopping and return to the butcher counter and there it is. He even knows how to do cut that special piece of beef we use to make brociola. He had many years of experience working in an a butcher shop in an Italian neighborhood.
I caught the end of the most interesting movie last night. I was surfing around looking for something to watch before bed. I like to watch a little TV after my husband has gone to bed. Something to relax with and no surfing while the commercials are on. You know that drives me crazy, it just makes watching TV nerve racking. I love DVR and we try to record as much as we can so there are no commercials to watch. So anyway I was looking for something to unwind with and I came upon a movie on PBS. I didn't not catch it from the beginning but it caught my interest anyway. The movie was based right after WWII in London. I didn't even know the name of it until I had to Google the PBS schedule after the movie went off. What I found out from the PBS sight was it was Part II of a movie called Small Island. Done in black in white and I don't even know if it was an original movie done during that era or something made to look like it was old. Has anyone seen it?