EARTH DAY CELEBRATIONS | farmer’s market, bird watching, & garden party!

It is Earth Day weekend and we are celebrating and it has just been a truly glorious day so far. I'm so thankful. I started the day by going on a bird walk with some of my neighbors. It was so precious just walking around together and it was led by a neighbor who is a bird connoisseur so he knew a lot of different species of birds and just gave a lot of tips if you like to bird watch and if you want to learn more about bird watching he had a lot of tips so that was really helpful. He told us about an app called Merlin. Let me just double check that that's the correct name. I believe it's free. I haven't downloaded it yet but it's called Merlin and it helps you identify birds and it has the bird calls so you can start to identify the sound. Yeah Merlin bird ID. So that's pretty cool and it was just a really beautiful morning so I loved getting out early and he also said that the best time to hear and see the most birds is typically morning between 7 and 8 a.m. so we started at 8 a.m. and it was really really nice. Brandon also made us bananas foster french toast for breakfast. It was fancy and delicious and sweet and then once I finished the bird walk came back did a few things around the house and then we went to the farmer's market which is always a beautiful time. So now I am actually preparing a farmer's market to table meal. I'm starting to prep a few things because the plan tonight is to enjoy dinner in the garden to have an alfresco Earth Day dinner and let me just share some things I have on the menu. We will be preparing everything together but we're gonna of course have some kombucha with fresh mint from the garden so I'll probably mull the mint and then stir that in. I also have some butterfly ice cubes so we'll use those naturally and then we're gonna do a bruschetta and I saw someone do this they did tomatoes with fried capers but I'm gonna do fried capers on top of the bruschetta which I don't even know how you fry capers. I don't I don't know if I can just add some oil and do it on a skillet hopefully because that seems the simplest route but we'll play around with that that's what I'm gonna work on first bruschetta with fried capers and then we also have a veggie salad with chick peas and then roasted potatoes and roasted asparagus yum yum yum and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert so a pretty simple meal but it was inspired by everything we could find at the farmer's market today I was gonna do chocolate covered strawberries instead of chocolate covered bananas but they didn't have any strawberries at the farmer's market so bananas it is which speaking of let me insert a haul of everything that we picked up at the farmer's market today. We have quite the colorful farmer's market haul so many goodies got lots of heirloom tomatoes for a salad and then I'll also probably use some for bruschetta then we have a potato medley some of these are sweet potatoes some are red and some are russet some fresh ginger root red pepper I'm gonna do some pickled red pepper not red pepper pickled red onions and then some raw red onions as well some asparagus kale I've been making this delicious kale salad and we have some in the garden too that I'll mix in and then these absolutely massive radishes I have never seen radishes quite like this but they are really really just ginormous and I'm excited to try them some more tomatoes cherry tomatoes bananas cucumber grapefruit and a gorgeous baguette also so cute at the farmer's market for Earth Day they had a plastic swap so if you got some fresh produce and you got a plastic bag they were doing a swap for the plastic bag that they would recycle and then you got a reusable tote bag and I didn't have any plastic to swap because we brought our reusable bag but she gave me a quiz question for the bag and she asked me when was the first Earth Day I guessed it was 1972 but it actually was 1970 so not too far off and I got a nice reusable tote so let's get prepping I especially want to do some chopping and prep because in about an hour so I want to go see a pollinator expert speak she's speaking at 4 p.m. so I do want to go see if we can learn some more about pollinators and I believe she knows a lot about butterflies as well so that's really cool some local garden societies are going to be here as well just sharing information and sharing volunteer opportunities and stuff like that so I want to go to that soon but get dinner all prepped before we enjoy our alfresco evening under the stars and I did get some paper lanterns that would be so dreamy to hang over the garden for our dinner situation but I don't know a hundred percent if we'll put them up there is a chance of rain today so that can play an impact on whether we hang any lanterns or not but oh it does sound really dreamy to do that the kale salad I made it's surprisingly really tasty it has Parmesan cheese lemon olive oil salt and pepper and some red pepper flakes did I say lemon lots of lemon I've been made fun of for this but I think I mean some olive oil and a spray bottle spray bottle is very helpful look how efficient this is covering all the potatoes so effortlessly we did end up going to the Nature Center and listening to the pollinator talk which was the pollinator expert talk which is really nice and I got this magazine it's 20 easy to grow wildflowers the beautiful monarch on the cover also one of you actually mentioned in the comments that you could tell we recently did a butterfly release and you could tell it was a male butterfly and I looked up how to tell the difference between a female and male monarch butterfly and it's so simple it's signified on the wings there's two little dots on each on this specific line on the monarch if it's a boy and then there's just the lines I believe they're a little thicker too if it's a female so that is so interesting it's so fun to identify them now that I know that so thank you for sharing that which by the way I'm just so grateful for all of the wisdom and knowledge sharing that happens here every time I talk about something or am confused about something I feel like you all just have the best advice and tips and it's just really appreciated the last garden video I posted last week I was showing my ficus and there were ants on it and one of you summer said the ants seem fine but there's these other little bugs that are not fun I believe they're called Maisy bugs and I didn't even notice them I mean I noticed there was something there but I didn't really think much of it but good thing she said that because they're not the kind of bugs you want hanging out on your plants so I was able to remove them and I'm kind of monitoring it from now on but I just wanted to say I'm really grateful for all the kindness and knowledge sharing that we get to kind of create here but this is the magazine it's specifically for Florida so let's see milkweed is highlighted and lots of like golden daisy looking flowers which I love this one's so beautiful it kind of looks like an orchid very very lovely so I am definitely going to browse through here we are working on a pretty big garden project soon we're gonna be adding Christmas palms along both sides of our fence line so that should happen in a couple months we hired that project out because I love gardening and doing those bigger projects but there's just no way one we can fit the palm trees in our cars to that I'll be able to even Brandon I together it would be very challenging so happy to hire that one out but between the palm trees there's gonna be quite a bit of space that we can do for other gardening projects and I can plant other native plants there I also got some seeds so that's always exciting add that to the seed collection but now I'm just wrapping up the food I'm about to put the potatoes in the oven just get those roasting I feel like that always takes the most amount of time I fried the capers by just putting them on the skillet or in a pot with some well I made garlic oil garlic olive oil for the bruschetta and so I use that same pans that already had some garlic and olive oil in it and I fried the capers just kind of heat them up and let them sizzle for a bit and it smells really good it kind of filled the house up with the smell of fried capers so maybe open a window soon but that'll probably be yummy hopefully and then I'm finishing up the corn salad now I looked up a recipe with some kind of dressing because I wasn't sure which is what dressing to do for this salad so I think I'll end up doing one with some oil and vinegar and lime juice so we'll finish that up and make our chocolate-covered bananas because those like to sit in the freezer for a while and my friend Lys is coming over soon and we're gonna work on some more projects together and enjoy dinner together in the backyard and it is looking a little cloudy out there so I don't know if we'll do the lanterns I have these lanterns that we made we made them at the beginning of spring and they are really cute but they are not as durable so we might use these but I also have these hanging paper lanterns that are a bit more structured so we'll see we'll see how we feel and what the weather wants to do whenever I do chocolate covered anything pretty much I like to add a spoonful of coconut oil it helps thin it out but then also adds a nice flavor I'm gonna sprinkle these with some Maldon sea salt flakes I love to put these on top of chocolate desserts it really just takes it to the next level and I feel like it looks a little bit more elevated absolutely beautiful Earth Day celebration I'm so thankful it really was my dream day spent a lot of time outside in nature had a dinner party Brandon got Palmer a new toy today and he is so happy about it let me show you this chaotic puppy energy what are you doing is that your new toy is that your new toy okay now the couch is a trampoline anyways I hope you all are well and having a beautiful April so far but I'm so thankful for you again and I'm excited to see you next. Bye!