Welcome to another edition of Saturday Sun. It’s a long weekend here with warmer temperatures and sunshine every day 😌. I’ll be out in the garden cleaning up, trying to imagine new plantings and plans for our space. Even the most mundane gardening tasks have had extra significance for me lately. Touching dirt and leaves, feeling the wind blowing on my face, clearing out the old and seeing new bright green shoots underneath, putting in the time and care with hopes that something will grow and find its way. It is an active meditation that fills me with gratitude and presence.

I hope that you’re taking care of yourself, finding support and peace in whatever activities you choose this weekend. Thanks for checking in here! As always, if you have a question that you would like me to answer for next week, you can leave it in the comments here, message me on Instagram, or send an email. Be well ♥️

5 Things I’m Reading:

1. What Really Makes Us Happy
2. How to Be a Mysterious Woman Who Is Also in Bed by 9:30 P.M.
3. It Turns Out Mushrooms Have a Language—And We’re Just Figuring Out How to Decipher It
4. How to foster your purpose wherever you are in life
5. The Assumption That Everyone Benefits From Reading Food Labels Is Unsafe and Short-Sighted, Says an RD—Here’s Why

5 Things I’m Enjoying:

1. Doing a deep dive through the podcast archives of The Way Out Is In: Zen and the art of living
2. Google Sheep 🐑 View
3. David Hockney’s portraits of his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie. More about the inspiration behind these 45 portraits here.
4. Community Seed Libraries
5. Spring is the time to dig up and transplant a lot of perennials and shrubs. My parents got us a Root Slayer shovel last year, and it’s been a huge help with this task.

5 Questions:

1. Any garden plans for the new house?
   Short answer: yes! Long answer: we are replacing the 300+ foot fence that goes around our backyard hopefully before the end of May. This fence goes through a few garden areas, winds around trees etc. Once that’s done, there’s an area that runs along the side patio that’s just a mess of periwinkle, weeds, and dead cedars that I want to dig out and re-plant with some shade loving perennials and shrubs. We want to eventually replace the patio in this area, but we do hang out here a lot in the summer, so making it nice is a priority this year. We also have an overgrown path area on the other side of our house that needs a bit of love. I’m hoping we can dig it up, level everything out, and place some pavers and low border plants there by the end of summer.
2. Where did you get your doggies from? They’re so sweet.
   We adopted Cleo from Rat Terrier Rescue Canada in 2014, and Mickie from Save Our Scruff in 2018.
3. What are your favourite things to grill?
   It’s getting to be that time of year! Grilling season puts me in such a good mood honestly. I love to grill wedges of cabbage (like with this recipe), my classic marinated tempeh recipe, and whole eggplant for a silky and slightly smoky pasta sauce. What kind of grilled recipes would you like to see this Spring and Summer? Let me know 😊
4. May be too niche, but favourite dill pickles?
   I am a pickle fan, so I extra appreciate this question. We used to take more frequent day trips over the US border and I would always grab Grillo’s Pickles at Wegmans or the Whole Foods in Buffalo. They really are the best pickles I’ve ever had! Here in Canada, I usually buy Strub’s refrigerated pickles or Bubbies.
5. Most underrated and overrated kitchen tools?
   Underrated is the Microplane. I love to use it for citrus zest, mincing ginger and garlic, grating large whole spices, toasted nut “sprinkles” etc. It helps add so much flavour to my cooking. Overrated is probably the air fryer but I also really love mine, so it’s a bit complicated haha. It’s just not an absolute need if you have a working oven/toaster oven. Also, the results of air fryer-cooked food are not really on par with deep fried food, so the messaging/claims seem a bit off to me.