Finally, John is here to stay for the week! He has traveled three weeks in a row and it got a little tiresome for us both. The house seems much less "full" when he's not in it.
The shed is almost complete. All that remains is to shingle the roof and install the skylight. John will add some gutters for the rain barrels and inside he will make some kind of loft for (yet more) storage. The skylight and the two windows will allow us to winter some plants or plant some seedlings in there as well. We still have to figure out what to do with the (really) large mound of dirt left from digging out the area. A small tractor and front loader would be nice about now. Next up, we call the driveway guy and get that done before the really big rains (and snow) arrive.
The kitchen cabinets got their knobs and handles installed. Lesson learned: handles are a lot more tricky than single-hole knobs. It took most of the day to get it all done; 32 knobs and 14 handles. Today I'll stick with sewing chickens, getting a massage, and watching some football. Less is definitely more on the weekend. We attended the annual fundraiser event last night for the Humane Society. Incredibly, we came away without buying anything. But we have a soft spot for this organization and were happy to see them raise over $44,000 for their medical fund. They do good work there.
Our own resident animals are well. John took Zoe to the vet Friday to see why she is shedding three times more fur than ever before (and to discuss her anorexic state). She has lost 4 pounds so a new food was prescribed and she gave it a hearty thumbs up for the first two days. This morning she is holding back, waiting to see what else might be on the menu. The vet also thought her thyroid might be at the root of the shedding problem so a small dose of medication was prescribed to boost her level. We'll see what this month brings. Meanwhile, Roosevelt continues his strict surveillance of the garage for errant mice. So far, with the new audio disruptive devices in place, his security rounds have not turned up any of the small terrorists.
Our weather gave one last shout-out to summer last week with temperatures in the high 70s. That all came crashing down about 3am this morning when, as predicted, the wind came up and a new front came in bringing rain and cooler weather for the week. John rose to the pressure yesterday and mowed all the lawn/meadow/jungle clearing. There can't be many more of those mowing days left in the year. Next weekend we look forward to a visit from both Gareth and Karen and hopefully the weather will behave. Until then, it's business as usual....
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
and "Just Like That"...
Summer has given way to Autumn it seems. We are promised a few more days next week of temperatures in the 70s, but our 80s are gone and abruptly so. It will be in the low 60s again today and the rain has begun. For good measure, we had a power outage in the night just to get us in the proper Autumnal mood. Last weekend I canned more jam as John continues his mission to denude all the blackberry bushes. It's unlikely he will succeed, but a man has his dreams, right? Meanwhile, the blackberries continue to show up in the kitchen and so far the freezer is managing the overflow. I also tried my hand at making dill pickles from the hearty supply of cucumbers that we have received from our Farm Share. If they turn out well, I will distribute them to pickle-loving friends and family as we won't be able to consume them all. By "we" I mean "me" as John won't touch the things. Our own garden is yielding a few beets, some carrots, and loads of John's beloved runner beans. Whether we manage to get any winter squash is still up in the air. There are two wee squashlings on the vine, but they have a long way to go and will have to do it during the Fall with much less sun and cooler temps. We have a fair amount of shallots and will enjoy those if Zoe doesn't eat all the tops. In spite of a reluctance to eat her expensive prescription food, she enjoys hopping into the garden bed and munching on shallot greenery. Go figure!
The hard-headed brown dog has been, well,,,hard-headed, of late. She obviously feels much improved but has become picky about eating. Not wanting her to decline, the humans in the house are trying all kinds of things to entice her to her food bowl. Whether it's old age and loss of appetite or part and parcel of her chronic kidney state we don't know. But she is confounding us with her stubborn stance. And I thought cats were finicky!
Our shed started going up last week.On Monday, I arrived home to a large hole dug in the lawn/meadow/jungle clearing. Since there's no level ground on the property, and since we didn't want the front of the thing to rise 6 feet above ground (that's a bit tricky for getting the shiny red tractor inside), a backhoe was called in. There are pictures at the end of this post. It has steadily progressed through the week and will be finished by the end of this one, we are told.Then we'll have to figure out some landscaping. Amazingly, the backhoe missed cutting through the invisible fence wire in that corner! Literally a quarter of an inch more and it would have been severed. John tried to map its location out before the digging began, but carrying Zoe's collar while touching the sensing posts turned out to be a bit of a "shock" (or in the invisible fence lingo, a "correction"). We decided to just go with the flow and if it was severed to deal with it. Fortunately it survived.
Knobs and handles for the kitchen cabinetry have arrived! They are a lovely brushed nickel finish. Two years into the house, they will make a nice "improvement". I will work on installing them over the next week in the evenings while John is (yet again) in California. For the third straight week, he is traveling south. Less than ideal, but necessary. It's always nice to have him home and out of that rat race they call the Bay Area.
It was the year of the 40th reunion for my high school graduating class. We had planned to go but weren't able to swing it after all. Still, a classmate wrote and presented a nice tribute to the times we all grew up in and I have included the link to his blog where it is posted. Enjoy: 40 Years High School Reunion. Thanks Dave.
Today it is cloudy and has been raining in the night. It looks like a good day to be inside. Maybe we'll watch a little football later. The football that is soccer to us Americans is already on and being absorbed by the resident soccer veteran. I have a sewing project to begin and later I will start some lamb shanks for dinner.And then it will be another week. Just like that...
Photos of the Shed this week:
The hard-headed brown dog has been, well,,,hard-headed, of late. She obviously feels much improved but has become picky about eating. Not wanting her to decline, the humans in the house are trying all kinds of things to entice her to her food bowl. Whether it's old age and loss of appetite or part and parcel of her chronic kidney state we don't know. But she is confounding us with her stubborn stance. And I thought cats were finicky!
Our shed started going up last week.On Monday, I arrived home to a large hole dug in the lawn/meadow/jungle clearing. Since there's no level ground on the property, and since we didn't want the front of the thing to rise 6 feet above ground (that's a bit tricky for getting the shiny red tractor inside), a backhoe was called in. There are pictures at the end of this post. It has steadily progressed through the week and will be finished by the end of this one, we are told.Then we'll have to figure out some landscaping. Amazingly, the backhoe missed cutting through the invisible fence wire in that corner! Literally a quarter of an inch more and it would have been severed. John tried to map its location out before the digging began, but carrying Zoe's collar while touching the sensing posts turned out to be a bit of a "shock" (or in the invisible fence lingo, a "correction"). We decided to just go with the flow and if it was severed to deal with it. Fortunately it survived.
Knobs and handles for the kitchen cabinetry have arrived! They are a lovely brushed nickel finish. Two years into the house, they will make a nice "improvement". I will work on installing them over the next week in the evenings while John is (yet again) in California. For the third straight week, he is traveling south. Less than ideal, but necessary. It's always nice to have him home and out of that rat race they call the Bay Area.
It was the year of the 40th reunion for my high school graduating class. We had planned to go but weren't able to swing it after all. Still, a classmate wrote and presented a nice tribute to the times we all grew up in and I have included the link to his blog where it is posted. Enjoy: 40 Years High School Reunion. Thanks Dave.
Today it is cloudy and has been raining in the night. It looks like a good day to be inside. Maybe we'll watch a little football later. The football that is soccer to us Americans is already on and being absorbed by the resident soccer veteran. I have a sewing project to begin and later I will start some lamb shanks for dinner.And then it will be another week. Just like that...
Photos of the Shed this week:
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Indian Summer???
A quiet week while John was down south. The weather has been stunning; clear days and nights, warm temperatures, and brilliant colors. The leaves have not begun to change color yet, but the sun is lower in the sky and casts intense shadows through the trees. Soon enough we'll move to proper Autumn with that certain chill in the air.
We're still harvesting blackberries. It looks like more jam is on deck. And I will take a stab at making pickles from all the cucumbers that we have received from our farm cooperative share. We had dinner with friends last evening and contributed some blackberry ice cream for the dessert. Very yummy.
This weekend seems quite short. I guess I like the three-day variety. Yesterday, the morning was taken up with a service on the car just in time for winter, followed by a quick drop off at the Goodwill store and a stroll through the Farmers Market to grab some more tomatoes. We had a few hours for some of the usual weekend duties before cleaning up to join our friends for dinner. They have a lovely view of the Olympics and we were treated to a beautiful sunset. The Olympics are looking a bit like the Blue Ridge Mountains at the moment. There's a fire burning that will continue until the rains put it out and it has resulted in a perpetual blue haze over the mountains. It's in a remote area, difficult for fire-fighting crews to get to and they have chosen to let it burn. A natural solution to a man-made problem. Despite all the rain that falls out here, the conditions get quite dry quite quickly.
The month is well under way now. We have a few "occasions" on the social horizon. Later this month we'll go to the annual fundraising event for the local Humane Society and then we look forward to the weekend of John's birthday when Gareth and Karen will both travel up here for a visit. In the meantime, it's business as usual and there's nothing wrong with that....
This weekend seems quite short. I guess I like the three-day variety. Yesterday, the morning was taken up with a service on the car just in time for winter, followed by a quick drop off at the Goodwill store and a stroll through the Farmers Market to grab some more tomatoes. We had a few hours for some of the usual weekend duties before cleaning up to join our friends for dinner. They have a lovely view of the Olympics and we were treated to a beautiful sunset. The Olympics are looking a bit like the Blue Ridge Mountains at the moment. There's a fire burning that will continue until the rains put it out and it has resulted in a perpetual blue haze over the mountains. It's in a remote area, difficult for fire-fighting crews to get to and they have chosen to let it burn. A natural solution to a man-made problem. Despite all the rain that falls out here, the conditions get quite dry quite quickly.
The month is well under way now. We have a few "occasions" on the social horizon. Later this month we'll go to the annual fundraising event for the local Humane Society and then we look forward to the weekend of John's birthday when Gareth and Karen will both travel up here for a visit. In the meantime, it's business as usual and there's nothing wrong with that....
Monday, September 5, 2011
Bonus Days...
It's Monday in a three-day weekend. Labor Day usually signals the end of the "summer season", but it looks like summer is here for a couple more weeks at least. Still, the sun is much lower and the nights are quite cool even with the warm days. It's the best of both worlds; autumn nights and summer days. No rain is in sight. It's really pretty perfect.
We've taken advantage of the weather to eat outside (al fresco) each evening. Soon enough we'll be putting away the summer toys and hunkering down for winter. For now, evenings are pleasant as we while away an hour or two with a glass of wine and plain ole conversation.
We've accomplished quite a lot this weekend. It was the monthly Farm Breakfast on Saturday and we enjoyed chatting with our regular breakfast partners. We like the breakfast experience but it's lots more fun with friends. We admired their beautiful gardens at the Farmhouse and aspire to one day have a fraction of that at the house. Of course, they have "peeps" who work on it daily and we have no "peeps" save ourselves who are working elsewhere most days. But John has been clearing and reclaiming some of the lawn/meadow/jungle clearing since getting his handy strimmer-on-steroids tool. It's an attachment with three blades that replaces the string cutter head and it takes no prisoners. It makes short work of the brambles which have taken over about two feet around the edges of the property. I guess that counts as some kind of landscaping. And we visited the Farmers Market on Saturday and scored some real honest-to-goodness homegrown tomatoes. Heaven in my mouth. Next year, no matter what else we grow, we have to create a "hot house" so we can achieve tomatoes.
Yesterday, we Skyped with our friends in England in the morning. It's fun to catch up and see them while we do it. Closes the distance a little. Then we were off to do our respective "stuff". John had more gardening to do and he got some rhododendrons placed. He has been picking the ripened blackberries throughout the week and I canned some jam from them. We'll freeze some of them for use later and use another bit to make ice cream. We discovered that blackberry ice cream is a truly divine experience. How can we not have thought of it sooner? We also teamed up and replaced the whole-house water filter that lives in the pump house. That may not sound like much, but this contraption is placed in a wholly inconvenient space and is not the easiest thing to remove. But, we did it and we're set for another 6 months or so. A trip to the hardware yielded us some obscure batteries I wanted if not the filter wrench we were looking for. As an aside - I love a hardware where you can see a man working in a kilt. Finally, we managed to give the dog a bath. Since she injured her leg, we have been reluctant to bathe her because she usually runs around like a nut afterwards and we didn't want her to stress that leg. She had reached critical dirty-dog stage though and so we managed to get her into the bathtub and contain her long enough to get a good layer of muck off. There's a do-it-yourself dog wash in Kingston that we want to try, so as she gets back on her feet more and more, we'll take her up for a more thorough cleaning (those sprayers really help do the job).
Last night the coyotes were out in full chorus. I woke a couple times to their eery howls and replies. And early this morning the owl that lives in the woods gave a few hoots as he finished his shift. Today is rightfully a holiday. The "work" of the weekend has been completed and so we can enjoy some down time. Maybe I'll pull out a quilt project that's calling me. John will likely putter about in the garden. And this evening, we'll sort it all out when we meet on the deck for dinner. As I said, really pretty perfect...
We've taken advantage of the weather to eat outside (al fresco) each evening. Soon enough we'll be putting away the summer toys and hunkering down for winter. For now, evenings are pleasant as we while away an hour or two with a glass of wine and plain ole conversation.
We've accomplished quite a lot this weekend. It was the monthly Farm Breakfast on Saturday and we enjoyed chatting with our regular breakfast partners. We like the breakfast experience but it's lots more fun with friends. We admired their beautiful gardens at the Farmhouse and aspire to one day have a fraction of that at the house. Of course, they have "peeps" who work on it daily and we have no "peeps" save ourselves who are working elsewhere most days. But John has been clearing and reclaiming some of the lawn/meadow/jungle clearing since getting his handy strimmer-on-steroids tool. It's an attachment with three blades that replaces the string cutter head and it takes no prisoners. It makes short work of the brambles which have taken over about two feet around the edges of the property. I guess that counts as some kind of landscaping. And we visited the Farmers Market on Saturday and scored some real honest-to-goodness homegrown tomatoes. Heaven in my mouth. Next year, no matter what else we grow, we have to create a "hot house" so we can achieve tomatoes.
Yesterday, we Skyped with our friends in England in the morning. It's fun to catch up and see them while we do it. Closes the distance a little. Then we were off to do our respective "stuff". John had more gardening to do and he got some rhododendrons placed. He has been picking the ripened blackberries throughout the week and I canned some jam from them. We'll freeze some of them for use later and use another bit to make ice cream. We discovered that blackberry ice cream is a truly divine experience. How can we not have thought of it sooner? We also teamed up and replaced the whole-house water filter that lives in the pump house. That may not sound like much, but this contraption is placed in a wholly inconvenient space and is not the easiest thing to remove. But, we did it and we're set for another 6 months or so. A trip to the hardware yielded us some obscure batteries I wanted if not the filter wrench we were looking for. As an aside - I love a hardware where you can see a man working in a kilt. Finally, we managed to give the dog a bath. Since she injured her leg, we have been reluctant to bathe her because she usually runs around like a nut afterwards and we didn't want her to stress that leg. She had reached critical dirty-dog stage though and so we managed to get her into the bathtub and contain her long enough to get a good layer of muck off. There's a do-it-yourself dog wash in Kingston that we want to try, so as she gets back on her feet more and more, we'll take her up for a more thorough cleaning (those sprayers really help do the job).
Last night the coyotes were out in full chorus. I woke a couple times to their eery howls and replies. And early this morning the owl that lives in the woods gave a few hoots as he finished his shift. Today is rightfully a holiday. The "work" of the weekend has been completed and so we can enjoy some down time. Maybe I'll pull out a quilt project that's calling me. John will likely putter about in the garden. And this evening, we'll sort it all out when we meet on the deck for dinner. As I said, really pretty perfect...
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