Home mini improvements

Besides clearing the front of the barn to expose the nice stone wall (still don't have pictures), we've only done a bit of painting really...and when I say 'we' I mean Jesse. He just knows the right colors and every time I try to pick one on my own it ends up being painted over immediately. So I leave it up to him, and as a result we have pretty blue chairs (no picture yet) and a nice dark teal door to the pantry:

The new additions to our kitchen floor:

The sun/dining room has a bench and our table, but we haven't really eaten here more than once or twice this summer... I'm trying to decide what to do with the benches and our new chairs, since the window seat is a little low for the table. We'll see. In the meantime, we continue to enjoy eating our food outside or at our chest/coffee table : ) old habits die hard!

Jesse found a nice gray for the closet doors near the front door...

... and here are some pretty flowers that bloomed the last couple weeks on our back porch steps:


Those, the sunflowers that I planted earlier this summer and pretty wild black-eyed susans all over are nice pops of color, and keep it looking like sunny summer -- especially since the roses and pansies are gone :(

Aaand a picture of Pippa, because she is just so precious...

Our new addition!

A few weeks ago, this happened:

We had talked about maybe getting a dog, and summer is the best time since I'm home more often, but I wasn't completely sold on the idea of having a helpless animal/baby/commitment/responsibility/I could go on... However, when Jesse's friend told him that he had four puppies to give away, and I found out that there was a yellow girl, and saw that face...

 I couldn't resist. And Jesse was already completely sold and had been for awhile, but now we are so in love and feel even more like a little family than we already had (which was a lot!) 

Pippa is a shedding sweet quiet love and being responsible for her is actually a responsibility I feel ok about: I don't even mind vacuuming up her fur (yes it is fur; if it was 'hair' then it would not fall out) because her face alone makes it all worth it (and the fact that she follows us around all day and is calm are just bonuses!)

Jesse and I have done a few house things, but Pippa has obviously become the priority. The summer is quickly finishing up, but the pretty skies will hopefully continue through fall. 

On our way home from Boston last weekend:

The back-to-school stresses have started, as they have for 4 years now (have I really been teaching for 4 years??) but I know that by early September they'll be gone and it will be like riding a bike...a giant tandem bike with 18 fifth graders pedaling along behind me :)

I continue to be in love with summer, and fall too-- once school actually starts. I'm excited to see the trees around the house change, and get rid of some of the greenery in front of the house this fall so that we can start fresh in spring. First to go; the tall ferns in front of the windows. Then the weeds under the apple tree, so our front yard will (hopefully) be just grassy next summer!

Sitting on the back porch, using our woodstove (with the 4 cords of wood we ordered) and taking long walks without mosquitoes will be nice too! 

lately

Summer has been rolling along and I'm afraid it will be August (otherwise known as the end) too soon. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying occasional furniture shopping...

....having time to make iced lattes for Jesse every morning...

 and trying out new recipes. I made honey cloud pancakes (recipe here) and used nectaries and blueberries since that's all we had, and it was a hit.

We also have been exploring places to swim and paddleboard, since last week it was too hot and hazy to do anything else. Now it is rainy every afternoon, but I try not to complain about anything summer-related!

(note: Jesse's wanted a small couch in this room since we first started the woodstove this spring. I was against it at first, but the first night the stove was on I immediately wished we have a comfy couch right in front of it. I wasn't sure I'd love having our table in the sunroom, but it fits perfectly and turned out to be fine...it's nice looking out the bay window while doing work!)

more peonies, because I love them so.

They come out right when summer starts, they smell so sweet and they are so fully and classically pretty! I remember getting off the bus at school and smelling the fuschia pink blooms every June, and it still is one of my favorite smells.  

new plantings&more weeds.

As my annoyance and frustration with our weed problem has increased, the new plants we seem to be given every week or so has counteracted the negative feelings. It's been so great! I figured it wasn't a good use of time or finances to invest in lots of plants and flowers to plant this summer, since we have plenty of areas that need to be demolished spruced up. I didn't want to let myself buy a whole bunch of pretty things, and just ignore the stuff that needed to be removed. So, I work away (slowly) on weeding and bagging the awful bishop's root (the name of the weed that shall not be named) and then every so often we're given a great new thing to plant. This week was Thai basil and an artichoke plant from Ronnie, which we added to Jesse's beginning stages of an herb garden. Next to that was where we decided to put the tomato plants. They're still in pots in case we want to move them. My dad brought them over and helped me set them up.

He also brought more lilacs! He'd planted some for us behind our mailbox, so it will make a little hedge around it. These we decided to put near the road, to block off one of the yards from the driveway and road. When our new leachfield was put in, they cleared a bit of greenery so it looks sort of....sparse.  At least they planted new grass.

My dad also brought a little birdhouse he made, so we hung it in the tree that is right near the kitchen window and our sunroom bay window. He said only wrens could fit in it, and sure enough we now have a wren neighbor craming nest materials into the house every morning!

Bishop's root behind the stone wall, which I may not get to this year...At least it's out of sight most of the time.

On the side of the stone wall, I've cleared some of this.

The beginning stages of weeding the front of the stone wall. Seeing it come BACK after a good rain shower (which have been daily) is just like a little stab in my not-green-thumb.

I've been working away at this little slope, and have almost gotten to the bottom. It's been about 6 big trash bags worth of weed, and lots of snails and slugs.

We also want to dig up these ferns that have taken over the front of our house...I regretfully urged Jesse to keep them when we saw the bulbs starting in April ("We don't know what they'll be! It might be pretty flowers!) and now we know they are huge jungle fern. It almost seems silly to dig each of them out this summer, so we'll make sure to tackle them early next spring when they're just little bulbs poking out of the ground. I thought this was too much, but they are now taller than me:

Father's Day with new blooms!

This weekend, the house finally started looking floral. Our peonies took their sweet time to come out, but when they did, it was worth the wait! They are a beautiful light blush color, which I hadn't expected (my parents have bright pink ones that I've always loved) but these blush are so pretty. And, since it had been so rainy and miserable the last couple weeks, other peonies had turned brown and ruined. So ours turned out to be at a great time.



It was weirdly great being able to bike over a Father's Day treat to my father in-law:

It's also just great having this hog...

Ronnie came over with young sunflowers, and I was in the process of weeding the front garden so we thought they'd be a nice replacement in the previously weed-infested space:

I can't wait to see how they do--hopefully they'll all be fine and we'll have bright yellow sunflowers to distract from the awful ferns we have yet to dig up.

Jesse has been gone to Costa Rica since the beginning of June, and has missed lots of great flowers blooming. I sent him a picture of these irises (he loves them too) and am so happy we have these pretty flowers all over that we happen to love! It makes me feel less guilty about the lack of gardening we've done. There's always next summer...?

June! Almost summer! &weeding.

It is June at last, and with that comes weird weather and heat and report cards and end-of-school-year craziness. It also means I am so close to a few weeks of working on my house during WEEKDAYS! I can't wait for this, the weekends seem to just fly by during spring and summer and coming home after long school days makes it hard to get much done at the house during the week. I have lots of tutoring starting in july and a couple courses too, but having a few days every few weeks to be home will be so wonderful. 

 

I need to make a to-do list of the things that can realistically get done this summer. A couple of things NEED to get done and others would just be nice. Ill make my list for another post to help me keep track.

One item on the list I've already semi-started: occasional weeding. In some ways the least fun way to spend 'free time' but really so satisfying when you can see your flowers/stone wall again. There is also something  strangely therapeutic about tearing up invasive tall weeds from soil (that you own, still so crazy to me) and having the whole root come up with it.

 Apparently the weed we have all over is a really bad kind (forget the name; is it worth finding out?) and the only way to truly get rid of it forever is to tear it up and then cover the ground where it grew with black garbage bags. For TWO YEARS. We have it all along our stone wall near the picnic table, and all along the other side of the wall down near the stone stairs. We also have it it under the apple tree in this large circular space. The ones near the evergreens near the road don't bother me and its not as bad there, but the other two places are definitely a few days worth of work. That is a lot of black garbage bags on our pretty green lawn. I'm still debating whether to do that this summer once we've torn them all up. It'd be hideous and sad but also maybe worth it if they're gone...(if we do it and they come back? I can see my future self having a bit of a fit) Either way, it's not like I'm going to be planting and gardening  like crazy in those spots in the next two years; there is plenty of other places to garden and other things to do so maybe we'll do it. In the meantime, I have a cartfull of the weed I tore up yesterday morning that I need to put in the trash.  You have to dispose of them all like trash (vs dumping them somewhere) so they won't spread. I tackled some in the front of our house a couple weeks ago when I saw they were crowding our precious irises and day lilies. The rest will have to wait.

Pretty flowers left for me, Jesse is gone for a couple weeks so the house feels large... at least it smells good :)

Started the hallway! The wallpaper didn't want to come off easily so the impatience in us won over and we just painted over it; the OCD in Jesse won over and after 3ish shades of blue he found one he likes! Before he could change his mind again the pictures were moved to the hallway for him to 'place' and yay! It'll be a work in progress all the time and I can't wait to keep adding things.

Our peonies are not blooming yet ( I'm hoping this week! Or at least sometime! Anytime, just bloom) but my parents have beautiful ones so I took a couple to hold me over while I wait. They smell so amazing and brighten up our bathroom :)

I am loving the drive into town, the warm weather makes everything brighter and more alive--case in point my first stop-for-cows crossing.