Memorial Day Update

We have had the 6th rainiest May on record, and most of that came in the last two weeks! So needless to say we haven't been able to spend any time out on our beautiful new porch. I did, however, find some flower baskets that I have been wanting to hang on this porch since before it was even built. I also found a couple of planters in the 'damaged' rack at Lowes, but I thought they still looked pretty good and snatched them up for 1/2 price. We have also been seeing a lot of hummingbirds, so I hung a couple of hummingbird feeders and we instantly started seeing them lapping up the nectar. I am still shopping for just the right glider and also some nice cushions and our lovely new living space will be complete!


Our garden is coming along fine, with some some successes and failures to report. The plants that like cool weather are doing fine...like the peas, potatoes, onions, swiss chard and bok choy. In fact, we will need to eat the last of the bok choy this week as it is beginning to bolt already. The warm weather loving crops are not faring well, especially the ones that needed warm soil to germinate. I need to replant some carrots, corn, beets and basil, plus think of what I want to plant in place of the bok choy. Frank spent several hours out there today in the rain doing some much needed weeding, and since it looked so nice I had to take a picture. The still-weedy patch on the left is where the corn is, and the ones that came up are too fragile to tolerate much weeding nearby until they grow a bit more. I'm hoping for a non-rainy day soon so I can get out there and get my hands dirty again!


We bought our blueberry plants in the spring of 2008. Last year we were happy that they just took the transplanting and winter well, and they produced enough blueberries for about three batches of pancakes. This year I am amazed and so thankful that each of the four plants is just loaded with berries. I picked each plant specifically so that its berries would ripen at different times so hopefully we'll have fresh berries all summer and maybe even some to put in the freezer as well.

School is winding down and I'm heading to my Mom's next week to be with her after a bit of surgery. We've got trips planned in June and July to California and Wisconsin, respectively. Then, in early August I am having foot surgery that will necessitate me being totally off that foot for 4 weeks, so this should be an interesting summer! I'll do my best to keep the blog updated so that my faithful readers can follow our adventures!

First Harvest!

It's not even June yet and there are things to be harvested in our garden! Yeah! You can see in the picture above our bok choy getting ready to bolt already! So two of these plants ended up in a stir-fry tonight with beef, celery, onions, carrots and mushrooms. There is just something so rewarding about eating things you have grown yourself! We might actually have to eat all this bok choy in the next couple of weeks and plant another crop. I do notice that they bolt really quickly, so it kind of forces you to eat them while young. I also notice that this part of the garden still needs to be weeded. Oh well, it's a never ending job!


There are also radishes to be eating now too, as you can see in this picture. I decided to try growing a variety of radishes called 'icicle' that is shaped more like a carrot than the round, red kind. They taste the same though! Frank was kind of bewildered when he found these radishes drying in the dish rack after I washed them. OH well!

Thanks for reading this first of many more reports of things we've harvested and eaten from the garden! It's amazing I still have faithful readers after all these mundane and boring posts. I'm glad you're hanging in there. :)

Finally Done!

Well, a normal spring in the northwest has conspired against us in our efforts to finish painting the deck. We prevailed, however, and the last coat of stain was completed just in time to dry enough that another spring rain didn't do any damage. Here is Frank doing the last steps. Notice the little white fence at the foot of the stairs. Now this certainly couldn't and wouldn't stop any chicken, but it was enough to stop people (namely US) from forgetting that we couldn't step on the deck for a couple of days.


I took these pictures at 6:30 pm, so the light isn't that great, but you get the idea. I'm sure there will be many more pictures to come of us enjoying this lovely addition to our home. We have yet to add a couple of nice hanging flower baskets, as well as cushions for the bench and a glider. Also, we'd like to hang a hummingbird feeder, as they seem to be all around this spring.


We're off tonight to watch the finale of LOST at a friend's house. I made fresh strawberry crepes to bring. YUM. I can hardly wait for the good company and the good food! See you later!

No Chickens in the House!!

A little background information first: We have a sliding glass door/screen that we leave open on nice days so that the cats and dog can go in and out on their own, instead of making us be their personal doormen every 5 minutes. Generally, this works out well. See the elusive Jake above, hunkering on the corner of the little porch out there, surveying his land and ever alert for something he can kill. (Luckily, chickens, even little ones, are not on his menu.)

So last night Frank and I are enjoying our new porch for the first time by sitting at our new table and playing a game of Settlers of Catan. Then came some tapping from inside the house. First tenative, then more insistent. What the heck? Well, we look toward the tapping and see something so incongruous that it took a while for it to even register...it was Sylvia!! She was in our living room, walking back and forth on the sills of the windows to our new porch!


So, with my faithful blog readers ever in mind, I ran in and was able to snap off this one picture before territorial Katie the yellow kitty decided that she didn't think a chicken should be in the house either and thus commenced the cat/chicken rodeo. Too bad I didn't get any pictures of that but I was more concerned about keeping them apart than capturing the moment! Needless to say, Sylvia was happy to go out the front door that Frank so graciously held open for her. And to answer the question that I know all of you are thinking: No, she didn't poop in the house. Whew!

Painting the New Porch - Day 2

Well, today was LONG with painting but the rewards were great. Frank finished the tedious job of painting the inside of the roof while I did the white posts. Once Frank was done with the roof, he moved on to doing all the white on the higher horizontal wood that I couldn't reach. It's 6:10pm now, and he says he's got a half-hour more to go tonight. We started at 8:30 this morning, so that's a full day of painting...WHEW!


We are done with painting for this weekend. We need to put another coat of white stain on the wood that Frank painted today, and we also need to wash all the horizontal surfaces (benches, railing, deck floor and stairs) prior to staining them. We don't have time to wash it tonight, and since it needs at least overnight to dry, it'll just have to be done next weekend (hopefully!). That's OK, we have neglected the lawn so there is mowing to be done! There's always something!

Painting the New Porch - Day 1

Well, we finally got a stretch of weather promising to be nice enough for us to be able to start our porch-painting project! Poor Frank got the hard job of all the high work, which meant standing on the ladder (or the railing) and doing all the brush work above his head! I didn't think to get out the camera until he was hanging like a monkey painting the outside of the rafters, but you surely get the idea. Poor Frank!


After analyzing the things we did right and the things we could do differently from here on, we agreed to try to find a ladder for the outside stuff. Burke, the man who built the porch, lives just three doors down, and when he came by to inspect our work, he offered one of his many ladders and we're surely going to take him up on his offer. We actually made really good progress today. Frank did half of the inside roof, and I did all of the back sides of the benches and railings.


I also did the ballisters and rail on the steps. I included this picture so you could see the stain we're using and how it looks compared to the unstained wood. The unstained part in this picture will be an opaque white stain, which will match our house. Tomorrow, while Frank finishes the inside roof, I'll be doing all the posts in that white. On Sunday we plan to do the inside benches and railings. The floor of the deck and the outside lower trim will have to be the next nice weekend. Whew!


We asked our builder to make a table for us that would match the style of the porch. We had been looking around and couldn't find anything that we thought would work for us, and he agreed. This is the stunningly beautiful pedestal table he built for us. I stained it today too, and it was still fairly wet on top in this picture. Sorry about the drop cloth being all around the foot...I'll take a better picture of it once the deck is done and it's in its rightful place.


Burke's wife knew I wanted to plant hydrangeas (among other things) around the deck, and she had some to spare, so she dug these up for me. They are patiently waiting to get back into the ground, which will be as soon as we're done with the porch, hopefully next weekend. I also want some peonies, but I'm not sure how well they grow here.

Once the deck is done, then I get to decorate it! I'm thinking about some colorful cushions (red and white stripes?), a glider and a small table, and of course a couple of hanging flower baskets. We've also had some hummingbirds flit through the porch, so I think we'll hang a hummingbird feeder as well. Thanks for looking and I hope to have another installment of this saga soon!