renovation blogs

I've had a weird year of semi-failures, outright failures, and mysterious successes in the garden. For example, I give you this liatris. I started this from seed in the winter, and planted it here, and it died. Or, well, it...

It is no secret that I have problems keeping plants alive. Unless they are able to grab my ankles as I wander past and scream, "WATER MEEEE!", I often forget that they are there.

To survive in my house, you have to speak up. Grace has developed a 60 decibel screech and I think that demonstrates the theory of acclimatization pretty well. Smart kid.

But I have REALLY been making an effort with the garden this year. I've kept it weeded (more or less) and have been clearing out the dead things. Aaron has helped me keep what is left of the grass under control. At least, we are no longer the neighborhood lawn losers.

I still get confused, though, because I don't know which plants are desirable and which plants should be banished.

So I'm turning to those of you in blogland who know more about green and growing things than I do...keep or throw on the heap?

We've had a non-house weekend, but Noel got a couple of things done today that are very nice. First, he finished the multi-chambered bin for grit and shell (on the left in this photo) and also installed a little "roof"...

I've been doing a lot of weeding lately, and it's been taking up most of my free time. Just me and my little wagon, making endless trips from the front to the back. So even though I was trying to...

Obligatory photo of the midget.

Most of this month, I have been wandering around and just working on whatever is directly in front of me. At times, this has involved fitting screens into windows, picking up toy trains from the floor or scraping stickers from the plexiglass that we installed over the TV screen with my fingernails. Unless I want to imagine that the anchor on Nightline really DOES have a Winnie-the-Pooh head. Then I just leave it there.

This entry is for my mom, who has promised to disown me if I do not post something about the house and/or her granddaughter. These are not idle threats as she has been obsessed with her own demise since I was about nineteen or so. How did I know this? There were clues. Like that fact that she has been putting Post-It notes onto various items in her house with the names of her daughters or grandchildren since, um, forever. These Post-Its get rearranged depending upon whether we are being sufficiently dutiful or not. We also get emails like this one:

"Who wants the Captain's decanter that Dad gave me for our second anniversary after we're gone? Because we're not going to live forever, you know. By the way, when are you coming to visit?"

So you see, if I ever want that Hummel figurine of a little boy fishing or the macrame owl from the foyer of my childhood home, I have to pony up some photos. Hope you understand. Anyway, here are photos of the benches while being built...

Benches in Progress

Since we now have a chicken laying eggs regularly, we decided that the back of the nest box ought to be, you know, attached somehow (Liza has knocked it off and ended up in the shed already, which is just...

It's a little hard to believe it's August already. It's time to do some hard pruning on the nectarine trees to help dwarf them, and at the same time I'm reconsidering the peach trees. We have two, as well as...

When last we left the pantry, we had just bought more drywall to finish the walls. But we had not installed it because we had some chicken house stuff to do (this working on two projects at the same time...

"It just occurs to me that there's a signature on that piece of wood," said Noel. And we both went back into the pantry to take a look. And there it is. Rob't Holt. The architect who designed and built...

The kitchen light has had some serious problems. It had eaten light bulbs like they were potato chips, both incandescent and compact fluorescent, and frankly not so many compact fluorescent because we're not made of money, you stupid light. At...

Old house owners don't often have much to feel smug about as we spend our weekends hanging from ladders and scraping trim.

So, this was nice.

Heavy? It Might Be Your Neighborhood's Fault.

Not much to report, as the watering has slowed to a minimum (just tonight we added a hundred or so gallons of municipal water to the tank, because we're getting only about 35 gallons per day from the sump --...

I spent most of the day today making a nest box. I made it three times: first I screwed everything together the wrong way. Then I got it all together properly and realized I'd mis-measured. And the last time, I...

You know those wonderful summer days when you took all your toys outside and played and played and played for hours because there was no school, and at the end of the day the sun was setting and you mother...

I have here, on my dining room table, a lovely underwing moth in a bug cage. The bug cage is sitting next to a copy of "Once Upon a Potty", a piece of sandpaper, a plastic piece of birthday cake, my bike helmet, a roll of painter's tape, and my untouched To Do list.

And that should tell you all you need to know about my summer. It's busy but not about the house busy. And it's lovely. Except for the impending potty training part.

Having caught up with the internet this morning (as much as I can), I have little to write about, but much to link to. Let's get started:

Is that a third arm growing out of your shoulder or does your kitchen have granite countertops?