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| Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 | | 1:51 pm |
Kitchen and bathroom work
SJ helped me rip out the extra cabinet in the downstairs kitchen last week, where we found this delightful green linoleum tile on the wall. We also discovered the kitchen was wallpapered under the pink paint. Who knew? I've scheduled one contractor to come over and talk to us about the work on the kitchen and bath next week. We want to have the kitchen floor redone (finally, getting rid of the white and pink linoleum) and something close but not quite a complete remodel of the bath. I don't think the downstairs bath will ever be great because there just isn't enough space, but we can do better than the current shower and sink. There's going to be a lot of running around looking at tiles, sinks and such in our future though. | | Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | | 6:18 pm |
It is a very strange fall. On wed, I had raspberries straight from the bush. They were good too. The blue bearded iris is trying to bloom again. SJ and I cut all the other irises back for iris borer control, but let this one keep its leaves so that it doesn't use all its energy on the flower. I felt strange cutting so many strong leaves but, it's Thanksgiving, and we've already had at least one hard frost. Today, the wind actually ripped my butterfly bush out of the ground. It's lying in the driveway. This is a 7-8 ft tall bush which has been in that spot a few years. If the wind is down tomorrow, I'll try to put it back in the ground, stake it down, and cut it back a lot. I didn't want to try today, as it seemed the wind would just tear it out again. No idea if it will handle this okay, or if it's pretty much dead now. Luckily, these bushes grow fast and are easy to find, so it's not a huge loss if it doesn't make it. | | Saturday, October 17th, 2009 | | 7:23 pm |
Off to Maine to be not-in-Boston for a few days. Hopefully this will be nice. | | Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | | 2:44 pm |
Things I did not want, but got anyway (a partial list): Iris borers. I feel like the yard is a losing battle this week, with the squirrels (I don't know what it is, but I'm blaming squirrels) digging up both established plants and vegetable seedlings, the return of fungus infections, everything stressed from the heat and dry, and now nasty insects. And I get to deal with it all in hot, sweaty weather with plenty of mosquitoes. | | Saturday, August 8th, 2009 | | 2:42 pm |
Zoe caught a bird yesterday. I was working on the big veggie bed (which is sadly pathetic this year, the last of the zucchinis just died, and I'm trying to figure out what to plant in its large, empty place) when I heard her walk by behind me, peeping. I thought that was a rather odd sound for her to make, and looked over to see that she had a large, reddish bird in her mouth. Looked pretty satisfied too, and had no intention of giving it to me. She took it over to the pear tree, and set it down, at which point I picked her up, and dumped her in the house. She was pretty annoyed and spent the next while staring at me through the door, meowing constantly. The bird was gone by the time I got back a few minutes later. While I didn't get a great look at it, since it was upside down and in Zoe's mouth most of the time, I think it was the female from the local cardinal pair, so I'm not particularly pleased that Zoe beat it up. Why couldn't she beat up a pigeon or a starling or something else nasty? I am curious to see if this was one-time luck, or if she's learned a new trick and there will be more birds. Ivy followed this up with a good impression of freaking out at seeing my shovel lying on the lawn, which I later figured out was freaking out at seeing the skunk hiding under the hosta. For once, freaking out over something reasonable. | | Saturday, July 25th, 2009 | | 8:53 am |
I found something in my yard that seems to like the current weather: the bamboo. It's finally hit its growth stage. (It does all its growth for the year as one spurt over a few days.) The new canes are at least a foot taller than the old ones on most of the plants. Yay for it finally settling in, I'd been worried that it wasn't doing well, and this is better. It makes sense that it would like this weather too, as it's supposed to like a lot of watering. | | Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 | | 9:32 am |
Yesterday was the deadline to nominate gardens for the 2010 Somerville Garden Club garden tour. I went on the 2008 tour, and had been interested in being part of a future tour, but was being somewhat angsty about it, and only found out about the 2010 tour yesterday. Yes, on the due date. I was convinced to sent in a nomination last night anyway (you can nominate yourself) despite feeling kind of weird about the self-promotion, and kind of weird that they will definitely get it after the deadline. I don't know how strict they're likely to be about the due date, and it'll only be a day or so late. The worst that can happen is they'll ignore it, right? Which is no worse than not having sent one in. | | Friday, July 10th, 2009 | | 9:59 am |
Zoe-cat is doing better, yay. She's been eating food for almost a week now, and we've been letting her outside again. She lost about a pound, which, when you're a 9lb cat, is quite a bit. I don't know if/when she'll get the weight back. She looks kind of sadly skinny right before her back legs now. We don't really know what was wrong, some people have been guessing food poisoning from something she ate outside. | | Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 6:35 pm |
Zoe-cat hasn't been eating. She threw up in several places Monday? (not certain due to the out of town) night, and no one is sure they've seen her eat since. She definitely has not eaten in a day, as we put the food dish away so we'd know who was eating. We tried giving her wet food last night, which she happily licked up the juice from, then threw up an hour later. So, off to the vet she went today. Vet can't find anything wrong with her, other than being dehydrated (not an unlikely consequence of not eating for a few days.) Hopefully she will just be fine in a few days. | | Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 11:12 am |
Gears
All the rain has kept me inside, and made me finally get back around to the gear mural project. Here are the first ones I put on the wall. I'm not entirely happy with the reverse one. The spray paint is nice and bright, but the positive image jumps out at me and it's in the dull background color of the wall. I think I'll take a hand brush and some bright paint of some kind and try to make the positive image more interesting. I'm also being amused by realizing how ridiculous it is for a control-freak perfectionist like me to be doing an art project with spray paint. | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 8:12 am |
Just got back from my first Baitcon last night. I loved the feel of the forest it was in, and liked the chance to relax and hang out with people, though it took me a day to figure stuff out and start doing so. Lots of little wildlife in the forest: tiny bright lizards, snakes, huge moths, birds, little brown toads. The birds were so loud the first morning I had trouble sleeping. I didn't manage to explore the whole area, and would like to at some point. Also drums, silks, ice cream, hammocks, and a neat swing. Going to work this morning after three plus days of not really being inside is going to be a shock. | | Saturday, June 13th, 2009 | | 11:04 am |
Latest yard project, building a step-stone path around the pear tree. I like the effect from a distance, but the hard work of leveling out the rocks so they don't tip when you step on them is still to come. ( Pictures behind the cut ) We've started letting Ivy out as well, because she whined so much, (I know, giving in to the whiny cat sets a great precedent doesn't it?) and I saw her climbing the elm tree for the first time today. She's catching up with Zoe in crazy level! | | Saturday, May 30th, 2009 | | 5:49 pm |
Tried Zing Pizza today (in Porter, near the Dunkin Donuts) I was quite impressed. We tried 'fiddlehead on the roof' and 'blue october', both were tasty, neither had a tomato sauce. A little spendy for pizza slices, but large ones. They had compost, recycle and dishes but no trash, and the mantle over their fireplace was covered in hotsauces. The fireplace itself contained what looked like a hubbard squash. | | Friday, May 29th, 2009 | | 2:31 pm |
Kendall-ish people: I want to try out this friendly toast place and see if it is any good. Would other people be interested in getting lunch there sometime next week? Probably wed. | | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 9:55 am |
Pictures from my garden over the past month, including the bench we assembled a month or two ago. I'm hoping it will weather to match the beds it's next to. It's an excellent place to sit in the morning and drink tea or read, but gets too hot and sunny later on. I'm trying to pick another spot for a chair which will be cool all day long, in the last weedy corner of the yard. We got 353lbs of rock this weekend to complete the stepping stone path through that corner, but I'm still not sure what the rest of the design will look like. I got this laurel on saturday and am still very happy about it. I've been looking for a small evergreen to fill that spot for months, and this should do well there. I've been spending lots of time outside, many weekend days doing a mix of garden work and just reading when I'm tired out. I don't get as sick outside, so it's a nice place to be. | | Sunday, May 24th, 2009 | | 7:27 pm |
My dad's prizewinning chicken, for those who were interested. The forehead is part of the chicken, not the costume. | | Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | | 9:24 pm |
My dad dressed up one of his chickens and entered him in a pet costume contest as a Klingon. And won third place. I ... don't have any words for this. The article in the local paper mentions him in passing. | | Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | | 7:10 pm |
Random thing that amused me...we got work done on the downstairs kitchen. Specifically, we got the countertops and kitchen faucet replaced, a cabinet with a light under it added over the sink, the large cabinet that was four inches higher on the left rehung, and a dishwasher added. The unexpected side-effect of the new dishwasher is that we stopped having enough dishes to fill the upstairs dishwasher before we ran out of some random thing we need (most often bowls.) We wound up going to Ikea and getting a new, larger set of dishes for upstairs. I wonder what we'll discover we need for the new dishes. We're also getting the basement stairs replaced, both the bulkhead and the interior stairs. There was more rot and damage than expected and things are taking longer, so getting to the basement right now is a choice between walking outside and going back in again through the bulkhead and jumping down about 4-5 missing steps. | | Friday, May 8th, 2009 | | 10:09 pm |
| | Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | | 10:27 pm |
Back from the west coast. A bit tired, and will probably be jetlagged for a few days. We had a good trip though, went lots of places, did lots of new things, saw people, and got sunburnt in Canada in April. I might put up some pictures in a few days. |
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