Sweetfern Handmade ~ Crafts, Recipes, Creativity

Garden update

2012-05-23T08:47:00.000-04:00

How exactly did it happen that I let nearly two months pass without taking an updated shot of the garden? It would go like this: Stand at window. Frown. See something amiss-- bluejays in the lettuces, sun-scalded seedlings, frost-damaged asparagus-- and run downstairs immediately to do something about it. Now that we're past hard freezes, and many of the seedlings are out of infancy, I can relax a little. Another frost may come, and bugs and weeds surely will too, but for now we have a pretty garden we're eating out of, the raspberries have buds, the asparagus is growing into a forest, and all is well.

I've been filling in the beds around the bricked area with corrugated cardboard, food scraps, and hay, which has had the predictable though undesirable consequence of luring every black feathered being in Otsego county to the neighborhood. Patrick counted five crows the other day, coming home from work. Sigh. Once all the beds are full and covered, of course, the smorgasbord for crows will end, and I'll go back to feeling like Spring Street's golden girl, not Crazy Crow Lady.

The mess in the bottom left corner is a failed attempt at sheet mulching, whereby I attempted to smother a bishop's weed infestation with homasote and corrugated cardboard... and the damn stuff came charging right through. So, now I need to clear off the homasote and cardboard, and dig... a lot... and extirpate the noxious stuff. To the left of that messy area, out of view, is the shed roof. There's a hickory seedling nearby, and two currant bushes, and a highbush cranberry, and to the right of the "pathway", a syringa shrub. All around, once I evict the bishop's weed, I'm going to plant yarrow and mint and oregano and thistle, and everything that loves full sun and attracts beneficial insects. The "insectary."

Things are really coming along out there.

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Shed on the move

2012-05-21T08:52:00.000-04:00

We began at ten o'clock Sunday morning. We had bigger pipes, bigger chain, and an F-150. We were well-prepared, and determined to succeed. Unlike last time. Within fifteen minutes, it budged. Huzzah! We had the curious and helpful assistance of our kind and indecipherable neighbor Dick.

Slowly slowly, it creaked along the rollers. Those new four-inch pipes turned out to be the key. (Side note: anyone want to buy a lot of pock-marked 4" PVC pipe?)

Once we hit the driveway, she was a-cruisin'.

The tow chain pulled off some rotted wood trim and siding-- oops-- so she's looking a little banged up in this picture. A trip to the lumber yard is planned this week.

As we neared the final resting place, I summoned Jody from across the street, not wanting him to feel left out on all the fun. As we swung the shed around there were a few instances where the two old guys pushed on one corner while Patrick and I pushed on the other, and the shed slid like it was on skates.

Once it was over the site, we jacked it up and put the blocks in place.

And that was that. Amazing. Now to clean it out, spruce it up, and make it into a potting shed. I'm going to put a cold frame around its left side, and plant all manner of flowers and herbs around its right side, and flank its doorway with something gorgeous... maybe hollyhocks, maybe baptista, maybe ninebark... and it's going to be the downright prettiest potting shed that ever lived. Or close, at least.

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Presenting...

2012-05-16T09:02:00.000-04:00

We have shelves! These babies have been in the plans since the beginning, and it's so very nice to see them here at last.

My dad came late last week, bringing his magical mystery van of tools and hardware and shelf-parts. I love my dad. He used to be a boy scout, and his old den leader would surely be proud today, for my father is nothing if not Prepared.

As he turned our living room into a pop-up woodshop for the afternoon, I worked on my laptop in the other room, emerging periodically to rub my hands together and cackle with glee. Looky looky looky.

This week, I'm working on painting the thing (it arrived primed), and then I will be looking forward very muchly to filling it with books and pretty things. I might even have to log some hours antiquing, with the very reasonable excuse that our annual house party is coming up and, well, we can't have an empty shelf now, can we?

Exactly.

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Seven women, one big city

2012-05-14T12:13:00.000-04:00

It was a weekend full of unexpected awesome. I had no idea that the hotel would be this chic. That it came with its very own rooftop bar, and that the nightclub off the lobby would make a fine place to lounge pre-dinner. I'm rural now; it's easy to forget that things like Lucite chairs and cupcake bars and subway beatboxers exist in the normal world. I didn't expect to realize that I'd been missing New York, somehow, for the many years I've been away.

I had no idea how much I would appreciate unplugging myself from my laptop and my blue-million ongoing house and garden projects. I sat at that rooftop bar and nursed my nine dollar beer and had absolutely nothing to do and it was wonderful.

The bride-to-be looked about as cute as I'd ever seen her, through all our ten years of knowing each other. Her face was lit with absolute bliss at every turn of the evening, because the whole entire thing was one exciting secret we'd managed to keep from her for months.

After a belly dancing class, and some time on the roof, we changed and headed out for dinner. Something about being one of seven women on an escalator...

... and in a subway car. I loved the camaraderie. I loved the outfits, and the shoes. I loved that even though some of us didn't know each other well, or even at all, the whole evening came together perfectly.

But Alexis's happy face was my favorite part of all.

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This weekend

2012-05-07T13:12:00.004-04:00

This weekend, I...

// Watched as we tried, and failed, to budge the shed from its spot under the hickory trees.

// Learned a lot about friction, and leverage, and the breaking point of nylon rope.

// Made a mental note to keep the garage doors closed during the day, lest the swallows take up residence inside.

// Admired the chives budding out around my fruit trees, which are also budding out.

// Repaired the back fence, and made it all the way across the gap. Almost.

// Weeded with my left hand, and held the phone to my ear with my right, all through a glorious Sunday morning chat with my mom.

// Ate from the cold frame a lot.

// Used the back steps as dining room morning, noon, and night.

// Fantasized a little more intently about the future greenhouse, cold frame, and potting shed-in-the-works...

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A new vignette

2012-05-04T11:14:00.004-04:00

I struggled with what to blog about today, and then I looked back through my posts for the past couple of weeks, and realized I was falling into an inevitable pattern: garden, garden, cat, garden, chicken, flowers, trees, garden, garden. Garden: close up; garden: from the upstairs window; garden: looking north; garden: looking west. You can tell my mind has been a bit one-track lately. The waffle-stomped clods of garden dirt on the dining room floor tell the same story.

And so, instead of rushing outside to take more pictures of garden, flowers, and chicken, I photographed this little vignette I put together a few weeks back. I'd stepped into an antiques store a few days prior, and skipped out with the white rectangular planter and the little metal dish, and when I decided I was tired of my aqua McCoy planters-- which had sat atop the Hoosier cabinet since pre-move-in-- I gave my new friends a spot in the sun, alongside the seltzer bottle, pitcher, and basket I've owned for some time. The McCoy collection moved into the dining room.

This coming week will be a busy one for me: I'm going to stuff all my work into four days, before waking up Friday morning to drive to the city, where, on Saturday, seven women will converge for a rip-roaring bachelorette party. The Museum of Natural History, and also a belly-dancing class, are planned. There's also a pot-luck to cook for, and our dogged siding-removal project, which is proceeding in earnest. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to check in here, but I will do my level best. Expect more garden pictures.

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May Day evening

2012-05-02T10:09:00.000-04:00

In quiet moments, I can feel myself being pulled into May. It's a heady green siren song: month of lilacs and last frost, of tomato plants in the ground and the first warm thunderstorm. On the 16th, we celebrate exactly a year as Gilbertsvillians. Last year, May was such a blur of unpacking and hauling and digging and scrubbing and schlepping, I think it passed me over completely without a single quiet moment.

Not so, this year. The early spring means I've already accomplished so much of what was on my bucket list for the whole summer. The shrubs are planted. The garden is begun. That means it's ok to sit on the back steps with a cup of tea for an hour before I start my writing day; it's ok to stroll around the yard with Pete and Diesel, to take pleasure in all the little sounds and smells and sights of being in this place in this season.

We visit the blueberry bushes, which are budding. We visit the apple and cherry trees, which are leafing out. The hard work of last season is there in the details, and now I have the time to see them and be content.

Pete meanders over to say hi to Genevieve, who puffs herself out and charges the fence, intimidating as any eighth grade quarterback. Pete gallops off. There is still a lot ahead in this heady year: planting an "insectory" garden between the driveway and the vegetable garden, to bring beneficial insects in to carry off my cabbage loopers. Planting comfrey and daffodils and more chives and lupines in the orchard, which will, in theory, work together in perfect harmony with the apple trees, and cut down on the need to mow. But right now, I'm most looking forward to our four little yellow puffballs, slated to arrive about mid-month. Chicks!

Oh, May. Oh good month.

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Kelly Hollow

2012-04-30T09:22:00.001-04:00

We love this place.

The wildflowers, the old foundations, the mossy streams cutting across the trail in places. The beavers, whose progress transfigures the pond at the top each season. Last year, a thicket of alder and birch and beech ringed the whole pond, which was maybe twenty feet across. Now the thicket has become a dam holding back a semi-lake.

We stopped in town on our way home. I stepped into an antiques store and bought an old photo of a formally dressed woman about to saddle a mule. Patrick had a short beer at the local watering hole, and we purchased a pint of Ben and Jerry's to share on the car ride home. It was a great day.

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The Waiting

2012-04-27T09:34:00.000-04:00

The waiting is as good as, sometimes even better than, the doing.

This has been a week full of waiting-- sometimes pensively-- for the right time. The right time, the right weather, the right materials. It has been good. April will teach you patience, even when you think you've already learned patience, she will remind you again that you have a long way to go.

Ithaca got five inches of snow this week. I was there yesterday, and it took me several long minutes of staring at the odd crumbly white stuff on the side of the road before it registered. My farmer friends were well-prepared, though they're pretty much writing off any possibility of a plum harvest this year...

I brought home four tomato transplants from aforementioned farmer friends, a pair of thrifted jeans that fits like bark on a tree, and a reel mower from a different friend, for which I traded a jar of homemade dill pickles.

All these things are waiting.

My parents came Wednesday night for a brief dinner, and to walk around and see the progress being made. They brought comfrey roots, and wine, and a spading fork, and a scythe, and these things are waiting, too, alongside the hay I bought to use for garden mulch.

I am eager for the right time and the right weather, but not too eager. There is something cozy and satisfying, for sure, about this waiting business.

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Greenhouse in the works

2012-04-24T14:54:00.000-04:00

I have found myself deeply, ecstatically grateful for a cold week of rain. After the week I had last week, and the weekend full of waitress-hustle, it was positively delightful to spend yesterday evening sitting at the dining room table with hot chamomile tea, reading. Letting the muscles recover, letting the garden dirt work itself out from under my nails, and doing some thinking.

I'm been absolutely devouring two books right now. One is called Gaia's Garden, a guide to permaculture and creating an ecological garden. The other is called Four Season Harvest. It has a lot of ideas about row covers and high tunnels and cold frames and... greenhouses.

My graph paper pad and my freshly sharpened Dixon Ticonderoga pencil have been keeping me company at the dining room table lately, too.

Into the midst of this inspired graph paper groove: serendipity! My inlaws replaced all the windows in their house. Did I want some? Oh yes, boy howdy, did I want some. They loaded them into the truck for me and I drove all of them out here, to share with my neighbor who's also building a greenhouse. But I kept the best ones for me.

My inlaws' house is an Italianate brick semi-mansion with arched two-over-two windows. The greenhouse I intend to build with these lovelies is going to be class. It'll live on this corner of the garage (to the right), where it will get south-west exposure. It's going to be about 9 x 14 feet... larger than our bedroom... and visions of fresh March salads and seedling flats and overwintered pots of rosemary dance in my head.

I am no architect. There is going to be a lot of pacing, pencil-behind-the-ear, back and forth. Lots of struggling to visualize the whole process of construction, start-to-finish, like any three-dimensional project. Like sewing a flat-bottom bag.

(Incidentally, I really miss sewing. Someday I'll set down the shovel and pick up the rotary cutter...)

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Some scenes

2012-04-20T10:52:00.004-04:00

Currant bush

Spinach seedling

Asparagus

Chicken run and compost

Genevieve's evening snack.

Happy Friday, everyone!

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Outdoor stories

2012-04-18T08:55:00.000-04:00

I've been getting so much done this week. Outside. I'm adhering to last week's make myself sore until I can't do anything but sit strategy, and it feels great.

I went for a walk around an old cemetery, and then around my neighbors' back forty (they aren't back from Florida yet) with a sharp knife and a jar of water. Though I really like how these clippings look in the dining room, the ultimate goal is more pragmatic. I need shrubs. A lot of shrubs. I'm talking native plants and things that have edible fruit and things that attract wildlife, and also some things that have fearsome thorns and will hopefully keep the deer out of the orchard when planted in a hedge. These are not the kinds of things you can walk down to your garden center and buy. I wanted dogwoods and viburnums and hawthorns, and a few pieces of that glorious weeping mulberry up at the cemetery. I took clippings-- the innocent thievery of genetic material; a huge investment in time and patience and care. In a few weeks they'll start to root out in the water, then after a time I can pot them, overwinter them in the to-be-constructed greenhouse, and plant them next spring. I imagine. I'll keep you posted.

I laid more brick. I'm down to my last 27 in a tidy little heap, and I need to find a new source for more. I didn't tell you, did I, that I went back to my salvage site a few weeks back and they'd fenced it? Well, yeah. Was bound to happen, but still made me depressed. In a perfect world all useful raw materials would get claimed by resourceful folks, and reused, and given the respectful honor of being enjoyed the rest of their useful lives. I'm not fretting, though. My neighbor Jody has offered to "put in a call" to a well-connected friend who might know of some brick to be had.

Yesterday I was pretty heavily invested in a wrestling match with an extremely tenacious and deeply-rooted forsythia tangle, when my neighbor Olie drove up. She'd helped me unload my truckful of lumber (for the fence) weeks back, hoisting 30-lb boards up over her head into the pile on the side of the driveway. I'd baked her muffins. When someone who haven't met yet ties her dog to your porch so she can come help you unload lumber, you bake. Now she was back, opening a trunk full of recently divided perennials and offering me peonies, chives, grape hyacinth, lady's mantle. Gold mine.

"You don't want any forsythia, do you?" I asked. As a matter of fact, she'd just been talking about wanting some. As a matter of fact. I sent her home with three "satellite"-sized forsythia, while I resumed my battle with the mother ship. The plants she gave me were huge; I was so grateful I had something to offer in trade, and that it was something she wanted for herself.

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An excuse to dawdle

2012-04-16T12:56:00.001-04:00

Bloodroot.

A friend's baby shower gave us the perfect excuse to get out on Saturday. We had to drive two and a half hours west, but, realizing the shower wasn't until 3, we were able to dawdle. We stopped at a yard sale. We followed signs to antiques stores that never materialized. We stopped at a picturesque cemetery. And we got to go back to this beautiful place. I got to drink in some spring wildflowers, and that felt pretty amazing.

This morning, I got out to the garden (before the thermometer climbed to eighty-five (!) degrees, and planted lettuces, radishes, and more peas. Neighbors stopped over to say hello and compliment the brick-work. Over the weekend, another friend had posted a status update to Facebook, "Gilbertsville. You can't make this shit up," and more and more I'm thinking it's the perfect reaction to this place. Half the time I feel like I'm living in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The other half the time it's some combination of happy Beatles song and trippy Grateful Dead song. Oh, and there's another half the time where it feels like a Wendell Berry book. Have you read Wendell Berry? Gilbertsville feels like Port William, only more idyllic.

Next month, we'll celebrate two years since we "met," and one full year since we came to call it home. What a journey.

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Brick of the litter

2012-04-13T12:59:00.001-04:00

A good strategy, when one finds oneself incapable of focusing on writing, is to make oneself so unbelievably sore that the desk chair is the only comfortable option.

Mission: accomplished.

I spent the whole entire day outside yesterday, hauling lumber and wielding power tools. Power tools = my happy place. Then I jiggered and re-jiggered and re-jiggered those frames until everything measured true and square. Then I laid down weed block fabric, then I poured sand. Then I was Zen-like for a little while leveling the sand, and then I hauled brick and laid brick and smiled A LOT.

Life is such a good thing right now.

The lumber frames are temporary; once I finish laying the brick and sweeping more sand down into the cracks between, and let it all cure and settle for a month (and hopefully a few good drenching rainstorms) I'll remove them and unscrew them and reuse the lumber as part of my greenhouse frame. Ah, plans.

The beds themselves aren't getting planted until next year-- except the herb bed-- and I'm going to spend the summer laying cardboard and newspaper and dumping buckets of food scraps on the dirt, then mulch it all with autumn leaves and let it go all winter. This experimental plan is one of the things making me a little giddy lately-- just plainly curious to see if it works, if it results in a till-free garden full of rich, crumbly soil well-tunneled by earthworms.

The beds will grow mostly leaf, stem, and root crops, the polite kind that mind their manners and don't go sprawling over creation like zucchini bushes and tomato vines. What I'm picturing when I smile like I'm crazed is a lush, picture-perfect shock of red-stem Swiss chard leaning luxuriantly out over those red-brick paths. Can you see it? It'll look like a painting, I tell you. A damn painting.

Lucky, lucky me.

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Garden babbling

2012-04-11T13:41:00.000-04:00

I called my mom last night, as I do most Tuesday evenings, and as we talked I began to prattle. I had spent about half the day outside in the garden, (and half the day inside trying to focus on writing, and failing), and my head was full of thoughts and ideas and plans and lists of materials. I told her about planting herbs (variegated sage, purple oregano, lemon thyme, chives, tarragon, cilantro, lemon balm, sorrel) and about planting carrots and cilantro, and about all the plans in my head.

Because she gardens, too, she understood it all. The lust for experimentation and planning, the prattling. The head full of dreams.

(This picture will make way more sense once I start laying out the pathways.)

My last deadline for this writing cycle is April 23rd, and I'm starting to keen pretty strongly for that day to come. My favorite thing about writing is the flexibility, and the variety. When the mind is worn out from assignments, I can go outside and work myself sore. Then I let my sore muscles recover while sitting at my desk and stretching my mind. It's hard to focus sometimes, but no day is ever the same.

I have a list for my next chunk of free time. It goes like this:

Frame salad garden paths with 2x4s; lay sand and then brick in basketweave fashion.
Finish planting early crops: lettuce, arugula, radishes, beets. More peas.
Use excess sod to build short raised beds; cover with black plastic so sod decomposes.
Pick up reel mower from friend who said I could have hers; mow paths!
Spend ~$100 on more shrubs and trees for the yard.
Start prettying up foundation flower beds.

Sigh. It must be spring.

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The promise

2012-04-09T10:51:00.000-04:00

I planted peas, kale, spinach, and broccoli on Friday, and that felt so good I spent Saturday afternoon planting potatoes.

(Potatoes which I carried home from the post office that very morning.)

That felt pretty good, too. I love this time of year-- the promise in the bare dirt, the promises you make to the plants, yes I will weed you, yes I will water you, yes I will care for and nurture you... It's like marriage, a little bit.

Coming out this morning to see my 24 newly planted broccoli seedlings showing traces of sun-scald, I reminded myself again what it means to be present, to nurture and protect. I scurried inside for 24 wide-mouth mason jars, and improvised cloches to shield my charges from sun and wind.

I'm trying to keep myself here, focused on early springtime, and not think too far ahead.

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Friday

2012-04-06T09:04:00.002-04:00

Olive and I had a photo shoot yesterday afternoon. Her sweetness comes across so well in photographs, whereas when I point a camera at Pete he won't make any face but his smug, cocky, "You want me, baby, and I know it" face.

Not Olive.

Olive is an angel.

As I was shooting these, I was periodically getting up to stand at the window, watching our sainted neighbor Jody rototill our garden. We suggested we might borrow his tiller this year-- he rototilled the space for us last year, which was wonderful because we were only there two days a week last year-- but he offered to do it anyway. I told him, wait a couple weeks for my rhubarb to get up. I'm gonna bake another pie.

Some debts of kindness, you see, can only be repaid with pie.

Right now, the minute after I hit publish, I'm going to the dump, then to swap vehicles, then to Frog Pond to buy broccoli seedlings then home. THEN I PLANT. Peas, broccoli, kale, spinach. Yes yes yes.

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How revealing

2012-04-04T09:52:00.000-04:00

I'm a little surprised to find us diving into another big project for this summer, truth to tell. This summer already includes brick paths in the garden, moving the shed, building a patio, planting more trees, and raising chicks-- and I thought that would be enough. Right? That's enough.

But then I got this bright idea to spend part of Saturday scraping porch trim. And it takes about fifteen minutes of that for me to say to Patrick, "Hey, want to tear off a piece of that aluminum?"

A ladder was procured. A screwdriver was applied. And, like all other quick and revealing home improvement projects (pulling old carpet, stripping wallpaper) we couldn't take down just one. In other words, once we popped, we couldn't stop.

This house is beautiful. This house is historic. This house, for fifty some years, has effectively been George Clooney in a t-shirt tuxedo. Wrong. I pulled off some aluminum, and rubbed my fingers across that beautiful yellow wood underneath. Even the cracks and the nail holes are pretty. I found myself having an imaginary conversation with whoever built this place, in 1858. I know what he was going for, and let me tell you, it was not a mildew-covered aluminum sided subdivided rental house. I was playing out something like that scene in Catch Me if You Can, where Frank writes his bankrupt dad a letter promising, "I'm gonna get it all back now, Daddy. I'm going to get it all back." Exactly. I'm going to get it back, house. Your beauty, your charm. Everything you were meant to be, in 1858. All of it.

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Be-sodded

2012-04-02T11:15:00.002-04:00

Well, it didn't snow. It did rain-- cold, sniveling rain-- but we persevered. When there's ground to be broken-- and seeds so eager to jump into their furrows they're probably trembling in their packets-- the weather is not a determining factor.

We had Patrick's dad's fabulous miraculous sod-cutter on loan, and we had some cuttin' to do.

(The leaf-covered area is what I planted last year. This year, I'm a bit more ambitious.)

The cutting is smooth and breathlessly fast; the rolling and lugging and lifting and dragging not so much. One quick call to our neighbors, however, and they were both over here rolling and lugging along with me, eager to patch and smooth their lumpy bumpy front yard with slabs of free sod.

In between the heavy lifting and heavy breathing, we found ourselves talking about the upcoming summer, and found that our homesteading/gardening/chickening goals are strikingly similar. By the end of twenty minutes' work, we had a tentative arrangement to trade one household's free range chicken eggs for the other household's sweet corn. We talked about building greenhouses. We talked about sourcing salvaged materials and sharing labor and knowledge and teamwork. We're both young families figuring it out as we go along-- and it seems we'll be enjoying that process together.

Back to the garden. Since we put up the fence we've heard nothing but enthusiastic compliments from the town-- and curious speculation that we may be getting a pony. (We are not getting a pony.) The fence is to keep hooved things out, not pen them in. This summer will feature twice the tomatoes and broccoli and peas and beans as last summer, and my first attempt at growing potatoes.

To the right we'll cut a 20 x 20 square-- after yesterday's sore muscles have repaired themselves-- and put in a salad and herb garden. That's what the brick is for-- pretty pretty basketweave brick paths. Eventually-eventually I'll establish some raised beds back behind that, for a rotating assortment of root crops, strawberries, and things that like to be fussed over. Leeks, celery. The big open space to the left will be for the big, sprawly crops and staple vegetables-- beans, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers-- while the polite, reserved lettuces and cooking greens and herbs and edible flowers pretty up the right side. In my mind's eye, the whole thing looks like a page from a glossy garden magazine-- but doesn't every gardener's garden look that way, in their mind's eye?

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Scenes

2012-03-30T15:37:00.001-04:00

Raspberry

I knew those mid-seventies sunny days we had last week couldn't last. I'm almost relieved. I wasn't ready for lilacs in March.

The weather was perfect, really. Just enough to green up everyone's lawn and pop up snowdrops and crocuses, and get the daffodils well underway. Just enough to give us hope for the remaining few weeks of mid-forties/low-fifties we have left.

Crocus

Daffodils

See how green everything is? Yes. I like it this way. I have seedlings in my cold frame, and tomorrow Patrick and I are planning to cut some more sod off my garden. Last year, I planted an 18 x 20 square of it. This year, 24 x 40. Yee doggies.

Petecat

Never mind that it's supposed to snow, just, never mind.

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Downstairs bathroom, after

2012-03-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

I think I can finally declare this one done.

Well, done save for caulking and repainting the baseboards, which I honestly acknowledge may take until Christmas (possibly longer) and in the spirit of moving things along, I'll just share pictures now before the whole project fades into obscurity. (See that blue tape to the right of the sink? That's where I started taping off to caulk and paint and got wholly dispirited.) Seems logical.

For reference, the before:

Whoa, nelly. I'm so in love with this room now. I think it might be my favorite in the house. I like to sit in the dining room while I eat breakfast alone in the mornings and look at the sun beaming into the bathroom and smile. Hit's so purty.

I learned a good lesson with this one: a bathroom facelift is a good place to start, decorating-wise. There are fewer variables, and more direction than you have with most other rooms. All the characters-- shower, toilet, sink-- are set, you just have to pretty it up.

In the grand scheme of things, we didn't do much. We tiled, that was the biggest thing. We also moved the electrical box about eight inches up the wall (it was oddly low, since the previous medicine cabinet had come with a built-in light. Me, I wanted a nice, classy ceiling-scraping light fixture, to draw your eye up and sit pretty atop the mirror I scored at one of my new favorite antiquing haunts.

The price was marked $38, I said how about $25, and the guy says, "How about $20?" That, friends, is my kind of place! My dad repaired the mirror frame, and I painted it cream. (Behr Evening Sun, the same color as our headboard.)

I chose to work with the vanity and sink we inherited-- they aren't bad, really, just generic. Generic can be upgraded, though. Pretty easily. I got a new faucet and cabinet hardware (from Home Depot) and primed (with Benjamin Moore's SmartPrime-- great stuff!) and painted it Valspar Woodlawn Music Room. I don't really know what that means, that color name, but I like the yellow a lot. It goes really nicely with the walls, which are Behr Baked Brie.

Other things I did: painted the tile over the sink (quick, cheap fix), made curtains for the window and the shower, hung a new wooden blind, bought new towel bars, switchplates, and a new rug from Anthropologie thanks to a very awesome birthday present gift card.

Eventually I'll hang those two yellow-flowered plates on the wall over the toilet, but I need to find something to hang in between them first. Eventually-eventually we'll swap out the ceiling fixture and move the whole electrical box to the center of the room... that's eventually-eventually because it will involve tearing out the floor above down to the studs. Fortunately, the room directly above this is our upstairs bathroom, and tearing that floor down to the studs is exactly what we plan on doing. Eventually-eventually.

So it goes.

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The view from here

2012-03-26T10:23:00.003-04:00

This is where I'm standing when I feel luckiest. It's the north-facing window in my second-floor office, and this is what I can see, this time of year, when I look out.

Hello, heaven. Hello good neighbors and pretty forsythia bushes, hello brick pile and future shed foundation. Hello fence! Hello asparagus patch and raspberry patch and whole unbroken promise of this year's growing season.

This time last year, we were nigh unto stripping and sanding floors. There was no garden, no chicken coop and yard, no orchard, no raspberries or asparagus. The house was just a house and a promise, nowhere near home, yet. Headed into this year's busy time, I feel so grateful for the infrastructure already established, all the things that won't need to be re-done now that they've been done once. Even better, I know some year in the future, spring will be easier still: just a till and a rake and some seeds is all it will take. Hopefully when we're at that point, the wonderful beautiful things I'm imagining now will all be reality. They'll be part of this view, too, and I'll probably feel even luckier, and even sappier, than I do now.

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Yard projects

2012-03-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

Just a note to say: YES, Genevieve is finally home! We searched high and low for two days, and saw not a trace-- and then our up-the-street neighbor heard from another neighbor who had a chicken roosting in his backyard... up the street we marched with a container of fresh-picked earthworms, and five minutes later we had our bird. Huzzah!

On with the show, then. It has been a very busy two days, project-wise. It has been so incredibly unbelievably warm and sunny, and it is that time of year when it's near-unbearable to spend time inside. By July I'll get all jaded and start taking the greenness for granted, but right now I can't do anything but drink it in. I built a gate for my fence. That felt good. Today I marked off all the new ground to be broken inside the garden, and soon, I hope, we'll borrow the sod-cutter and make it reality. Only then can I plant, and boy, let me tell you, I am itching to plant.

I went to visit a friend in Binghamton on Tuesday, and her peas are already in the ground. I suffered a faltering of garden self-esteem. Thank goodness I already have spinach and arugula seedlings in my cold frame. At least I can beat her at the salad game, right? (Hi Kate :))

Also getting underway is a perhaps overly ambitious but anticipated shed-moving adventure. We want to take this shed, as shown:

... and relocate it to this improvised foundation closer to the garden, as shown:

(It actually looks way more official than that now, since I've dug out the grass and made everything level and trimmed the board-ends and screwed it all together.) I'm going to fill in the foundation with concrete and a motley assortment of rocks, rubble, broken bricks and clay flowerpots, and whatever else I can haul out of our weedrow in the intervening eight days.

Where the shed used to stand, out under the hickories just outside our kitchen window, we are going to build a patio. There are eight giant bluestone pavers reposing in the weeds in the back corner of our land... left there like beached whales when the town replaced all the sidewalks sometime ago... and, well, YES, as a matter of fact a reclaimed bluestone patio DOES seem like a very good idea under those hickories just outside the kitchen window. Like, one of the best ideas I've heard this century.

Oh, and please don't be impressed by any of this. My sweet salt-of-the-earth neighbor (he of the cookies, the Santa Claus, the constant lending of tools and time and guidance and porch hospitality) came over and pronounced me "pioneer woman" after I hung up the gate. Even that was over the top. I had help, see. I had assistance. I owe a good measure of the credit for the success of these endeavors to Pete. As shown.

It was really nice to watch and listen to the robins this evening, sitting on the porch with Patrick and a beer. He sighed and said, "The family's back together."

Yes indeed. Tomorrow, we reinforce the chicken yard!

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Genevieve, come home!

2012-03-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

I didn't expect this at all! I took these pictures of Genevieve "helping" me turn the compost a few days ago, with no inkling at all of any encroaching avian malcontent.

I got home from a day in Binghamton yesterday, and she was gone. Genevieve, honey, we could have negotiated. Better feed, better lodging? A once-weekly chicken spa with earthworm scampi for lunch?

She has done this before. She is an escape artist. I'm optimistic, but also starting to worry-- we left her coop open with the light on, and she didn't come home last night. She could easily have roosted up in one of our neighbor's pine trees, or...

I've looked all around, I've told the neighbors. She will come home, in time, or she won't. Sniffle. Oh, the unpredictabilities of livestock.

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Fence!

2012-03-19T09:31:00.000-04:00

So, I hadn't planned on asking Patrick for help with this. I try to limit the things for which I request his help to things wayyy beyond my ken. And, though I'd never fenced before, I assumed I could handle it. I knew how to use a circular saw, and a drill. How hard could it be?

Patrick must've been watching from a window when I attempted to attach the first board. With my right hand, I attempted to hold the end of a 12-foot-long piece of lumber in place on the fence post. With my left, I tried to simultaneously hold the screw in place, keep it upright, and pull the trigger on the cordless drill.

The screw slipped, the bit fell out, the end of the board came down on my foot. I may have said a bad word.

Patrick came out, took over the drill, and two and a half hours later, we had our fence. I took a picture this morning, with that gorgeous early spring morning sun struggling up over the sugar maples in bud:

(The shadow person is me.) I'm in love with this fence! It might not be everybody's idea of beauty, but it measures up to mine. The beauty of rustic vernacular architecture combined with the beauty of a secure and productive garden? Yes please.

We ran 4-foot-high welded wire all around the square before attaching the boards, because, let's face it, the boards aren't really there to keep anything out. They're there to make it look pretty. I can't wait for my potatoes to get here so I can put them in the ground.

My north-facing office window looks directly out onto this slice of heaven. It's a sight that makes deadline logjams (like the one I have right now) so hard to commit to. I try to write, I get frustrated, I get up and pace and stand at my window. I look at that greening yard, and those emerging daffodils (and weeds) and I decide I can spare an hour. Just an hour. So it goes.

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