I Can See Canada from Here...

It's in the air. Really. Canada was on fire. Look.

The haze isn't the reason they're called the White Mountains. The haze is burnt-up bits of Quebec floating our way.

For those of you not in The Know, I went to Boston for Memorial Day. So no yard projects. But lots of fun, and good food. Lezzee... there was...

• Pizza (1 + partial)
• Stromboli (1)
• Cannolli (2 partial) 
• Rum baba (1 partial, enormous)
• Italian cookies (Many)
• Ravioli (5 or so)
• Mexican Sampler Plate (1)
• Delicious Rolls (2)

No, I don't have to go all the way to Boston for good mexican food. I could go to New Mexico, too. I am not a fan of Tex-Mex, which is about 98% of what you get here.

I did manage to eat some pesky normal food, too, but that's hardly worth mentioning. What IS worth mentioning, I think, is that I spent four whole days in Boston without entering a single Dunkin' Donuts. If you've been to Boston, you will understand just how remarkable this is. There might be more DDs than Starbucks in Boston.

But let's get back to the fun stuff! The afore-mentioned raviolis were homemade. 

 

Well, technically, they were half homemade, half hotel-suite-made.

And funny-shaped.

Yum.

The Balancing Act

As I have just posted on my Facebook page, tonight I started one project... and I finished one project.

Those two clauses do not refer to the same project. Get real. This is Juli.  But the PiP (Project in Progress) balance remains the same.

Some of my yard projects have hit a snag or two (insert shocked gasps here), so I shall instead show you the results of some of my indoor activities.

I replaced the thermostat a while back. That in itself is not terribly exciting, but take a gander at the wallpaper I uncovered! That must've been one stylin' entryway when the house was built - especially paired with the light fixture that was in place when I moved in (all of my tall helpers will remember that thing forever).

I've also been slowly replacing all of the doorknobs in the house. In addition to being, well... ugly, the old knobs were treated quite carelessly when the doors were last painted. For a change, I have a before picture...

 And an after picture:

And the project I finished tonight... ok, it's a subproject. I've been gradually repainting the kitchen. This has come to involve stripping three layers of paint and a layer of varnish off the cabinet doors. I might finish that part before I move out. The built-in parts of the cabinets are now painted, as is the pantry door. And as of tonight, the cheap wire thingies that hang on the inside of the pantry door to Hold More Tea have been washed, straightened a bit, and rehung... CORRECTLY. With hollow door anchors and the little tabs facing the right way and all that, so that my Immense yet Insufficient Supply of Tea (and granola bars) won't tear the thingies out of the door.

I shall now proceed to enjoy some of said tea. You should, too. But maybe not my tea, since it's far away from most of you.

Broken Promises

I said I would show you the herb garden next. I lied. Thing is, there's another project in the middle of herb garden, and it's not cooperating. So instead, you get to see my philodendron. As usual, there is no "before" photo, but that's because in order to get to "before," one has to go back to early January, before hell froze over. This philodendron was huge. Huge. I had to cut it back twice last year just to be able to reach my water knob. I couldn't see out of the window over it. There was more wrought iron stuff between in and the house that I didn't know about until the leaves froze. And died. And got hacked off. But it's a philly, and it gamely started growing back. In the meantime, I noticed that wate coming off the roof was washing away the soil in one particular spot. My solution: dump more rock on it.

See the leaf on the left touching the ground? That's the only leaf that made it through the freeze... the last leaf that was there when I moved in. I named it Mike. Minnesota hockey fans know why (and no, I won't be cutting it off anytime soon). The rest of you will just think, "oh, I see she's still naming inanimate objects." Which I am.

I fully expect my philly to be as big and tall and even fuller by the end of the summer than it was last fall. At that point, I probably won't be able to see the nice rock, so I'd best enjoy it now.

Well, Would You Look at the Time...

Is it April already? Has it really been four months since I've posted anything?

Ooops. Sorry.

I shall attempt to make up for it with a series of fascinating and reasonably-spaced accounts of the various Projects I've been working on. Will that help? I'll start with one I just finished today. I didn't think to take any "before" pictures, because really... who would want to take a picture of THAT? If it were pretty enough for a picture, I wouldn't've ripped it out and dugged it up and redoned it, right? Well, what I did was take out all the weeds, spider plants (which grow like weeds around here), and dead trees in little pots that didn't make it through the freeze (that's right - freeze. It got down below 20 for two or three nights in a row in January)... the sections of rusty iron fence I found beneath the dead plants... the odd terra cotta pot laying on its side in the dirt... I took all that out from the corner of the back yard and replaced it with this:

The bushes are Photinia. Their new growth is a nice, dark red. Other than that, they are pretty bushlike. I put some of that deep red volcanic rock around them, and a row of zinnias in front of them on the fence side. There really wasn't enough room to put them along the house wall, too.

And here are some of my friends who helped me with this project:

Of course I can't thank everyone; there simply isn't enough time. I'll have to save some of it for the next Project: herb garden.

More Thanksgiving

There're still some leftovers. Come on over. Bring your appetite. No, seriously. There are still leftovers.

The Thanksgiving Review

Happy post-Thanksgivingness, everyone! What did you have for din-dins? We had: 

• Roasted chestnuts
• Squash cakes (think latkes only with yellow squash, served with sour cream and salsa)
• Wild rice soup  (with sherry)
• Turkey/gravy
• Stuffing (with toasted pine nuts)
• Cranberry-raisin relish (the leftovers of which I am currently consuming)
• Sweet potato balls (with bourbon)
• Camp Hilary cornbread
• Green bean casserole
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower 
• Pumpkin stuffed with sweet stuffing
• Apple pie (with Cool Whip)
• Pumpkin cheesecake (with cognac) 

To date, the only leftovers finished in this household are the soup and the cornbread. Dan thought he finished the turkey this morning, but tonight I found another container of it. To be fair, we did also finish off the leftover gnocchi from friday night, and the hot and sour soup from wednesday.

I are full.

Something Interesting About My Life

So... I was going to post more often. Really. I meant it. Thing is, there's nothing much to talk about. I can't tell you about the house project I recently finished, because I haven't finished any. I can't tell you about the exciting project at work, because they are a) all proprietary, and b) not terribly exciting. I could tell you about my dinner, as requested by Dearest Uncle Paul... it consisted of ravioli from Costco with a tomato-cream sauce which I did make myself and a glass (or two) of cheap wine. I ate it out of a bowl. A blue one. Later I'm going to run the dishwasher with the bowl in it.

Yeeeeup. That's pretty much it. I put fertilizer on the lawn a couple of weeks ago. That was thrilling, lemmetellya. Last week I bought a new dining room table. It's for the formal dining room, which I might paint sometime next year. Why do I need two places to eat, anyway? So I can have two tables upon which to put piles of unopened mail and papers I should file someday? I eat at the coffee table more often than not, anyway. It's hockey season, after all. But I have a new table, and I'd show you a picture of it, but it's in boxes still.

Ah, posts without pictures are so dull. There has to be a picture around here somewhere...
Ah. Here we go. This is from a recent sunday morning while I was puppysitting. It was chilly that morning... about 45 degrees and rainy... and Karma (left) and Pasha (right) and I had ourselves a good long snuggle in bed, followed by breakfast and some more snuggling in bed, then a walk and some snuggling in the living room while watching football. That's the stuff!

Juli 1, Weeds 0

Gradually... slowly... finally I finished the strip of garden next to the garage. When I moved in, it contained two rather random-looking small trees or large bushes, a big hole, a large leafy plant, and a bunch of weeds. As of this past saturday, it contains two rather random-looking small trees or large bushes, four hibiscus...es... hibisci... um... hibiscus plants, all with different colored blooms (which I may have to wait until spring to show you), and a rather unhappy-looking azalea that was hiding under the leafy plant before I ruthlessly pulled it from the nourishing earth.

I just realized you can't see the azalea in this picture, but that's ok. It probably wants to take some time to freshen up before you see it. But look! MULCH! Landscape fabric and MULCH! Like a growed-up would do...

The hibiscus plants, from left to right, are peach, bright yellow, a color that I can only describe as what you would get if you mixed hot pink and fire engine red, and pale orange (not the same as peach). If the azalea allows and I can find, there might be a white one next year, too.

Sorry

I know. It's been a while. A long while. But the only interesting things that have happened since my last post have been time consuming things. Like the water leak. Oh, yeah. The water line coming into the house came apart. Literally. Two pieces of pipe. Not connected. Pond in Juli's yard. My friend (and for a brief time, till the novelty of running water in my house wore off again, a minor god) Michael is a bit of a plumber, so he said, "Let's take a look." I wasn't sure I should let him get involved in my problem, but aren't other people's projects always more fun than one's own? Of course they are. I would be cruel to deny him a weekend of avoiding his own chores. So we started digging a hole where the water seemed the worst, which was right where the line comes into the house. We got about six inches underground when we discovered a repair job - I use the term loosely. It was a lousy repair job. Really lousy. They had used couplings instead of joints and cement, and one of the pipe ends (they use PVC down here where the ground doesn't feeze) was cut at such an angle that the "lower" end barely touched the coupling. No wonder it came apart when the ground was dry and shifting during our drought!

At this point, I believe, Michael's involvement switched from "casual task avoidance/helping a friend" to "righteous affrontery," that someone could do such a shoddy repair job. But something was not right. The water was shut off at the street, and still the meter spun... and spun... and spun. Turns out that my shut-off vavle was more of a trickle-through valve. We couldn't get the water completely shut off, no matter what we tried. That explained why the former owners had done what they did, but I? I called the city and told them to get their asses out here... I mean, I requested that someone replace the shut-off valve so that we could complete the repair. Two days later, the valve was fixed and my line was repaired. Joy.

I believe that I did promise you some pictures of the recently-painted entryway - the one that took me two weeks to paint, 4-8 hours per day, because of a little issue with latex paint not sticking to the underlying oil paint. Turns out primer didn't even help much. Anyway.












The floor hardly ever looks this clean. Don't worry; I'm still me.
















See... every bit of white is latex over oil, so I had to edge in the grey using, basically, an oversized putty knife to protect the white. I had to wipe it off every two or three lengths. It took forfrigginever. But doesn't it look NICE? It's the only thing in the house that looks the way I planned it.

Right... the Foot

Ok, I guess some of you actually managed not to hear about the burned foot.

I was grilling.

I was in a hurry.

I dumped the coals out of the chimney starter, and almost immediately managed to drop the thing on my foot. It was still just a bit warm.

There are pictures, but I'm not posting them here. For all I know, some of you read this while eating breakfast, and you do not deserve that. They're on my Facebook page (yes, I have one of those blasted things) for those of you whom I have enfrienderated. For the rest of you, I will accept requests for pictures to be e-mailed to you.