Eight Days

This time next week I'll be shipping stuff for the conference and trying to pack. The whole summer is flying by, and we've been working our butts off. No time for blogging. The brief update: 

-garden is looking awesome... weeded and green. My green beans, golden beets and cilantro are sad but tomatoes, peas, kale, cucumbers, squash and lettuces are doing fantastic. Planted eight ground cherry plants in the strawberry patch:

Seven tiny ground cherries have survived so far

Strawberry patch - only 12 of the 80 survived (!)

Our jerusalem artichoke corner

lettuce and radishes - fast growing section :)

Kale from a friend's seeds

-Trimmed back an ungodly thing growing in our front yard

Before

After

-Planted some oak trees, some blackberry bushes and a black cherry tree. My mom moved some sad looking junipers + a rose to a better spot. Acquired a forsythia bush (still small) and planted a crimson maple near the bonfire pit.

Black cherry by the wood drying area

Maple rescued from my grandmother's ditch

A few blackberry bushes from my boss

Forsythia planted in the new vacancy

Plants near the front door are making the place a little nicer

Junipers and rose near the kitchen windows

-My mom worked on a new flower bed near the fire pit, which the chickens promptly destroyed, and tended to the perennials she planted by the white fence last year (yes, my mother is my gardener).

There were living plants in this, at one point

too small to see: sweet pea, poppies, clematis, and more grape 

-damask stenciled floor is finished in the rooms where is had to go. All spots have two coats of water-based sealer.

-Still working on the other rooms. Here the dog chills out in the fireplace parlour, white from primer:

Camouflage!

-kitchen pantry and appliances (induction hot plate -FANCY)  have migrated to the fridge & sink room. It's bare bones, but at least I won't have to run up & down the stairs mid-meal anymore!

impromptu pantry

storage until the cabinets arrive

kitchen skeleton crew

-dog has a cute but badly behaved boyfriend, and has learned how to tug at my heartstrings in the mornings so that I leave her out instead of putting her in her crate.

Dog and her (huge) doggie boyfriend. His name is Berlin.

Day one

Day two 

 -Went camping in the middle of the woods, played cribbage by the campfire, used a chainsaw, jumped into cold water

-initial tests on stripping the wood trim were not promising. I have a feeling a light sanding, a coat of primer and a new coat of latex will do just fine. The same for the stairwell, which is in need of attention:

snazzy floor, sucky stairwell

-reroofed the second floor deck:

"Don't jump Natalie"

-made a front parlour Idea Book one day, because right now it just looks like this:

needs accessories (other than a macbook)

Well what do YOU do on your lunch hour?!?

-lost a few chickens to a sneaky predator - we are down to five females (we JUST bought three new ones a few weeks ago). As a result, the chickens are getting a new chicken run.

Dismantling the old fence, building an enclosed chicken run

-went to a roaring 1920s theme fundraiser, and won the costume contest (prize: ticket to a local music festival!). This is a different music festival than the one I volunteered to run the merchandise table for last year...and will be doing again this year.

-the two companies I had contacted for kitchen cabinets haven't been returning my calls. I sent them detailed drawings with various budget-minded options, wanting them to supply me with a quote. It's possible my uber-detail-oriented plans put them off. I'm looking at other options (prefab Ikea boxes with hardware + custom made doors)

detail-oriented customers scare kitchen dealers...poo

-acquired about 18 tons of beautiful stone from an old quarry-man about to move out of his house. We hauled by hand to our house, and stacked behind the barn for future projects. Mom, husband and I.

Not even all of it

-went camping and hiking in the valley about 4 hours away and FINALLY saw Mother Mother in concert. Ate strawberries from a side-of-the-road farmstand, picnic'd in the sun, visited friends.

The Sticks by Mother Mother: