Paw-blo Picasso

It's been a pretty mild summer so far.  May was great weather-wise.  We only have a few big rain storms and a couple days over 85.  Mostly it was high 70's and glorious blue skies.

We spent the weekend outside.  Blake had to work, but he worked from home.  More specifically, he worked from the patio.

I puttered around the yard as my energy came and went, and also curled up on the bench under the lilacs with my kindle and a selection of John Green books.

It was a great weekend.

Bear, of course, spent his time patrolling the yard, checking on the neighbors, and digging up previously-burried treats.  There's nothing quite so appealing as when he digs up a gooey bully stick, brings it proudly to you and sets it on your bare foot.  Yummm-o.

All that work in the 80 degree sunshine tired him out, and he napped the rest of the afternoon like it was his job.  But, not before he created a mud masterpiece on the back door.  Thanks, Bear.

Easter

This post could just as easily be titled "A love letter to the self-timer."

It's fairly rare that I blow dry my hair and get fully "ready"for church, but I felt like Easter was a great opportunity to put on a new dress and pull out the blow dryer.  The cherry tree was in full bloom and the yard was looking spiffy after our marathon clean-up session on Saturday, so we pulled out the camera and took some family photos.

Thank goodness for Blake and his artistic prowess and technical know-how.  He can put a camera on top of our good ole Honda Accord and make us look halfway decent!

Our neighbors probably thought we were strange staring at our car with plastered-on smiles.  Oh well.  The cherry tree is one of our favorite things about our house, so we like to get as many pictures of it/with it as possible.  There's just nothing better than the springtime - when all the windows are open and the smell of cherry blossoms is wafting through the rooms.  I could live in perpetual spring for the rest of my life and never lose my appreciation for it.

 

Picturesque

All this snow has been a huge pain to deal with.  We dig our car out, then the plows come by and we have to dig out again from an even bigger pile.  We shovel the walks, then it snows and ices over the next day.  We go out and shake off the tree branches again and again and again.  We dry Bear off every time he comes in the house from his adventures.

But there are two good things about all this snow.  1.  Snow days (I wish we got more of them), and 2. The way our house looks in the snow.  I can't get enough of the bright red with the stark white.

When we first bought the house we contemplated painting it a more subdued color like grey or wedge wood blue, but we quickly grew to love the fire-engine red color and are so glad we kept it.  Grey?  What were we thinking.  

Montage

That chair in the last post?  We got it for $50.00 at a neighborhood furniture sale.  It's a brand new Pottery Barn armchair that normally retails for $650.00.  Score of the decade!  I do so love a good deal.

In other news, Bear continues to be an absolute delight.  He entertains us all day with his silly antics and his penchant for snuggling.  He's loving this fall weather and asks to be let out every few minutes just so he can lay down on the patio and chase the falling leaves.  He's trained on the bells now, so all he has to do is go ring the bells and sit and wait for me to open the door.  Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure he's got us trained rather than the other way around.

He loves to survey his domain every morning - both from the front window and from the edge of the patio.  The first thing he does when we come downstairs in the morning is to run to the front window, wiggle his way between the curtain panels, and try to push the curtains aside so he can have a better view.  This means I actually have to be halfway dressed and partially presentable in the morning so that all our neighbors aren't horrified when they look in.  BUT, does this mean I actually do look presentable that early in the A.M.?  Not a chance.

Bear finally reached his 16 week mark last weekend, so he's cleared to meet other dogs and go on more involved adventures.  Yesterday he was the toast of the town in Bethesda when we went for a walk and lunch with friends.  A few people even stopped to take photos of him.  He posed like a champ. That's my boy.

Oh boy. I'm turning into one of those dog owners.  Well, begin as you intend to go on, I say.  To cement my status as crazy dog lady, here's a montage of the little guy surveying his fiefdom:

More of Spring

I can't get enough of our house in the springtime.  The forsythia bush blooms bright yellow and is followed shortly by the tulips (I planted them last fall and was ecstatic to see them come up in such force).  Then there's the piece de la resistance - our cherry tree. 

Blake and I have both decided that if anything ever happened to the cherry tree that we'd have to move.  It's just so much a part of the identity of the house.  Our yard would feel naked without it.

When it's in full bloom, I can smell it wafting down the street about a block and a half away.  The sun is always hitting it just-so as I'm walking home from the metro and it makes my heart burst with how much I love where we live.  The first thing I do when I get home on those nights is to crank open all of the windows and let the scent fill the house.  It feels and smells like spring.  It's magical.

On a different note, I also think we're single-handedly employing all of the honey bees in the metro area during the two weeks it's in bloom.  The whole tree buzzes happily with activity.

Azaleas

One of my favorite things about springtime DC is that the color comes in waves.  Not everything blooms at once.  The daffodils come first.  Then the cherry blossoms and the tulips, then last (but certainly not least) the azaleas.  I'm pretty sure it's nature's way of easing us through 'til summer.  Just when I think the soggy blossoms littering the pavement are going to break my heart - wham, here comes the next round of color and I'm perking right up again.

Blake and I have been taking walks around the neighborhood at night to enjoy our neighbors' azaleas.  Our neighborhood is absolutely filled with them - in every shade you can imagine.

These photos are from my iPhone and were taken at dusk, so they're nothing special.  But, you can imagine how amazing the colors are in person.

When we bought our house we had only two azalea bushes on the property.  Huge, white, puffy ones by the patio.  We've kept those, and added several more. We can't be outdone by our neighbors now, can we?

Pennsylvania Blue

When we purchased our home back in 2009, we knew we'd have to make some landscaping updates. The shed was old and crummy, and the brick patio was buckled and sloping precipitously in toward the house.  The brick required constant weeding, and caused me frequent heartburn as every time it rained, the water would come rushing in toward the house and pool by the foundation (eek!).

We ousted the old shed and replaced with with a new, updated version throughout last summer and into the winter (our projects take a long time around here, ok?), and have been saving and planning for a new flagstone patio since we signed our mortgage papers on the dotted line. 

Although we're often DIY-ers, we weren't ready to take on the leveling, foundation digging, cement stair jack-hammering and general stone heave-ho-ing that comes with putting in a new patio.

We worked with East Coast Landscaping to come up with a plan, and let them work their magic. 

They had a last-minute hole in their schedule, so they started construction while we were up at the lake.  We had them send pictures at the end of each day, and had to have a few changes made (we're pretty picky customers), but it was a fairly painless process. 

We couldn't be more tickled with how it turned out.  AND (big, important and) we've already had a couple of nasty rain storms, where, to our delight, the water rolled politely off the patio away from the house rather than rushing in toward it.  As if the patio weren't beautiful enough to look at, it also brings the sweet relief of knowing I can sleep at night without worrying that our foundation would be soggily disintegrating.

I even bought some long lusted-after outdoor lights - I like to think of them as the cherry on top of a big, delicious ice cream sundae.

Come over and have a BBQ with us soon, ok?

More saving, more doing, more dirt in our car.

When spring hits each year, you can count on the fact that Blake and I will be up at the Home Depot every Saturday morning scouting out new flowers and shrubs, and waiting in the mulch line.  Home Depot is great in the spring.  There's a DJ playin' rasta music in the garden section and the flowers are plentiful and gorgeous.  All of this plus some grungy, dirt-covered clothes, and you've got yourself a party.

I've started to see that there would be advantages to owning a truck...  other than the very obvious disadvantage that you come across when you're Mormon and own a truck: getting called every weekend to move someone in our out or go to a scout camp-out. 

So for the time being, we'll remain selfish with our vehicle choice and will continue to deal with the dirt in our trunk that comes with all of our Home Depot outings.

Owning a home and having a yard is hard work.  It's a full-time job on the weekends to keep the place cleaned up, weed free, and looking presentable.  But I will say this: it's so worth it. 

I've been spending a few minutes out on the patio when I get home each afternoon, enjoying the great weather we've been having.  I get to breath in the smell of the lilacs, and be surrounded by these beautiful azaleas and other products of our hard work.  It's heaven. 

Our house in the springtime gives me a perma-grin.

I know I know.  Every post I've written in the past couple weeks revolves around the beautiful spring we're having, but I just can't get over it.  Spring is by far my favorite season, and I never get tired of it.  It's our third year in our house, and I've been looking forward to our cherry blossoms for months. 

As happens every year, I catch people from all over the neighborhood stopping on the sidewalk or road in front of our house to take pictures.  And it is picturesque, don't you think?  The bright red house, the soft pink blossoms, the green grass and the round yellow forsythia bush?

They're not completely at their peak yet, but I am thinking they'll probably be at optimal blossom-ness this weekend.  You know what's even better?  They smell as good as they look!  When you turn onto our street you see a puffy pink cloud of blossoms and the closer you get the more you can smell them.  I was telling Blake this morning that I wish I could bottle up that scent and keep it all year round: the blossoms, the clean, fresh spring air, the forsythias.  Mmmm.  It's my idea of heaven.

What exactly is figgy pudding?

Does anyone know what a figgy pudding actually is?  And, if so, how to make one?

I've got about 500 ripe figs that need to be used.  And used fast. 

Our fig tree was a wee little guy when we moved in a year and a half ago.  Now it's a towering two-storey jungle of a tree that we can't cut back fast enough.  We pick a big bowl of figgies every day, but it's still not enough.  The ones we don't get to in time get eaten by the pesky wildlife (squirrels and birds) and then dropped on the ground to become fodder for the even peskier bees.  And I do not like the bees.

When Blake and I were picking figs last week, we accidentally knocked a baby bird out of its nest (disclaimer: we're not masochists...we had no idea there was a nest in the tree, or else we would have been more careful while picking).  Blake and Jimmy spent the rest of the evening devising -with the help of google- operation baby bird rescue.  They successfully got the little feather-puff back into its nest.  It was great news at the time, but now the little puff has been chirping as loud as he can for as much of the day as he can.  It's so bad that I'm about ready to go knock him out of his nest again. 

Year of the Yard

You may or may not have seen what we've been doing in the yard lately, but the transformation is coming along nicely.  We've got big plans for the next month: a new shed, an arbor, and a slate patio...all good things.  But while those things are still in the pipeline, I've really enjoyed reaping the benefits of having a husband with a green thumb. 

I'll bring you a figgy pudding.

Actually, I'll bring you a figgy anything.  Just find me a recipe. 

Our fig tree is producing at a stupendous rate.  We've got figs ripening faster than we can pick them. And squirrels strewing half-eaten figs around faster than we can pick them up.

So, if you're in the D.C. area and you're in to figs.  Let me know.

Happy Fourth/Fifth of July!

When the fireworks were going off last night we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic downtown looking for a parking spot.  Great way to celebrate our nation, right?

So, we got home frustrated, fatigued, and shaking our fists at the traffic gods in futility.

And I had to remind myself that life in general is pretty great.  I mean, look at that hydrangea.  We've got three huge bushes of those.  Life can't be all that bad...even if we missed my favorite firework show.

Just a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Well, it's been beautiful in our yard lately. The azaleas were in full force, the grass was green, and the trees were in perfect shape.

Proof:

That is, until disaster struck on Monday night and one of our biggest trees suffered a massive "natural disaster" of the left branch.

Proof:

See, there's Blake's face poking out from all those beautiful branches.

We were/are pretty upset. It was a huge branch and it provided us with a lot of privacy. Goodbye branch. Goodbye privacy.

So, Blake is out there right now putting his trusty (small) handsaw to use. Did I mention that the handsaw is small and the branch is most certainly not? We'll see how this goes.

Proof:

(sigh) Oh the joys of home ownership.

Cha Cha Cha Changes

Remember 6 weeks ago?

Well, things are looking a little bit different now.

There is no prettier city in all the world than D.C. in the springtime.

Hey Mr. Post Man

I just really like our post box. Especially when it's covered in a light dusting of snow.

Welcome to yester-year.