i was shelling peas last night and had to take a picture. aren’t they lovely? hubby was making methi matar malai with fresh red potatoes, peas, fenugreek and red onions from the garden. mmm.
Archive for July, 2009
just look at those eyeballs.
at least it felt good. i stayed up till 10:30 painting window trim in the glow of the porch light. it’s not much but i had to share. this is the primer coat so far, with two more coats to go. but like my mother, i just couldn’t stand the gray/blue trim another second. it practically hollers ghetto. along with the rest of the house for sure, but i’m working on it. first things first.
and with that dirty deed done i’m back to boring ol’ scraping and patching – but i’d rather be painting. it’s sooo irresistible.
by the way mom and dad, next visit you can plan on fixing my porch. i want this. i don’t ask for much, right? much love. *m
a while ago my sister was looking at buying a toyota previa. she called me to ask what i thought and i instinctively checked the boise craigslist to do a price comparison. there sat a pristine previa, with relatively low miles, waiting just for me. (one of my craigslist watchers is still set to previas and there hasn’t been another one since.) anyways, we both ended up buying crazy, pregnant, anteater minivans at the same time. talk about an impulse buy.
actually, when you are trying to fit three kids across the back of an oldsmobile, where the door only works on one side and the windows only roll half way down…maybe wanting a mini van is not that impulsive. i love it. ideally, i wanted a vw eurovan. just for the slogan, “there’s nothing mini about it.” but the previa squeezes in a little extra cubit feet too and you can feel it. in fact, it is easier to walk back to the kids from the front see that it is to get out and open the slider. just the little extra ceiling room makes all the difference. plus, i loooove being able to stretch my feet out on the dash. i can’t even reach the windshield with my toes. before i would have to hang my feet out the window and they would pick up all manner of strange bugs.
another favorite is that when it’s cold we just all jump in the slider and buckle up, then i walk to my seat. before i would lug baby and bag out to car, open passenger door, drop bag, open back door, drop baby and herd boys to their seats with various threats, walk around, open driver’s door, insert key and roll down windows, walk back to buckle baby and middle boy, walk around to other side to hang in half rolled down window to buckle the boy on the far side. all in the rain.
marc’s favorite is that the seats flip up along the walls leaving plenty of room to haul (so far) dressers, lumber, broken concrete, mattresses, plywood, brush and piles of dirt. i think he has the mistaken impression that he bought himself a truck. i guess you should say that we both love it. my advice is that if you’re in the market for a people mover, be sure to keep a special eye out. previas were luxury vans in the 90′s and sold for around $40,000. now you can pick them up for three and they’re known to still be going strong at over 300,000 miles. plus, they’re just so stylish.
and here is my sister’s version. isn’t it even stranger that we have matching vans and matching children?
and the boys are kind of cute too.
thanks to grammy for the new clothes. jael was so excited when i pulled out her dress for church. she started clapping, which was followed by screaming and grabbing because i didn’t dress her immediately. i like to wait until right before we head out the door so her clothes don’t get dirty. apparently this is not to be tolerated.
we had a work bee at my house over the fourth of july. my family visited. for some reason they like to take vacation time and come work on my house (they’re strange). while they were at it i went out and took pictures of all my muscle. this is jehu and his post-nap muscle.
grandad and gideon. (gideon thinks his muscles are the biggest.)
auntie piolet and aunt natalie.
uncle reuben.
mavis muscle.
daddy boy and grandma. (those grandma muscles are the ones you have to watch.)
and gwill, who could not be convinced to stop sucking her thumb for the occasion.
anyways, here are my slaves hard at work. we’re prepping the house for paint. a lot of the nails have worked their way out. it’s going to be a big job.
it’s a good thing i have so much help.
it was really all my mother’s idea. i thought the siding was too far gone to mess with and was just going to wait until i could afford some hardiplank. she didn’t care. she said my house was too ugly to leave another day and that was it. so she drove over here with 20 gallons of random paint and mixed it up in my driveway. “there, paint your ugly house,” she said.
unfortunately it’s not that easy, as you can see.
but i am happy with the color. my mother bought 5 gallons of white, 5 gallons of yellow, 5 gallons of that crazy green and 5 gallons of olive drab. when you mix it together apparently you get a docile, suburban sage. who knew. all for $70 instead of $500. she also bought me some primer and a lovely white trim color. all i have to do is scrape the old paint off the house, replace the bad siding, replace half the nails with screws, putty all the holes, sand the putty, replace half the trim and paint my primer coat. then i can try out my lovely new paint. although i did let her slap some on end of the garage that we were tearing off anyways, just so we could see.
that’s the other thing. my family doesn’t seem capable of visiting without doing a little demolition while they are at it. we tore of the shed on the end of the garage and couldn’t help taking the sledgehammer to the front porch as well. my mother has a personal vendetta against the gray paint. who needs rails, it’s only a 2 and half foot drop. the babies can take one for the team. i agree. it’s a wonderful improvement. this week i hope to paint the white around the pictures window and just imagine the rest is done.
(you know, sometimes i think the neighbors must think i’m a little strange. just a hunch.)
and in the midst of all the other projects reuben found time to install the climbing wall grandma bought gideon for his birthday. my dad milled up the wood on his sawmill and my mom ordered some recycled holds from a place in coeur d’alene. i love the way it turned out.
thanks for all your help ma and pa.
come again soon. much love. *m
expanding the empire. (the back yard is next. followed by the world, of course.) here are some before pictures of my yard from last summer (dirt) and this spring (grass). which didn’t turn out to be any improvement.
so we moved on to this:
which is basically a lot stinking harder than it looks. the fun part was digging up the sod i just planted and having to rototiller it back into dirt by hand. so we could go over it again with a real rototiller. so i could go over it again with a shovel. and then a rake. and then weed indefinitely for the rest of my life. or so it seems. it turns out when you water a previously, 3-year abandoned lot you get a lot more than you bargained for.
my mother had the brilliant idea to break up the sidewalk. i told my brother to get right on that. the pavers aren’t all laid yet though. i want them to flair out more when they reach the driveway and mimic the curve of the grass. the yard is basically three big circles, two of grass and then a raised, circular bed along the driveway. we plan on xeriscaping it someday after we finish filling it with dirt.
and here’s the picture of my shadow as i came up the steps. it took me a little off guard. whoa nelly.
the bottom left picture is a pet peave of mine. our yard positively vomited out into the street in a mess of weeds, rocks and dirt. my mother, brother and i spent a day breaking through the packed dirt and gravel and hauling it off. after we scraped it down level to the road we put in a temporary retaining wall of stakes and 2×6′s. (i have high hopes for a sidewalk in 2011.) all the rocks are what my husband picked out of the dirt as he dug his irrigation ditch. (and he thinks i’m compulsive.)
all the plants in the yard are courtesy of my mom, mother-in-law and craigslist. in other words we did the whole thing without spending hardly any money. my mother filled her car to the brim with transplants and drove 7 hours to spend a day planting them in my yard in the rain. then she bought me three fruit trees (pear, apple, cherry) and helped me haul a truckload day lilies we found for free out in kuna. my mother-in-law visited too and brought me roses. (i think that was because she knows her son can’t stand them.)
we turned the city right-away into our garden. my husband irrigates it with canal water every friday and it stays perfectly happy, even in the heat. we have lettuce, kale, raddishes, corn, potatoes, fennegreek, cilantro, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, peppers, spinach, beets, onions, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, hubbard squash, strawberries, raspberries, parsley, mint, basil, chives, rosemary, thyme, fennel, coriander, carrots, rhubarb, and sunflowers. some of it’s spread around the house as well, but the garden itself is a pretty big stretch. and no one steals from it either, which is what everyone was worried about when we planted it. i think it’s great just because it doesn’t take up any of my yard. we planted a whole row of corn along the street to give a more uniform view when people drive by, since gardens are by nature rather mangy.
i’m still working on my driveway. it took forever just to stack the retaining wall. my husband hauled home free concrete in the minivan so we didn’t have to buy keystones. which he decried as ugly and suburban. and then left me to stack lopsided chunks of concrete. (he still thinks i’m a little ocd. he thought it was fine before.) but i insist that this is an improvement. previously there was no driveway. just this muddy, weedy, white trash pull-up you could fit 4 cars in. it drove me crazy. i still need to edge the other side of the driveway and then fill in with fresh gravel. that and a fence. i’m dying for a lattice fence in the front yard that i can pack with 3′ flower beds to insulate the house from the street noise. i’m going to keep packing in perennials and i hope by the time we sell it will like walking into a walled garden. that’s the look i’m going for. and since we didn’t start with anything i went out of my way to get it started this year. even if it meant abandoning my house, pet projects and blog for 4 months. could you tell? but now that it’s too hot for yard work it’s just right for scraping paint off my house. i plan to have it shiny and new by this winter. i promise.
for the last time ever. who in their right mind does this for fun? it goes against all good reason. if the boys ever want to camp they can go with their daddy, make fires with sticks, huddle in caves and eat all the grass hoppers they want – while i stay home. but the american, “let’s take everything we own and head to the woods” alternative is just dumb. yes, i’ll be the first to say it.
what possesed me to trod into the wilderness anyways? it was our 7th anniversary and i had a sudden urge for pristine water. i won’t set my pinky toe in a pool, or the boise river for that matter, and it was starting to get hot. what a perfect occasion to go lake hopping. unfortunately they were all freezing cold. pretty as pictures and cold as ice. it was a cruel business. and then there were the mosquitos.
but the mountains were gorgeous and the weather was perfect. except for the morning we woke up to frost and a deflated air mattress. “why?” is the question i asked myself several times.
here is a glimpse of me and my blooming optimism.
we did go on a 10 mile day hike/picnic. and that was nice. entirely reasonable. scenery, good food, exercise and we got to hold hands. the nut jobs we passed however, wearing packs that weighed more than they did, were plain off their rockers. sadists or something.
this was alpine lake. see how deceptively delicious it looked? what is the point of a lake if you can’t swim in it? …good for nothing lake.
boy doesn’t like water anyways, so he didn’t mind. he likes rocks and trees. (the list of things i like are much more endearing. rocks and trees? pshaw.)
but he is pretty cute. i certainly wouldn’t trade him for a boy who liked jacked up trucks and light beer. not on any account, he is perfect. he doesn’t even match his socks.
(i match them for him. i can’t help it, an irresistible urge. i hope he doesn’t find it totally demoralizing. in any case his heart is still in the right spot. sometimes he even lets me comb his hair.)
another cold frigid lake (sawtooth).
and just getting ready to head back down after some tomato, fresh basil stacked bagels and chocolate.
thank you to grammy for single handedly babysitting the whole collection. who knows what we’ll do next.
i loved this movie. maybe it’s just because i love clint eastwood, i don’t know. but it’s the best movie i’ve seen in a while. i loved the way it looked, the colors, the dialogue, clint eastwood’s grating voice, sweet one-liners, the way everything came together, how i laughed the whole time, it’s entire lack of political correctness, it’s simplicty and mostly it’s redemption. “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
more about “gran torino“, posted with vodpod
that and clint eastwood’s just hot. (he’ll be hot until the day he dies, face it.)
finally.
and it already has little, black, boy-shaped, foot prints on the top of the cushions. some would say that is what you get for buying a white couch. but it was 50% off and i lose all sense of reason when confronted with sale purchases. it is soft though. and you can sit on it. plus i got a $120 pottery barn gift card for throw pillows. which are bound to be spicy.
and this morning we tried it out for our morning psalm reading. instead of all the children crying over who got to sit on my lap in the only chair, we lumped together in a sea of down wrapped cushions. it was lovely. thanks grandma for your good luck visit to pottery barn. i would have never spotted it without you.
