Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The great outdoors

Friends, we have entered a new era. We don't eat dinner at 11:30 anymore. We don't sling 2x4s around our living space. We hardly ever go in the basement. Instead, we spend all our time outside making piles of rocks.

Along with rock piles, we have created three sifted garden beds, one and a half of which are sheltering seedlings—lettuce, arugula, turnips, broccoli, kale, collards, chard, spinach, beets, carrots, parsley, radishes, peas, and cabbage! We also have an insane number of young tomato plants living in our dining room. We have split something less than half the pieces of firewood that are piled at the edges of the lawn, and stacked something less than half of what we've split. We have planted azaleas given to us by John's grandmother. The spot where the shed used to be is now cleared of trash and most major rocks, raked over and spread with compost. (What should we plant there?) Many, many of these projects have resulted in piles of rocks. Need any rocks?



Also, thanks to John the Goat, two big areas have been freed of tangly vines and briars. One is next to "the second shed"—the one we didn't move. It has a lilac and a small apple tree growing nearby, and after we planted an azalea there he started clearing and clearing, shoveling away a big pile of bricks and exposing a funny little concrete platform with four white tiles inlaid. (One theory: This is where the chickens used to lose their heads.) There's a big boulder there too, good for sitting. It feels like part of the yard now.





After that, he kept on going, clearing a huge space under our favorite big walnut tree, pulling out vines and briars.



It's great to be outside. The grass is growing like crazy; we have redbud and dogwood blooming and the hillsides are getting green from the bottom up. Spring! Spring! The cardinal and the phoebe sing from the wire! The Carolina wren feeds its babies on our back porch! The tufted titmouse opens wide its beak! And the creek, friends, the roaring creek!

We also finished our bathroom trim, but have apparently gotten too jaded about house work to bother taking even a single picture.

- Erika

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

I'm thinking red could draw us all together.