Testing

I downloaded this ap on my cell phone to see how blogging on the run would work. I hope it does because I'm getting a little tired of Facebook.

Now I'm going to try to add a picture.

Hmm. Seems I can't view before I publish. So here goes....

Well it works pretty well except I can't place the picture where I want it. I'm going to try to take one with the ap and see how that works.

That works pretty well. I just wish I could place the pictures.

Oh well... It's pretty easy to use at least.

I Love Lucy

The usual weekend routine for my dog, Lucy, and me is:


Sleep in until around 9am at which point I am usually awakend by the worlds cutest nose on my pillow, little round eye urging me to respond. 

This is followed by good morning kisses and a good belly scratching (for Lucy, of course!)


Put the kettle on, get the french press prepared with the awakening powers of caffeine.


Let Lucy out into the yard to do her business of smelling what went on while we were asleep. I prepare her morning snack of her favorite wet food (sweet potatoes and venison) jammed inside the center of her favorite remnant of some poor slaughtered bovine. (I thank you little bovine for giving your life to sustain humans and canaines with your yummy goodness.)


Lucy comes in about the same time the kettle whistle blows. She sits on the kitchen rug looking longingly at me as she awaits her breakfast. 

I gather my coffee, and her bone, the sound of her claws on the wood floor as she follows me into the living room. 


She sits on her blanket, and I place the goodie filled bone next to her. "Wait" I tell her, and she does; watching my every move for the go ahead. 


At this point is where the routine changed this morning. Usually, I would take my place on the couch, take a sip of my coffee, then say "OK", and she would start in on her breakfast. However, this morning, I got distracted and went back into the kitchen. I was in there for about twenty seconds when I hear the sound of Lucy's claws on the wood floor, followed by her sweet little face peering around the  doorway. I thought for sure she had already dug into her breakfast, and a small waive of guilt for my neglecting to give her the "OK" command came over me. We walked back into the living room together, and to my surprise she hadn't touched her bone yet. She was waiting on me, so that we could have our breakfast together. (Heart melting). What a thoughtful creature. I love her.


She sat on her blanket waiting as before, I take my place on the couch, sip my coffee, give the "OK", and our routine is back in place.


Lucy finishes her breakfast, jumps on the couch, stis next to me, as we look out into the plum trees and watch other morning routines of birds and squirrels. 

She curls up in the bend of my leg and rests her head on my thigh. 


I sip my coffee, petting her head, and continue to watch the morning happenings in the trees outside. 








  

Flora and Fauna

When I moved into this house back in March, I told myself that I wouldn't do any major landscaping or planting until I lived through all the seasons here. I wanted to watch the sun, and see what volunteered to grow on it's own. There hasn't been any big surprises - mostly weeds or woodland plants that you might find just about anyplace that's been allowed to be wild. 

My friend, and realtor, Dennis brought me a raspberry vine. I probably got about five berries from this little vine. They were really tasty! 

I couldn't resist buying a couple of blueberry plants at a nursery sale.  They yeilded a few berries this season. Not so sweet, but maybe next season, once the plant matures a bit, I hope to have some sweet little berries for my cereal. Nothing better than fresh blueberries on a bowl of cereal.

There were some volunteer tomato plants that popped up in the front planting beds next to the yew. They didn't really taste that great, so ended up in the compost bin.

This is the one and only pear from my pear tree. The tree hasn't been taken care of in years - so I'm not too surprised that there isn't much fruit. I had my friends from Ascent come over and cut out all the dead wood and open up the canopy of the tree. I will give it a good fertilizing, and hope next season gives me some edible fruit. I want to try to make pear brandy. I've seen folks put a bottle over the fruit when it's just forming - letting the bottle act as a mini green house for the pear to grow in, once it's matured - they brew up some brandy in the same bottle with the pear. Sounds yummy!

This little moth stayed on my window for a day or so.. not sure why it didn't move. Maybe it kept thinking it could get inside to the orchid.

Or, maybe it was trying to figure out what kind of creature the oragami swan was. The orchid was a gift from Froelick Gallery. They gave it to me in April, it is on it's second round of blooms! The current bloom has looked just like this for almost two months. 

Love it!

I have not idea what in the hell kind of bug this is. The skin on the left is what the creature on the right crawled out of. I haven't seen another one since. 

This is a conjoined Black Eyed Susan. Weird, huh? I think it happended because it was super root bound in the pot that I rescued the plant from. I dunno.. maybe not .

Roses from my rose bushes. They weren't very well taken care of either, so I am grateful for the small bounty they gave me. I will have to prune them way back this year. The yellow roses aren't that pretty, but smell lovely. The others look cool, but don't have much fragrance. I will have to move them eventually. I plan on having a proper English rose garden in the back yard one day..

This is Henry. He is a caterpillar. I found him on the fern. I bet he will turn into something beautiful.

I puchased this Magnolia tree for $10 at another nursery sale. I hope it grows fast! I want it to fill in the whole corner of the side yard. It's supposed to grow to be about thirty feet tall and spread out to about fifteen feet - someday... 

Lastly, yesterday, Lucy (see her lil' paw leaving the shot..) and I came across this little grove of mushrooms. I wonder if that's where the faeries live?

Garage V.2

It's been a while, and life has been busy, but I have a finally have a homework free moment on this rainy cold autumn eventing - so, I'm going to attempt to update this blog with the more important happenings. 


I finished knocking the down the wall in the garage, and put away all the stained glass supplies. The garage has natural light and it doesn't feel quite as dark and dank in there. 

ready to work!

I also started to remove some of the paneling on the walls. I unearthed a vine of some sort, and some old newspaper clippings apropriate for a garage of the 1940's.

 

hmm.. wonder what kind of plant this was?

old cars.

I still wasn't sure if I could fit the wagon in here - but as you can see - she fits!

But... only by about inches. You have to pull her in backwards and line the door up with the stairs that go into the house in order to get out of the car. But at least she doesn't have to be out in the cold!

Good Bye Wall

There is a wall in the dark, dank, brown paneled garage between where the car goes and the laundry/mud room. I'm guessing this wall wasn't part of the original plan as it is blocking off the only window that would allow daylight into the whole garage, and who would wanna do that?! The laundry/mud room also has the only door that goes to the back/side yard. The laundry/mud room used to have the same dark, dank, brown paneling as the garage plus some big dark, dank cabinets that were way to tall for me to reach. I removed the paneling and the cabinets in that room a month or so ago revealing white bead board underneath. Although there are many imperfections in the walls and ceiling - removing that paneling and cabinet in the laundry/mud room has made it much brighter and, I'm not scared to go in there to do my laundry anymore. 


I started removing the paneling on the garage side of the wall that divides the two rooms and found there was ship-lap board, painted white, underneath the dark, dank, brown paneling! yay! This gave me hope that if I could remove all the paneling in the garage, I may have the beginnings of another room I wasn't scared to go into - but I still needed to get natural light into the garage - so the wall that divided the garage from the laundry/mud room had to go away. 

the wall between

The dark, dank brown paneling was easy enough to remove. It pretty much just rips right off, once you find a starting point. The ship-lap, however was not that easy. I'm sure it was the original material used when they put together this little 1945 house because the nails were super strong and the boards were tongue and groove, which made it hard to start. I really wanted to save as many of the boards as possible. One board edge was stamped with a mill stamp from Oregon. I wish I could've save it but as soon as I started to pry it loose, the board split.The bead board on the laundry/mud room side was a lot easier to remove. I was able to save a few panels of it, I will keep it to patch up some of the "imperfections" mentioned earlier. 

starting to see the light

I removed what I could until I had to get the ladder out. It became apparent after almost knocking myself out while trying to pull one of those nails made of super metal out, that I wasn't going to be able to do the rest on my own. I learned pretty quickly how important having your feet firmly planted on the ground was for leverage. Good thing I have friends with height. I called in the aide of the Linman's! Eric is 6'2" (or more.. seems like more to my 5'2" frame), and Maria, well, she's vertically challenged, like me, but is very powerful when she needs to be. Eric was able to bust out almost all of the upper wall in a about half an hour. (It took me three days to do the lower part...) There were some boards that continued on past the door that we were going to have to cut with a Sawsall - so those were left behind for another day. Maria and I figured we could handle that part ourselves, and I was pretty excited about the idea of using a power tool. A couple of days later, after a wonderful brunch at Autenica, Maria and I rented a Sawsall at Park Rose Hardware. I could wonder around that store for hours. I have no idea what most of the stuff in there does - but it's kind of fascinating. The guy at the rental desk fitted us with the proper equipment, and said that he didn't see many ladies renting Sawsall's. He kept trying to sell me the additional insurance - I don't think he had much confidence in us... After a stop in the clothes isle looking for real denim jeans (which we didn't find in ladies sizes - bummer), we headed back to finish the task at hand.

Maria demonstrates how effective the sawsall is at cutting twine. (not really!)

Maria and I pondered why they named it "sawsall", and posed for a few "oh no you dint' it'" pictures for Eric's benefit. 

I wonder if the sawsall will go through electrical wires?! (not really!)

It was a little scary using, what I consider to be a big power tool, but we did it! After I got the hang of it, we were able to cut the remaining wall boards, and then cut up some boards to fit in between the studs to serve as shelves.

done! for today anyway.

It took us about three hours (some of that time was spent laughing hysterically as we came to conclusions  of how hard we had made the measuring and inserting of the boards in between the studs - that's another story) but we had totally reached the objective of bringing light into the dark, dank, brown paneled garage! When I returned the sawsall to Park Rose Hardware, the guy seemed shocked, but delighted that we had managed to return with all of our fingers, and more importantly, the sawsall was still in operating order (I only dropped it once!).

Thanks for helping me bring in the light, Linmans! 

Early Morning

I've been up since 3 am. Yesterday was a wonderful sunny summer day. I had breakfast with the Linman's at a local diner (it was just O.K... pretty basic). I added weather stripping to the front and back doors, in hopes of detouring the slugs that seem to think they can just slide on in overnight. Lucy and I went for a long walk to the dog park, and stopped in at a couple of neighborhood garage sales. I took a short nap, watched a little bit of a movie, then got ready for the western themed fund raiser for the I Have A Dream Foundation. This is an annual event put on by my friend Dennis and his partner John, and a couple of thier friends. The foundation supports a group of under-priviledged youths, guiding them from third grade all the way through their second year of college. It's a wonderful event and draws all kinds of folks to Dennis and John's gorgeous Alamea Ridge home (it's been featured in magazines!). This year they had a wonderful western band, and BBQ. I had a great time dancing and chatting with folks I hadn't seen in a while - a very genrous and thoughtful group, and I feel very fortunate to be invited to that event each year. I hope they raised enogh money to keep those kids going for another year. Go class 10! After that shin-dig, I drove out to Gresham to meet up with the Linman's again at thier friends place. They had made a big paella! I was really late in getting there, but a few late nighters were still hanging out in the back yard, under the fir trees and the stars by the fire. The paella was delish, and sitting by the fire with Jasmine (a sweet little bull dog puppy) on my lap and chatting with everyone was the end to a perfect day. Got home around midnight, hung outside with Lucy while she did her bid-ness, then went to bed. But... as mentioned in the random beggining of this post, I woke up at 3 am. I couldn't stop thinking about all the little things I needed to get done to my wee little house before fall. I finally decided to stop thinking about it, made a list, and tried to go back to sleep. Nope! It just wasn't going to happen. So, Lucy and I got up around 5:30 a.m. and went out side.

fluffy little morning clouds

It's a gorgeous morning, watching the sunrise, checking on the status of all the berries. (lots of potential crops but only one almost ripe raspberry, and one blue berry for possible havest in the next couple of days). 

keep your beak off my berries!

As I type this, I am sitting on the couch looking to the east, watching ths sun rise through the plum trees , sipping on cup of coffee - no radio, or music, just the silence of the morning, and the chirping of few birds.

...here comes the sun (do do doo do)..here comes the sun...

plumb filtered sun light

orchid filtered sun light

I'm a lucky girl. Tired, thinking too much about stuff that doesn't really matter, but feeling grateful for it all. 

Sunbeams

Early morning sunlight shines through the leaves of the plumb trees. The breeze disperses sunbeams down the cobwebs of garden spiders.