Catching Up

I apologize for the lengthy break from posting. I have talked to a few of you in email and I'm sorry to worry anybody. Everybody is in fine health here. We just had to resubmit our drawings to the planning department because they wanted more information and wanted changes to the design, and it took pretty much all my free time for the last month to get that done.

Other things have been happening, so let me give you a quickie tour with some photos to catch you up.

We got a new big pot for the front garden, which looks a little sad right now but should fill out soon enough.

We've been packing things up and going through our possessions with sword and flame to reduce what we have by at least a third. We got rid of a car full of things at a garage sale. Some friends took a few things. I've sold a few things by Craigslist or our local sales group on Facebook. Much is getting donated.

Most of our bookcases headed out the door to go to new homes. Some went to some friends, and these went to a local school. We still have more. It's actually kind of a little shocking how many bookcases we had hidden around the house. The renovation includes floor to ceiling built-ins in the back parlour, and a few built-in bookcases elsewhere, so we should not need any free-standing bookcases at all.

The walls of the two parlours are now lined with packed boxes of books. And I have two bookcases worth of books to give away or sell.

We look to be having a bad cherry crop this year. That's a little disappointing, but it happens.

Noel opened the door a few days ago to see a swarm of bees all over the back yard converging on a stack of unused hive equipment that I was planning to get rid of.

They moved in and now I can't get rid of that equipment just yet.

We bought some patio furniture. Construction is currently planned to start in September, so we will be living on the deck all summer and this year we want to actually enjoy it on furniture.

You can sort of see one of the benches that we got with this set, which has a broken leg, lying on its back in the foreground. We need to call the store and get it replaced.

The center of the table lifts open to expose a drink well, though I'm not sure how often we will use it that way. Maybe once? Just to see how much the drain plug leaks, I guess.

We also got a giant umbrella, which is critical on hot afternoons. Equally critical is to furl it at night, since we get lots of wind off the bay that could break it or blow it away.

I got some new wire bins from Gardener's Supply to transfer our brush pile into. I had this idea that I would use them to make a temporarily enlarged chicken yard, but after partially assembling them I am just going to put them in the chicken yard and not be stupid about it.

We've also done some work inside, but I'll save that for tomorrow.

posted by ayse on 05/09/15