Labor Day Weekend

We took this holiday literally. We labored. Most of our time since last December when we purchased the bungalow has been on fixin' up the inside. The outside has been a bit of an eyesore, at least to me who is used to lots of flowers. At my last place, I hired a landscape designer to help with a plan and since implementing that plan and tending to the plants for several years, I know what I like and what I don't. With that confidence, I put together a landscape design for the front yard over the last few weeks and this weekend we installed it over the three day weekend.
On Friday night, Justin went off-script and started spreading some of the compost we had delivered. I wasn't ready for 4 days of labor so mostly I watched and made dinner. Bright and early on Saturday, we trucked it over to the rental yard and borrowed a sod cutter. Justin loves the sod cutter. He says it's like driving a Tasmanian devil. Justin drove the machine and I rolled up all of our weedy sod, readying it for the dump. We then spread 12 yards of compost around the freshly barren lawn. That took it out of us for Saturday. Except for a fun visit to the nursery for plants (I need a little bright spot to all of the dirt!). Sunday morning the weather was disgusting-hard driving rain. Although we were planning to rototill all of the compost to amend the soil, the prospect of working in the rain wasn't appealling. Instead, we trucked it out to the burbs to some more nurseries for more plants. It rained for most of the shopping but it sure beat laboring in the rain. By the time we returned home, the rain had let up and we got our rototilling on. By the time we had tilled the yard and raked it mostly even and cleaned up, it was time for bed. Today, we headed out to a couple more nurseries to see about filling out the rest of the plant list (we still have a few more plants to get!). And then we planted. Justin dug the holes and I filled them in. He also built a threshold to go around a basement window to hold back the dirt from the wood around the window.
We are sore and tired but there's a chicken roasting in the oven for dinner and a great view out of out dining room to our new front yard.

Here are some photos:

In process: sod removed and compost spread.

After planting:

Ah, How Cute

Here's Tink tongue-bathing Cricket and spooning. She's such a sweetie.

Puttin' Up

Yep, that's right. I'm a canner. As much as I reject gender roles, I can't help but enjoy the traditional homemaker tasks. I like to dust and cook and I'll take folding laundry any day over heavy lifting. So, this weekend when it came to canning 75 pounds of tomatoes, I said "Sign me up!". My friend Jen came over to share the bounty (actually she brought the bounty) and we made sauce and pickled cucumbers for a full shift. My dogs were barking when we wrapped up around 5 with quite a haul. Here's a photo taken before the last set of processed cans came out of the canners:This was our first opportunity to use all five burners on our range simultaneously. When we picked out the stove, we thought that fifth burner might come in handy for just this sort of thing.

Exterior!

We must be crazy. Take a perfectly put together exterior and two do-it-yourselfers and all of a sudden the window trim needs to be replaced (and subsequently painted). It was just going to be a paint job...a touch up really. But Justin, the unfailing perfectionist didn't like the way the wood on the trim was coming off in chunks when he scraped the paint. Hence, the larger job.

We shall see how much time and money this little project will set us back. The silver lining: the north side doesn't need to be redone!

Here's inspector Justin on the ladder preparing to remove trim boards.

C.O.P.S. live

Hmm, this was the scene from our front porch today. Someone did something naughty...

There were two women being apprehended. Our guess is that the car they were driving was stolen but who knows. There were some big guns!

Shuffle off to Buffalo

While I was in Buffalo for work for the week, Justin supervised the big machinery tearing up our yard for a new side sewer. During this week of 100+ temperatures, we had plumbers laboring out in the sun digging a new trench. Fun times!

This weekend, we committed to installing the tile backsplash in the kitchen. We had all of the tile up on Saturday. Here's a preview prior to the grouting phase: