HFM

What a weekend it's been here on Mars. I somehow found a giant burst of energy & got all this accomplished: Saturday -- Beer! First brew on Mars: a Belgian Saison  that I'm planning to bring with us on vacation in July. 3 kinds of malt + 3 kinds of hops + a sock full of crushed grains = hooray! We don't have a tub here like we did at the apartment, so some of the steps got a little dicey, but overall there is just so much more space here that it's much, much easier to brew overall. Success! While the beer was boiling away happily, I tried making a heated bed for Zoey, using the bed warmer we put on our mattress when it gets chilly (i.e. 11 out of 12 months). She gets so relaxed in the sun & loves being under a blanket so much, that we thought we would experiment & see if she would choose a heated bed over her regular bed for the evening. She is from the desert, after all. Sleeping dog! Success! Feeling ambitious, I thought it was high time to bottle the Ou...

We're not really ready to sort out what colors we want to paint the rooms, but we know we're ready for the wood paneling & mauve trim to go, so we bought a bunch of white paint recently. I don't know why I felt like painting at 7pm on a Thursday night was a good idea, but those cans of paint have just been calling out to me & I couldn't resist doing just one door. I chose one of the bathroom doors because I think it will unlock a mystery: The tile on the bathroom walls is a pale yellow, & the tile on the floor is a sandy mauve sort of color. The mauve trim obviously really pulls out the mauve in the tile, so it's been tough to visualize what other colors the walls could be (currently off-white) when the mauve-on-mauve effect is so strong. I like white trim in a bathroom anyway, but I also figured that painting it would break the Total Mauve Effect & allow us to think up other ideas for the walls more easily. Here's the door that hasn't been p...

A pestilence has been visited upon the Mars Farm. It has come in the form of depraved cabbage worms: I am devouring your collards and brussels sprouts right now! And the dreaded powdery mildew: We are sucking the life from your pea plants and there is nothing you can do about it! It's true that there is nothing I can do about the pea plants because it's just too far along. I can see clearly today that the mildew is so advanced, in fact, that pea production is slowing to a crawl. Alas! As for the collards & brussels sprouts, I have begun to combat the problem the old-fashioned way: picking the little bastards off the plants by hand. The plants are mature enough that most of them should withstand this initial attack, which was, by the way, brought on by delightfully warm weather & those cute little white butterflies I was formerly so fond of. The mustard greens I planted a couple weeks ago next to the brussels sprouts have come up -- as part of the same family as collards...

Lots happening among the flora & fauna of Mars this week. First, more harvesting (by me) & cooking (by Adrienne) of delicious, homegrown veg! Roasted chicken thigh & carrots, with a homegrown butter lettuce salad topped with pistachios, and pan-fried beets & goat cheese nibbles.  Slow-cooked pork over rice, with tomatoes, bell pepper & homegrown snap peas! Dinner served in our new dining room layout -- trying something different with the dog kennel thing.  The hydrangeas on the table are courtesy of Jackie, the previous owner, who I like to think of as a third grandmother. In other news, a kitchen garden has been planted! Here is a new bed of sage, summer savory, oregano, & basil, nestled in between yellow roses & the thicket of Jackie's mint: Some dill, sage, & more basil in the office window: Some marjoram, chives, parsley, cilantro & yet more basil in the back porch: Marjoram & parsley are in the egg container, & are destined for ...

After fortifying myself with a delicious brunch with Amanda, Matt, & Adrienne, today I tackled the cleaning out of the Haunted Garden Shed (the slightly creepy room under the final back extension/porch-sunroom-thing that is full of weird stuff & random junk left behind by previous owners, & that we don't ever go in). As it turns out, there is a hole in the wall, under the floor, that goes to the open area under the neighbors' deck -- a very nice way for urban nighttime critters (raccoons, possums, & yes, rats) to get in & out. When Mr. Bunkport comes to replace the fence this month, he is also going to cut back the floor of the Haunted Garden Shed & block up that hole, so I wanted to clear space for him to do that. No critters allowed on Mars. Unless they are willing to pay rent. Here's the a photo from when we moved in: And here it is, after two hours: I took out two large, black trash bags of junk, found some gardening stuff we can use, & also ...

There has been a pea-tastrophe! After reaching a height of eight or nine feet, only the left-most plants could find something to hang on to (the neighbor's trees) -- the rest were blown over by the 20+ mph winds we've been having: For scale, this is a six-foot fence. I put some twine up to support them in their newly horizontal posture, in hopes that their pods will continue to fatten up & find their way into our bellies. So far, so good. That one on the far left is going to find its way into the neighbor's living room before too long, I fear. In other gardening news, our friend & neighbor Jon has donated a beautiful 4-foot planter to our veg-producing efforts: Today I planted it & the planter nearest the camera with fava beans & more lettuce. The far one will get peas this weekend. They should have an easy time climbing their way up the security gate. After we get some more dirt this weekend (there is something that seems so backwards about paying money fo...

Finally getting around to a couple decorating projects. Well, the word 'decorating' might be a stretch -- maybe more like 'continuing to move in.' When we first arrived, we talked about getting a plastic film to put over the bedroom window, to do something about the "view." Finally got one this week, & got it up there last night! In the front room, I have been wanting to put up some curtains for weeks & weeks, because when I work from home, the light in the morning is just a little much. Done! I was sent two very nice framed pictures for the walls this week. Maybe that's what caused this flurry of activity, actually! Here are nine vintage postcards of Historic Lowell, Massachusetts, on the left. (On the right is a hand screen-printed poster protesting Arizona's racial profiling law that I got at a protest.) And here is a framed photo of the Boott Mills in Lowell, on the right: On the left, that's a drawing of Jack Kerouac & a kitten, a...

Apologies first, for the dismal quality of the video -- my camera is very ancient. Still, you can get an idea of the fun that Zoey is having with her new kibble-dispensing toy, the Kong Wobbler, & how good she's already getting at it, after just a few days: She's just learned how to get it away from a wall on her own. Way more stimulating for her than slurping her entire dinner out of a bowl in 15 seconds. And way more entertaining for me.

This weekend's big Mars work was conquering the front yard patch...again. It's shocking how quickly it gets out of hand. I forgot to get a 'before' photo, but this is more or less what it looked like: After 3 hard hours, Adrienne had it cleaned up entirely: The view from the front steps, highlighting mysterious bricks She filled the 32 gallon compost bin, plus 4 paper grocery bags full of grass, vining stuff, and giant (five-six feet tall) Italian parsley that had gone to seed. The view from the front A close up, showing the bumper sticker I put in the window: My dog graduated with honors from Pawsitive Tails! Afterwards, we took one of the Parsley Monsters over to Jon's, just to show off. Here's Adrienne, showing how tall it was before she lopped the top off: It almost won... Jon admired the Parsley Monster so much, that he put it in a vase in his living room: I hope it doesn't wait until the middle of the night & steal his stereo.