HFM

Back on Mars today. No projects around the house -- too busy doing laundry from the trip & resting up for the work week. Adrienne had the great idea to take Zoey to a nearby state park, so we did that, too, to take advantage of unbelievably warm weather. Here's a brave dog, wading into the ocean for the first time in her life: She had fun splashing around, & chasing the lizards & squirrels in the park. She thinks she's a crack hunter, but luckily for us -- and the lizards & squirrels -- she's not. In other news, while in NH, I got to pitch in on someone else's home improvement project: my dad is refinishing the walls in a half (quarter?) bath he has off the kitchen. Mostly I held the flashlight & the tools, & held panels up to be nailed in, but it was fun working with him, & it was great experience to learn how to do a thing like this. I even learned how to install a light fixture without killing myself. Hey! And, like a project on Mars, the...

Even though she's sad to see me go away for two weeks, Zoey is being a trouper by helping with the laundry and packing. "It just wouldn't be right if you left here & didn't smell like me."

The summer's vegetable experimental plantings have done well, & I have learned a lot about what will do well & where. Favas did fairly well on the front porch: Destined for the roasting pan! The planters I had them in were too small, & while favas tolerate some shade, most of the porch is perhaps too shady. Next time, I will put them in the back yard. Here is a little box full of the bounty of our garden, put together for a long-lost friend who came over for coffee: Carrots, mint, lemon verbena, cilantro, roses. The carrots were wonderfully sweet, but didn't reach their full length because I didn't prepare a deep enough bed. More digging in my future! And/or buying seeds for one of those little stubby varieties instead. The cilantro did surprisingly well in a little shady spot under the lemon verbena, so more to go in there next time, as well. Later today, I head off to go enjoy the bounty of autumn in New England for two weeks. More updates from Mars when I ret...

Friday was the most important day of the year: my birthday! Adrienne threw me the dinner party of dinner parties: Breakfast for Dinner, featuring Rochette's should-be-famous-they're-so-good bean recipe from Lowell, & several of the best people ever born. Here are some photos: The beans go in the slow cooker with a bunch of salt pork & a tiny bit of ketchup. Nine hours later: magic! The vegetarian-friendly version. Scrambling is in your future. English muffins! Fancy butter! Champagne! Sugar cubes & bitters for champagne cocktails! Susie & I having lively conversation in the kitchen. I am wearing my excellent new pitbull-with-a-halo t-shirt that Amanda & Matt gave me. Zoey had fun at the party too, working to get some biscuits out of a toy. For the non-champagne-inclined, gin & sodas with borage flower ice cubes. The cooking begins! I was in such heaven with the meal that I forgot to take photos of it before we had devoured everything. Including the gorg...

We needed more dog food. We decided that instead of borrowing a car to go get another 30-pound bag (& figuring out how to pack in yet another errand), we would just order one from Amazon. That worked out great, although it came in a box the size of a coffin. I was about to cut the box up to put out with the recycling, when I thought it might be fun to make something out of it first, & see if I could put the dog in it & snap a photo. Because, really, why not? This is Zoey's airplane. I made it in a couple hours on Labor Day: This is what Zoey had to say about the second part of the idea: You want me to what? I'm going to put it out on the driveway with a "free" sign on it this weekend, in case some family with little kids passing by would like to have it to play in.

And also, I started mulching the rose bushes with cut up wine & champagne corks that I've been saving for a while & meaning to recycle. Only had enough to do one. Better get drinking!

We decided to postpone painting Adrienne's office -- she had too much work to do this weekend, so rather than try to squeeze the project in & end up stressed out, yelling at each other about the proper technique for painting trim, we decided to just put it off for another weekend. Instead, I took advantage of some excellent weather & tackled a yard project that's been on my mind for a couple weeks: turning the panda corner into a little reading/meditation/morning coffee/sitting spot. As you can see, the placement of the lemon verbena, hibiscus-like plant, & two rose bushes set this corner sort of awkwardly apart from the rest of the yard, making it basically unusable as-is: View when you enter the yard. View from the side. What's back there: ten square feet of grass & spiders. I've been reading two books about garden design that gave me the idea for the project. One pointed out that even in a small yard, it's nice to have multiple places to sit ...

...but I didn't realize it had been a whole month since I last posted! Four different people have asked after the blog in the last week -- I've been busy with work and with dog training, & Adrienne started the school year on August 13, so we just haven't been doing much bloggable work around the house. We did, however, get one thing done this month that I've been meaning to post about for two weeks -- electrical work! The system was upgraded from a fuse box to modern circuit breakers by a licensed electrician in 2007, but the entire back of the house -- the kitchen, Adrienne's office, the sun porch, & one of the outlets in the bedroom -- was on just one circuit. Already a less than ideal situation. Then, Mr. Bunkport had to monkey with the system when he rebuilt the structure under Adrienne's office so that the refrigerator would still run while they were working -- he's a licensed contractor & knows what he's doing...but let's face it: h...