Welcome to the jungle.

That is, our garden. It's growing like crazy! Check it:

Pole Beans,

Cucumbers,

Corn,

and Tomatoes (5 kinds!).

And the lovely harvest.

We be jammin.

Sauvie Island + picking berries until your hands look like those of a cold blooded murderer + a ten pound bag of sugar + Molly doing all the work while I eat berries = flippin' phenomenal jam!

THE Refrigerator

The Criders came over for s'mores one evening and we got Caleb a little sidetracked with some kitchen demolition. Turns out the wall behind the cabinet is in good shape, just needs some paint.


So we put in an order for a lovely, and more importantly, large refrigerator! She was all set for delivery last week, but when she arrived the guys who came to install her didn't believe it could be done. They stripped off her doors but still couldn't get through. In fact, we had to refuse delivery. But I just couldn't give up on that fridge, so before they left I made them measure the back door one last time. Meanwhile the other technician was able to remove the one stubborn pipe that didn't want to fit through the doorway. Victory!


When they connected the waterline they found a leak in the wall. Our "first response man" Benjamin came over and worked his magic to fix the leak and we were in business. Take a look! Isn't she a beauty? We love her with an everlasting love.

Thank you!

Garden

Corn!

Backyard Garden

We are growing: onions, tomatoes, spinach, kale, lettuce, turnips, radishes, carrots, potatoes, corn, cucumbers, raspberries and beans.

We backfilled the retaining wall and planted some flowers and succulents.

Updates

Last night we enjoyed dinner on the patio with the other Evergreen girls house.

Tonight we did some yard work, and finally started edging the walkway.

I thought the lack of dishwasher would be the biggest downfall of the kitchen.  Turns out I don't dislike doing the dishes by hand as much as I did in the past... and the refrigerator has proven to be the weakest link!

Up next: our creative bathroom storage solution!

The man of the house

Meet Oscar, our weather boy. Or, as I-who-cannot-hold-my-tongue tell guests, "Come to the kitchen and say hi to Oscar the stripping weather boy!"


How Oscar came to live with us is another story, but as his 75-page instruction manual says, he's the "here's how to dress!" guy that lives inside our mini weather station. In this photo, he's sporting a sleek ninja ensemble. (Notice in the bottom right corner that it hit 80 yesterday!)

When we first met Oscar in April, he was wearing an overcoat, scarf, and hat almost every day. Now he tends toward the ninja look, or a modified version I like to call his Grease outfit--black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. Occasionally he gets out a beach chair, though he still pulls out the umbrella many days.

I don't trust his predictions much (he's holding an umbrella tonight...maybe I just don't want to believe), but we're really all waiting for when the weather gets really hot, because then the manual promises us that Oscar will strip down to his beach wear: nothing but creepily small boy shorts. And then, I guess, we're supposed to do the same. Perhaps that will finally scare the neighbor's chickens to death.

We are making excellent use of the oven

Rhubarb pie, in honor of the landlords. We ate it with relish (figuratively) and ice cream (literally, and lots of it).

Best. Neighbors. Ever.

How cute is this? Answering a quick knock on the door, I spied our 3rd grade neighbor, Elise, sprinting across our lawn toward her house. I look down on the doorstep, and this lovely bouquet greets me, in its little handmade basket. I can't even get over it. It doesn't get much sweeter than this!

How does your garden grow?

:: before & after ::

Yes, indeed, through the toil of our backs and the sweat of our brows, we have managed to bring life up from the loam of the earth.

After all the digging,






and planting,















and flippin' cute sign-making (thanks to katie!),











we have radishes, beets, spinach, kale, raspberries, strawberries, and tomatoes growing -- and more on the way! Katie even got dirt under her fingernails (a big step!), I got more muscles (hard to believe, no?) and we got to inhale the lovely stench of chicken manure for a full day! Who could ask for more?

And the flag is gone.

This flag sticker on the back door really needed to go away.  So it did in about 20 seconds, as soon as I got my hands on a razor blade.  Hope you guys won't miss it.  (It didn't really seem like your style!)

One move, two hours!

I have moved a lot lately--three times in the last year? Yikes! But I have always had decent weather for moving, which is pretty impressive in Portland, considering that I've moved in the spring and fall.

This time, not so much, though I'm hoping that's a good sign. Good weather moving in = place I want to leave soon. Bad weather moving in = I think this is a place I'd like to stay a while.

Even with the rain, it was my smoothest move yet (don't think about that too hard). One U-haul, two hours from first box in to last box out, and a crew of hardcore movers.


(Katie takes the best arm's length self-portraits ever!)

I didn't get any shots of the actual Disaster of Boxes (yes, this is the official term for a large collection of boxes, like a gaggle of geese or a murder of crows), but there's still a large collection of plastic tubs outside my door to by dealt with.

In our next installment: How I Doubled My Closet Space and Learned to Hate Lowe's AND Ikea is Ruining My Soul.

The first thing we did...created a blog.

Alright, so maybe not the first thing. The first thing was watching Back to the Future II. The second was drinking all the leftover booze. The third was moving Molly in (and boy! You thought I was bad?). The fourth = blog.

Although it's likely that these snapshots into the lives of your motley crew of tenants will more likely frighten than amuse you, here's to hoping that amid the terror that may be the color I paint the attic ceiling, you will find moments of happiness about what we did to your house while you were away.