Home Improvement

The exciting thing about our new place is that there are pieces here and there that we can really make our own.  For example, we have a really nice porch that will eventually have some patio furniture and maybe a little fire pit thing, a little hillside outside our door where we are going to plant daffodils and wildflowers, and we have a pretty long window box. 

Over the past two days Cliff and I have been working on the window box.  We are late enough in the season that a lot of home and garden places are starting to discount their plants.  We lucked out as we got 11 four ounce plants for only $1 each!    For the window box we bought a little honeysuckle boxwood, an ornamental grass, and tons of Sedums.  We really love Hen and Chicks and those types of plants grow really well here.  I took a photo so that you guys could see our progress.  We still have a bit more space to fill so we are keeping our eyes peeled for goodies while we are out and about.  Also, the garden gnome is a lot happier now that he actually has plants to look over in our mini garden :)  Side note: we bought tarragon, rosemary, tri-color sage, and lemon thyme.  They are currently living inside but will get moved outside in the spring.

We are hopefully going to plant the daffodils within the next few weeks.  We really loved Williamsburg in the spring because daffodils were everywhere.  We are going to try to recreate a mini version of that in our own backyard.

Our other major project this weekend was to install a bike lock on the side of the house.  We have really nice overhangs so Cliff's bike won't get wet when left outside.  We wanted to be able to secure his bike since it is his "car".  Cliff researched and found a steel sleeve online that would allow for us to park our bikes together using a heavy metal chain.  In order to actually make this work we would need to secure the steel sleeve in concrete.  No problem!  We went to Home Depot, bought two bags, and were ready to go.  I am so impressed with this process as we mixed and poured a concrete slab using the limited resources available to us: a pickle bucket, a borrowed garden hoe, a stick, a milk jug, and some good old fashioned yellow dish gloves.  Cliff and I had never been around wet concrete so we did what any good 16 year old kids would do...we carved our initials.  Awesome. We know.  Now the bike is not sitting in the middle of our kitchen taking up precious space.  Yesterday was an exciting day.

Other than our home improvement activities we have been doing quite a few 0-5 mile hikes around town.  Most of the hikes that we have done pretty much require us to walk up big hills.  From being outside so much (and the help of Cliff's new tree book) we are able to identify more and more plants each time we go out.   I'm sure Cliff will post about it later but I did want to share a photo of a fallen leaf from a big leaf maple. Look how big it is! It's nuts.

Also, we now have some official followers to the blog.  Thanks Aunt Kay, Aunt Peggy, and Uncle David.  Hope all is well with you guys and thanks for reading!