Meeting of the Minds

He called it a meeting of the minds.

Here's what hubby emailed the family:

Chips and salsa. Check

Margaritas. Check

A patio in the sun. Check

Figuring out the list of projects, cost, and timeline. Check

Enjoying every second of it with my wife....priceless!

It felt great to be home in the Seattle sun planning a garden and all the ways we're gonna make our yard rock this summer!

Happy Anniversary, House!

If it feels like it’s been a while since something has been posted about our favorite past time, you're not imagining it. I’ve been assigned to a big project at work for the better part of the last 6 months. The job has had me out of town just about 2 weeks out of every month – and every week for the next 5 weeks. It’s been really hard to get started on any home projects when I’ve only got about 30-40 hours to hang out with hubby and friends, wash clothes, and repack for the next trip.

This weekend, though, was perfect. I flew home to the most beautiful weather. It’s like Seattle sensed my need to be happy, enjoying perfect outside-in-the-yard-digging-in-the-dirt sunshine. The best thing about this kind of weather is that we finally have a yard to dig around in, plant in, and grow amazing things in. The juniper is gone, the soil has been revitalized, and I'm ready to get my garden on!

This gardening thing is not cheap though. Fortunately, we started out with a lot of stuff already on the property. We had Juniper (which we’ve removed), three cherry trees, an enormous rhododenron, a lilac bush, three beautiful rose bushes, rhubarb, and bulbs covering the entire property (tulips, daffodils, bluebells, lily of the valley, a ton of iris, and many more I don’t even know the name of - including an amazing lily-like flower that blooms in the fall and smells like cotton candy!) On top of all of this, we’ve been given two baby japanese maples, a magnolia tree (it's finally blossoming!), a rose bush, day lilies, crocosmia, peonies, and a juneberry tree.
It seems like a lot, but there is so much empty dirt from where the juniper used to reside that most of the yard feels naked. So a few weekends ago hubby and I hit Sky Nursery for some essentials. Sky is one of the bigger garden stores in the area and apparently they’ve just completed a massive addition and remodel. The place is HUGE. If you’ve got a yard and need stuff to fill it, this is where you need to shop.

The most exciting additions to the yard were a blueberry bush (below), a fig tree, and two kiwi plants (one male and one female - because you have to have a male to polinate and the girlfriend produces the fruit). I am very excited about the fig tree - but think the kiwi is the coolest new addition. Apparently they do very well in the northwest!

I spent a good amount of the weekend finding homes for our newly purchased plants and moving some stuff around. We also started some seeds for the soon-to-be garden boxes which hubby will be designing/building in the next few weeks.

Last, but certainly, not least...today is the one-year anniversary of moving into our little fixer-upper. I can hardly believe that one whole year has already flown by.

Our 'Best of 2009' posting listed pretty much everything we've done so far on the house. But the 'to do' list never ends.

The big things for 2010:

• Finish basement, add bathroom
• Remodel upstairs bathroom
• Paint exterior
• Plant a garden

In the meantime, I'll do my best to juggle work with posting and house projects!