Easter

Easter, American style

Boy did I have fun putting easter baskets together.  All the candy I never got.  ugh.

Hiding eggs was fun too.  The kids came over the day before and dyed them

Turns out there aren't many hiding spots in our living room

I think the kids were happy though

A rousing game of King of Tokyo after

Pretty good Easter if I say so myself

Industrious Hugo

Hugo helping weed!  a dream come true

Tomatillos

So, as the season fades into winter, I've been able to sneak just a few more tomatoes and peppers off the plants, making me reluctant to clean the beds up just yet.  The weather has been crazy wet lately, so yesterday I decided to do a last look though before everything rotted.  Much to my surprise, there was tons of stuff!  Look at all of those tomatoes.  And more importantly, look at the tomatillos!  The plant I put in this year really never looked very good.  Flopped all over the ground and generally was pathetic.  In september I pulled off a few pathetic tomatillos, enough to make a small batch of salsa.  But when I looked yesterday, I found all of these!

This does not include the two fridge drawers of eggplant and the drawer of peppers I picked before the weekend.  The peppers in this pic are actually from Shawna's garden.  

So, I made salsa verde and bread and butter jalapeños.  And I though I was done canning for the season.  Good thing I had gotten lazy and the canner was still sitting at the top of the stairs waiting to be put away in the basement.  

Living room art

We finally found a piece for above the fireplace. It was a big challenge because the space is huge but awkwardly shaped.  We wanted something that would compliment the oddity.  Solo is a moving piece that will hypnotize you. 

Full pantry

Though its not the can pantry I have been promised, we got these shelves from Josh and Shawna and it was just in time because look at the canned goods I have this year.  

No jam, we still have some from 2 years ago.  This year was the year of the pickle and the tomato.  

Spaghetti squash.  I haven't brought in the butternut yet.  

architecture update

Well apparently it was worth it.
Ewing architect won the Peoples Choice Award in their local Pasadena chapter of the AIA.  They are super thrilled and our house is now on Houzz.com.  Yikes!

deck flowers

I really like how the deck flowers turned out this year.  My new phone takes good pictures.  Hence, deck flower pics!

Bee care

Bountiful harvest

Holy tomato!

I think I will not run out of dilly beans this year

Architectural photography

So the architect wanted pictures of the house so he could submit them for various awards.  The only problem is that we live in the silly house, and are busy people.  We didn't have art up on half the walls, the garden is a disaster because I focused on the veggie garden this year and I let the rest of it hang for this year.  There are holes where things didn't come up, other things are too big for the space I put them, all the background shrubs and trees are tiny and don't give the intended structure... all in all a disaster.  

It took me a week and a half of full time work to basically move all of our stuff (clutter in architectural terms), do some emergency garden attempts at beautification. It was so hard since 1. I was removing all trace of us, and 2. I am a biologist darn it!  I'm no interior designer!

One of the fun things had to do with the bedroom art.  We've been working on art for this room for a while.  A lot of it went up in the past month in preparation (it does look so much better now, moved in etc).  This particular wall was driving us nuts though.  Nothing really worked.  We have a particular Portland artist that we absolutely love.  Her name is Laura Buchan and she does biology inspired woodwork.  We've seen a bunch of her stuff at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, but there were two particular pieces we loved for the wall.  The museum helped us track Pennon down, but when we got it it looked funny on the wall all by itself.  Just for the heck of it I contacted Laura and asked if she wanted to come help place it in our house.  And she did!  So Laura and Eric hung our new art and we loaded her up with garden veggies in thanks.  It was very fun and Laura is a really cool gal. 

The second adventure came when we hired a cleaning crew to come help clean.  When I called to hire them, I explained the architect situation, that we need a beauty clean and that it is a big and window filled house.  i.e. I need help.  They blew me off of course, but when they showed up mid day the day before shooting, they had a panic attack (I had sent pictures that apparently no one looked at).  3 extra crews were called in, an outside window cleaner contracted... All in all is was a huge production that they tried to blame me for not informing them.  Ha.  Why does no one believe me when I say it will be a big deal?

So heres my crappy camera showing how it looked on the day of the shoot.

My friend Jordan came out to take the pics and we spent the day from 9 am to 10 pm running around opening doors and windows, closing them, moving furniture...

It was exhausting.  By the time we finished, all the restaurants were closed, so on top of everything, I made ratatouille from the garden for dinner.  I think I deserve a little rock star status for that one. weeee 

Pretty garden

Isn't the garden getting pretty?

Persian tarragon pickles

Growing garden

Garden update

Well, we finally got the raised bed built and then I had to fill them.  For the ones adjacent to the parking area, I was able to get pickup loads and fill them by hand.  This allowed me to plant my currants and gooseberries.  As well as some onion starts that I threw in just for the heck of it.  It took 3-5 truck loads to fill each bed (short vs tall bed).  I filled 5 of them.  ugh

I also got the asparagus planted, over month after delivery but they are in the ground!

Potato boxes started! Artichokes in the ground

for the rest of the beds, instead of doing the wheel barrow thing, we hired a guy with a conveyor truck.  It was wonderful.  He just shot the dirt where it needed to go.  

It was glorious

the berries are filling in

Some squash and cucumbers getting started

the potato boxes are pretty cool if you've never seen them.  You just keep adding layers as they grow and theoretically get a tower of potatoes.  

Here's the beds with lots of starts planted

grow babies grow!