Project 365, days 148-154

A week with a holiday weekend is a week full of joys, and work. We spent this holiday weekend replacing our kitchen sink, faucet, plumbing, and garbage disposal, and (thanks to a lot of help from my dad) it was a very successful venture with very enjoyable results. On our day off we enjoyed a cookout with friends, and the rest of the week was relatively quiet—we are enjoying the bluebird pair and the flowers blooming in our yard, and have become driveway sitters. Every neighborhood has them.

Bluebirds

Several weeks after we moved into this house I was sitting in our front room gazing out at a dismally snow covered front lawn when I was surprised to see that our front tree was full of vividly blue little birds. Calvin was napping and I sat there and watched them for the time that they spent there, feasting my eyes on the little world splash of color they had brought to my corner of the world. Though my mother had a feeder and has spent her evenings whistling conversations with cardinals and robins for as long as I can remember, birds had not previously held much too large a part of my imagination. That afternoon, however, Calvin and I drove to Lowe's to find whatever it was that those little lapis birds would eat and a means with which to feed it to them, and thus began a fascination that has only grown stronger over time for all three of us.

Our yard, both in front and back, now houses three different kinds of feeders and many times more birds; we enjoy cow birds, red-winged black birds, horned larks, all the finches and sparrows you can imagine, jays, robins, cardinals, and even a couple very regular humming birds, but to this day I think the bluebirds are my favorite. That day two years ago I couldn't have identified the little buggers in my front tree—I believed bluebirds were very rare and it never crossed my mind that our front tree could teeming with them on their return to the area for nesting season—but they return to our neighborhood every year, and as I have added gardens and a multitude of low level perches (like tomatoes cages and shepherd's hooks) they have become regulars in our yard. This year, in fact, we have our very own pair—they are on our deck or in our yard every morning and evening and off and on throughout the day every single day. I think it's likely that they are at least considering nesting under our deck, if they haven't done so already, and I am kicking myself for not having installed a few nesting boxes in time, though I will be sure to get them in this summer for next year's brood.

Project 365, days 141-147

This past week: we watched mama European Starlings feeding their babies from our suet feeder; we enjoyed a homemade-pizza party with Curtis and Julie, who were visiting from Chicago, and the next day went to the park with them, too; We got all our tomato plants in the ground, and enjoyed our first harvest of parsley from our deck planters; the purple iris that came from my great grandmother's yard via my mother's, have bloomed out front; we even got Calvin to pose for one good shot in preparation for his fourth birthday.

Project 365 days 134-140

We've been so busy with both outdoor and indoor projects lately that I'm lucky I've had time to take pictures, let alone to blog about them, but here's a quick rundown: On Friday we played outside with friends after a good piano class; on Saturday we shopped at the Dexter Garden Club's plant sale in the downtown gazebo and came home with a large variety of plants; on Sunday we planted said plants and weeded, and I found a toad which I originally took for a rock; we also spent Sunday afternoon painting our fireplace wall and kitchen soffit, pictured here on Monday after it was dry (no VOC paints are fantastic, by the way); on Wednesday, after reading a cute book about a stegasaurus, I retrieved my own much-loved childhood stegasaurus friend from the basement and shared him with Calvin, and on Tuesday it looks like we just relaxed in life, but really the relaxing came between spurts of gardening activity, as do most of our summer ativities, I suppose.

Project 365, days 127-133

It was a week of home projects, like installing a new over-the-stove microwave (I'm in love), finally having a water softener and reverse osmosis system put in (it had to be done), weeding the gardens, planting the potted herbs (parsley and basil pictured here with a sunning dog), and beautifying the front with flower baskets. And all that work makes us hungry—hungry enough to eat an elephant, and to try my hands at homemade pappardelle (a success).