Yard discoveries

I love perusing the internet. I have the daily blogs that I read and then others that I read from time to time depending on the mood. One popular food and lifestyle blog I adore is essentially notes from my dream life. I remember when I first discovered the blog a few years ago. I read, enthralled how the family made a day of walking through beautiful, enchanted woods in search of wild mushrooms. Maybe one day we can also enjoy such a seemingly idyllic life in the countryside in the south of France- enjoying delicious foods and living so close to nature. 

Until that time, that blog post was exactly the one I thought of when I made my own discovery this morning in our very own backyard! Wild mushrooms springing up where they were not, just yesterday.

I texted a photo to C immediately. Should we eat them, you think? He wrote back with a firm NO. And don't let the dog eat them either!

The enchanting mushrooms that I had such a pleasure discovering were viewed as no more than dangerous weeds! Not the French countryside attitude at all, it seems.

The little things

I was asked by a stranger at a party this weekend about what I like to do for fun. Well, the answer is a bit complex, I suppose. Chris thought it was inappropriate, or something to that affect, that I started out with…"well, I don't have too much time for fun." It's mostly true. But I also felt like listing off all the things I do in my spare time aren't most peoples' our age (or younger, in this case), idea of "fun." It's a little bit questionable whether I even consider them fun.

In my spare time I garden, do yard work, paint, run errands. Is it a bit sad to say that I like to hang out with Chris for fun? When we don't get too much free time together, it's the truth. We had a wonderful Saturday this weekend and let's see what we did for fun: we organized our trash to take to the town refuse and recycling center, we browsed for books at the public library, drove to a great farm stand to enjoy lunch and found a delicious berry pie, oohed and ahhed at other local farms along our drive, spent at least an hour at a gardening center (where I was ecstatic to find that they had the lawn fertilizer I've had my eye on), enjoyed ice cream cones from an outdoor summer shack, visited and chatted with a friend, and then gardened for two hours- planting our spoils from the gardening center. What a day! That was all definitely fun and I wouldn't have wanted to do anything else.

Today, in my spare time, I finally painted our front shutters. Ever since we laid eyes on our house, it bothered us slightly that the shutters were painted a forest green, but the front door a solid black. It's always been in our plan to paint the shutters black to match the door and the job is finally done! The photo above is the "before" picture- green shutters and all. 

Here is our house with sleek black shutters (and the gorgeous hydrangeas that we planted by the front door):

in limbo, awaiting the new black shutters

Now, before and after photos side by side to compare.

The difference may be very slight- at least in these photos, but it's the small things, isn't it? It makes a difference of night and day to me, and I think, very much rounds out the facade. It's the small things that are so fun and memorable, I suppose.

Was it fun? Maybe not as much as I had hoped and mostly a lot of hard work, but it will be so fun to come home every day to know what a big difference to us it's made.

Life lately: hikes, gardening, grilling, and visitors

Time is flying, as always. We've been busy, but here is a snippet of our last month.

The Fourth of July weekend was beautiful- it wasn't too hot at all and E and A spent the weekend as our first multiple-night visitors. We went on a nice hike along a portion the Crosstown Trail in town- the trail that we biked down last year. Except this year, we walked. It was great fun. Of course, Harry came along.

We saw a whole family of swans swimming gracefully, and Harry even got into the water (to chest level!). At some point he had had enough of the water and ran quickly- much more quickly than we could- up the steep hill towards the picnic table. 

picnic table vantage point

The trail was nice and shaded and Harry was able to enjoy being off-leash. He even walked the entire way back on his own! 

With our hiking and visitors, we've been grilling quite a bit. Well in actuality, we don't necessarily wait for visitors to grill- we had grilled hot dogs last night, just the two of us, for dinner. Here are a few of our culinary (grill-ernary) delights. 

grilled salmon on a cedar plank- Chris' specialty

throwing some shrimp (and zucchini) on the Barbie

And of course, our garden. Most of the time, I spend a lot of time looking at the plants in the garden and wondering if they will grow. Though this month we had two exciting developments: 1.) our first tomato and 2.) we harvested a petite salad that we enjoyed for dinner!

But I shouldn't really sell ourselves short. We've had a delicious mozzarella, basil and heirloom tomato salad with basil from the garden, and guacamole with fresh cilantro from the garden, as well. I remember when the herbs and vegetables were just seeds, growing in the windowsill in Boston where we had to fend off predators like Gregory!

just a baby

our salad pride and joy (2+ months of sweat and tears, really)

how does our garden grow

Lastly, Carl came to visit. Here he is, saying good-by to his dog cousin, Harry.

Summer Living

Yesterday was the official first day of summer. The summer solstice and longest daylight of the year. Each year, I'm surprised by how early the first day of summer occurs. Can it really be summer? The weather certainly doesn't feel like it yet. We've only had a few sweltering days here and there, but there was quite a nice, cool breeze in the air yesterday- breezy enough for intensive yard work to feel moderately pleasant!

Though it is just the beginning of the season of summer, I feel that we've long been taking advantage of the outdoors over the past several weeks. We've been doing our best to have our breakfast and dinner  outdoors on our days off. The grill has also been used plenty of times. We're making some progress here and there with our grilling techniques. Chris wants to eventually grill mussels, though I this might be a tad beyond our expertise at this point in time.

Certainly rain doesn't even stop us from grilling…or gardening, for that matter

Beyond grilling, we've engaged in quite a bit of gardening. Nothing edible has been produced yet, but it gives me so much pleasure to see our little sproutlings growing stronger and taller by the day. We might be able to eat one single salad from the garden by the end of the season. Here's to hoping!

We had a great time in Maine last weekend at a wedding. Summer is all about small country towns, lawn games, lobster dinners, and dockside sitting. 

Maine wedding. Party time in a barn!

Goodbye city

This is a lovely, lovely photo I took on one of our last days living in the city. It was after eight o'clock in the evening and I was heading home by bike, over and across to the Esplanade. I just had to stop and save this moment on camera: just my phone camera, with no filter, of course. It was one of the first mild evenings  of the year where the sun had not fully set yet, and water was perfectly still, and the city seemed quiet and so pleasant- one of those nights that I knew I would miss about living in the city. 

What a difference a few weeks makes and how one's life changes over so seamlessly! We have fully moved to "the county" now and enjoying every bit of it. Of course we haven't gotten on our bikes in over two weeks, but we still hope for upcoming opportunities!

DYI project: Painting

I have been up to my ears in reading and online video watching of how-to's in and around the house.  Remember the long list of "things to dos"? One of the first projects I tackled today was painting the living room of the house. I've really learned so much from other bloggers! I also scoured the internet top to bottom for paint color ideas. I compared rooms of different sizes and lighting scenarios, rooms that were a perfect match for ours in color of the floors. I've always adored gray as a neutral base color. We have gray in our current apartment and I remember exactly the name of the color. Cement block. Is is  exactly that color and I love it. 

Since our living room in the house is a bit on the darker side, I decided to go with a shade of gray that was a bit lighter. I chose "Stonington Gray" by Benjamin Moore. Chris asked me last night after we lugged home gallons of paint from our local hardware store, why I thought BM paint was better than other paint companies (I suspect this question stemmed from the price per gallon!). I truly had no idea…until I finished painting today. I used no tape and no drop cloths. The paint was a perfect consistency where it was thicken enough to cover quickly, but not thick enough to drip. The coverage was very nice and not once did I drip on the hardwood floors. 

It looks a little baby blue-like in the "after" photo, but I suspect it will be more dark when the pain dries.

I think the living room will look even better once I paint the trims in "White Dove." Harry approves. 

House beginnings

Yesterday marked a new beginning for us. We now have our house in the "country" and yesterday was the first time we had been in there solely, on our own. Chris took this photo of it when we stopped by on Wednesday during a major spring shower. The slate roof was glistening. We brought food over to the the house yesterday and set up our lawn chairs (or rather, our roof deck chairs) to enjoy our first meal at the house. Even Harry enjoyed some hamburger! He was very intrigued by where we were and even explored on his own.

Of course, during and after our visit, we had so many plans to do this and that, in and around the house. The list is endless and I can't seem to keep it all straight or even begin to figure out what to do first. It seems like so much to do and all very exciting, daunting, but rewarding at the same time. 

One of the plans is to set up an outdoor garden space. Right now, our garden space is limited to a few sproutlings in out window sills. This week was a major turn for my green thumb, as they started to grow quite nicely! It's amazing just how much the sprouts grow in one day (Chris doesn't believe me, but I watch them closely so I am sure of it).

kale and mesclun salad greens

heirloom tomato sprouts!

makeshift backyard/driveway picnic at the new house