(new) neighborhood wildlife

Our old house was in a great location close to civilization but letting us see the occasional woodland creature scampering by.  We saw foxes a few times and heard a lot of fishercats in the woods next to the house.  There were lots of turkeys, and there was this little guy.

We love the house we've moved to, but there's been a bit of wistfulness about leaving behind the "hidden wooded gem in the middle of the city" location we used to have.  Mind you, I'm glad to leave the fishercats behind, but the thought of just squirrels and chipmunks in the yard was a little boring.

Thankfully, the new neighborhood doesn't disappoint.  Mr. Cecil and I were out on a walk last week, when I noticed about seven or so really, surprisingly, intimidatingly large birds in a cluster of trees.  We turned a corner and found a few of them perched on the roof and chimney of a house.  Stock-still.  With their wings spread out.  It was more than a little creepy, in a fascinating way.

Based on a little quick googling, I think they're turkey vultures.  So, not a threat to small and medium-sized dogs (yay!) but pretty cool to see.

 

how i roll

Oh yes I did.  Radio silence for two months, then back with an atrocious pun.  Pow!

I may never buy store-bought hamburger rolls again.  I won't if The Awesome Husband has anything say about it, anyway.

These were somewhat time consuming in a plan-ahead sort of way, but not overly difficult.  My perspective may also be different now because the process of cleaning up after cooking finally involves putting bowls and spoons in our dishwasher rather than into the sink where they'll mock us until we wash them by hand.  So now everything feels easy-peasy.

Anyway, yeah, homemade hamburger rolls.   We had these with black bean burgers, sweet potato fries, and a salad.  Yum!

orange + chocolate = delicious

One of my eccentricities is a very, very strong aversion to wastefulness.  I should probably put another "very"  in there, just to be accurate.  What this meant when I made candied orange peels was that I couldn't bring myself to throw away the orange-infused syrup left behind at the end of the steeping process.  Most of it went into the freezer to await further inspiration.

An idea hit me before the pot hit the sink, in fact.  I added milk to what I couldn't scrape out and stirred it over low heat, then added cocoa powder and whisked it until it was incorporated.  

Orange hot chocolate.  My new favorite toasty beverage for winter.  Yum.

settling in means being festive

Let's take an intermission of sorts from the posts about our old house.  I suppose you could also call it an intermission from not-blogging.  That wouldn't be inaccurate.

We're about 90% settled in at the new house.  There are some boxes left to unpack, which drives The Awesome Husband nuts but doesn't phase me much.  There's some art left to hang on the walls, but I'd rather wait until we're sure of where we want things to go before we go hammering nails every which way. 

Thankfully the kitchen's pretty well put together at this point.  Pots and pans and mixers and appliances are all where they need to be, which made it much easier to make some festive treats last weekend.  There was this wonderfully adaptable recipe, which I made as cranberry lime bread.  And then, because I wanted to make something for someone allergic to eggs, peanuts, and dairy -- the horror! -- I also made a small batch of candied orange peels.  

I think they turned out pretty well.  And hey, in the background and stuff, that's our new kitchen!  

   

love letter to our house: living room

Whoopsie!  I showed you the before and after versions of the outside of our house, then completely dropped the ball on the rest of it.  Moving will do that to you, apparently.

So I'd mentioned in passing that there was some orange shag carpet when The Awesome Husband closed on the house and first clutched the keys in his very own hands.  That doesn't fully convey the amount of 1960s-ness that had to be eradicated from the premises.   Not only was there orange shag carpet covering every square inch of the floor other than the kitchen and bathroom, but there was wall paneling everywhere.  And it covered up wallpaper.  Which covered more wallpaper.  

There were also some pretty sweet window treatments. 

We tackled the walls ourselves with some help from friends and family, and once we gave the orange shag the boot, we paid to have the hardwood floors refinished.  We could have given it the ol' college try, but it wouldn't have looked as good and it sure wouldn't have been done in a weekend.  Best $700 we ever spent.

And then, you know, we put furniture in it and stuff.  Take a look! 

Before 

During

After!

a very good day

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with good food and good company. 

I'm thankful for lots of things this year.  I won't bore you with the whole list, but Mr. Cecil is certainly on it. The dog beach 10 minutes away is on it too. 

"Leave it!"

love letter to our house: exterior

As I mentioned recently, we're selling our house.

This means, among other things, that it's never looked as wonderful as it does now. The outside has been pressure washed and the landscaping was updated.  All the rooms have been re-done over the course of the past few years.  The living room wall paneling and orange shag carpet are long gone, and even the pink kitchen counter that hung on for a while has been revamped.  And of course we re-did the bathroom.  Oh, the bathroom...

So now's the time to post pictures of it, right?   One part show-off-our-hard-work, one part nothing-else-interesting-is-happening-to-me-right-now, and one part farewell-house-we've-loved-living-in.

First up, the exterior:

Before

After

urban hiking

Now, I'm using the term "urban" loosely here.  This isn't a major metropolitan area by any means.  My point, though, is that we went hiking this weekend on a lovely wooded trail that's adjacent to my town's biggest commercial center.   You can go to the mall, and then a fraction of a mile away you can hike for a solid hour.  No joke.

You can hear cars going by, but visually you'd never know you're still remarkably close to civilization most of the time.  We even watched as an owl flew across the trail in front of us, landed on a branch in a nearby tree, and stared at us for several minutes.

in bloom: pale pink daylilies

Apparently 2012 was the Year of the Daylily around here.  I've already done posts on two different varieties this summer.  We'll, they were different colors and they didn't bloom at the same time, so I'm assuming they're different varieties. 

The pale pink ones were my favorite, though.  My fourteen-year-old self, who hated frilliness and being called cute, would probably engage in much eyerolling about that.  That's ok, though.  They're just plain pretty. 

They're also likely to be the last "in bloom" post this year.  Cue relief or disappointment.  I'm pretty sure everything in the garden now that's gearing up for the end of the season was the subject of a post last year already.  (Though, now that I've said that, watch some beautiful dark horse of a weed turn up next week...)

conveniently, we're growing beets this year...

On Tuesday, The Awesome Husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary.  We both took the day off from work, and we had grand plans to go kayaking!  And have a picnic at the place where we got married!  And be outside in the late summer, not-quite-fall air!

But it rained all day, so we changed our plans.  It was ok -- we still had a great time spending the day together.  One thing The Awesome Husband in particular had as a priority for the day was to make sure we did something new, because of the fascinating science behind this article.

With that in mind, we went to a restaurant we'd never visited, sat at the bar, and had cocktails and appetizers.  The wonderful bartender (seriously, can't say enough about her -- friendly, knowledgeable, made excellent drinks) gave us an unanticipated sample of infused vodka. Infused with beets and tarragon, mind you. If you're like me, that sounds... interesting.  Not tempting, not horrible, but interesting.

Having tasted it, though, I can assure you it's delicious.  It was definitely something new.  Bring on the dopamine and norepinephrine!

sightseeing

While I was on the trip that I recently returned home from, I took some photos.  I went through them this week and realized that quite a lot of them, taken at area historic sites, are non-descript as far as the location goes.  I could have gone anywhere!  How mysterious! 

Or, you know, not.  These were all taken here and here.



Sedum



Windmill!



"... leave a message and I'll call you back." (Anyone?  Bueller?)

 

We should make some popsicles for him!

I think it's been long enough since I shared a Cecil picture that I can get away with posting another one.
It's hot here today.  Well, hotter than I'd like and we live in the land of limited air conditioning.  It doesn't help, I suppose, that I'm also a stoic (and stubborn) New Englander who takes the approach that it's better to simply tough it out for the handful of days each year that it's uncomfortably warm.
Anyway, point being, we've all been pretty lethargic.  Cecil is setting a great example for us.  Smart puppy.

stormy weather

It rained buckets here this afternoon. There was thunder and lightning. There were sheets of water. Even before I walked outside, I figured I'd write a post about it: about how I hoped the seeds I planted this weekend didn't get washed away, about how I had little pieces of cheese at the ready to drop on the floor for Mr. Cecil after each thunder clap.

The storm moved past us, and now it's remarkably sunny. I took Cecil outside for a minute, and when I stepped into the backyard, I realized this was an even more eventful storm than I'd first thought.

Thankfully, the only casualty was the bark on the side of this tree stump:

in bloom: first daylilies

We were lucky enough to be given several varieties of daylilies from family and friends at the end of last summer.  There were so many plants, in fact, that we had the luxury of doing a little experiment: some went to the front yard, where they get full sun, and the rest were planted in a newly created, make-shift garden along the back of the house (which is to say, we dug up some grass and plopped these guys in). 

The backyard is fairly shaded, but oddly enough these were the daylilies that bloomed first.  They're taking an incremental approach, just a couple flowers each day.  I suppose that's fair considering it's their first year here.

in bloom: hydrangea

I find it so interesting that hydrangeas can be bluer or pinker depending on the soil they're growing in. At our house, we clearly have blue-ifying soil, whatever that is. And I've decided that "bluer" and "pinker" are words for today.

We got this plant from a dear friend when she sold her house and moved across the country. (Psst, M, let me know in the comments if I can link to your blog!) The Little Hydrangea That Could had a tough go of it last year, what with being transplanted and all, but it's rebounded a bit. Apparently it's also one of the more thirsty plants in the front garden; it wilts alarmingly after a dry day of sun and will only perk up with a couple gallons of water. 

 

stripes

I don't have as much time to knit as I used to or as I'd like, so I suppose it's fitting that my most recent project was on a small scale.  It's a gift for someone who I'm fairly certain doesn't read this blog.  Just in case, though, I'm posting a cryptic in-progress photo so the end result isn't readily apparent.

Cherry red and bright teal were great fun to work with.  Maybe I should incorporate more bright colors into my day on a regular basis.

holiday

(Taken during our trip to Castine last year)

May you all have a happy -- or reflective and appreciative -- Memorial Day.

Forget what I said.

The other day I mentioned that one of my goals this year is to show you pictures of flowers from the garden than I hadn't posted about last year. I still think there'd be enough variety to do that, but... well, the irises are out in force again this year.  And they had rain on them this morning.

They weren't rainy last year.

So it's different.

Right?