Hey, Mom...come look!

You never know what you're going to find when you hear, "Hey, Mom!  Come look!"  This time, the boys were so excited to show me the snake they'd caught in the back yard in the rocks.  Thankfully, I am not afraid of snakes; even more thankfully, it was just a harmless garden snake.  Even so, we had a little chat about maybe in the future, we should just leave snakes alone in the wild and watch them from a distance.  Since copperheads like to nest in rocks and all.  Sheesh.

Tempting...

I definitely laughed out loud when I saw this house listing on a "what not to do" real estate website.  So tempting to try it with our own, on-the-market-for-a-year house!

Good neighbors

Pat and Sally are an elderly couple who live down the street from us.  We don't see them often, but they are really nice people and love catching up when we do cross paths while walking the dogs or out and about.  Every now and then, I'll drop off some flowers from the garden or some baked goods for them.  It was a happy surprise when we came home and found this treat in our mailbox a few days before St. Patrick's day...four enormous bakery cupcakes and a nice note:

I am fly

Bunch of jokesters up in this house.  Pretty sure this was Papa's work...

Fatty hummingbird

I loved watching this hummingbird fatten himself up before his long flight south for the winter.  

Anything you can do...I can do (but probably not better...)

Now that the weather has cooled, the strategy of leaving the basement door open for the cats doesn't really work anymore.  The draft coming up is just too cold.  I measured and the door to the laundry room (where the litterbox used to be) is the same size as the basement door.  I decided this was a project I could tackle on my own.  (Man, that basement door is HEAVY!)  

All went swimmingly until the exchanged door wouldn't catch.  James didn't want me to mess with it, and went so far as to almost indicated that I couldn't fix it.  Challenge accepted!!

So there.  Installed and closed!

Another reason I love summer?

Hydrangeas!

Kitchen chores

Ellen and I took the kids peach picking which subequently led to a busy few days of preserving.  My entire kitchen was covered in a sticky layer of sugary residue, but we have 6 jars of canned peaches and LOTS of really fabulous peach almond jam (jelly?  I can never remember!) to look forward to.  I tried the low sugar pectin this time around and got great results with the jam - crushed peaches, a dollop of almond extract, (plus a dollop of vanilla vodka in one batch) equals a treat I can eat with a spoon...who needs bread?!

The canned fruit pictures didn't look too impressive...but I do have these.  One of the mishap of the broken jar.  Bummer.

And one of all of the peaches after a full day of canning...phew!

After this happened to start my Monday morning, I decided it was time to get the pantry under control.  

I sent this to Ellen, whose second guess for this substance was cocaine.  Upon further inquiry, she did point out that James is a chemist who is back to school in business; maybe we were looking to ramp up production.  Put your mind at ease...it's sugar, promise.

I refuse to give in to my Pinterest-y cravings and pay a small fortune for a designer looking pantry, but I did feel much better once mine was a least a little more organized!

Raspberry

I can't pick a favorite fruit because I love so many, but raspberries are definitely toward the top of the list.  My parents planted shoots of the raspberries from Grandma's house at their house.  Those plants have taken over an entire corner of their yard, so I dug up a few plants a few years ago.  I haven't tended them as I should (or at all, for that matter), so they are limping along on their own.  I was thrilled when I got a few ripe ones this year!

May flowers

Some of my flowers were particularly slow to bloom this year because of the late cold snap that we had.  The daffodils are out early and are one of my most favorite flowers, but they can be unreliable indicators of spring's arrival.  Once the clematis and evening primrose are out, though, I know we've made it!

I still don't know what the two bushes are to the left of the clematis.  They smell spectacular when in bloom and they grow gangbusters every year.  The bush in the middle is a volunteer after I got so fed up two years ago and hacked the original parent plant out of the ground!

Laundry

I've gotten hooked on Parenthood during my laundry folding.  To the point that I'm finding excuses to do laundry, just so I can find out the latest with the Bravermans.  Ridiculous, I know.  But Bell is into it too...

Cook out

We took advantage of an almost-spring-like day for a backyard campout.  We were all itching to get outside after the cold winter days!

For Sale

It's hard to believe that, after years of talking about it and three months of major reconstruction, we are listing the house for sale.  Of course, now that it looks nearly brand new we are kind of love with the house again.  We keep saying that it would be perfect, if we could only pick it up and move it 15 miles west.  

In any case, we're pretty proud of how great it looks at this particular moment...now just to maintain it until it sells...

 

Feathered friends

We haven't put bird feeders out for the past several winters, but enjoyed watching our many visitors this year.  The birds are pretty tricky to get pictures of.  The woodpeckers were my favorite, but I have to say I loved watching the squirrel too.  He was just so enterprising in getting to the food that I had time being too upset with him for stealing the bird food.  We'd let him munch away for a few minutes every time we saw him before running him off.