Sunday, May 26, 2013

First tomatoes

My first tomatoes are forming. Hooray!

Little green tomatoes on my Sungold tomato plant

Air Conditioning

To all that come visit us in the summer: we cannot promise pleasant weather, but at least you'll have a retreat in our house. We had central air conditioning installed this spring. We have already started using it in fits and starts, but it will be more appreciated soon. And my father in law will not have to sleep on the couch due to the lack of air conditioning in his room (nor will he have to build the couch in order to sleep in it).

The air conditioning system that we had put in is a high velocity system, which is great for old houses like ours because they use small tubes instead of giant ducts, thus are much less invasive. And the registers look like this:


There were a couple down-sides. The AC wall unit in the attic was in the way, so had to be removed. The AC system only cools the two main stories, so it's starting to heat up in there. We'll have a new wall until installed eventually. Also, soffits were not included in the AC installation, so we had some exposed silver tubes in both the attic and our bedroom for several weeks until we got a carpenter in. Here are the ones in our bedroom:

But the carpenter did a great job covering up all of the AC work. Here's some pictures of the attic mid-construction:




And the finished product:




We are very happy with the results. Now the only question is: when and how are we going to paint those soffits (especially the very high one over the stairs).

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Peonies

I've been waiting for these plants to bloom for a while so that I could figure out what they were. After getting several opinions, figured out they are peonies. Aren't they pretty? They seem to ask to be cut and put in a vase, since the flowers are so big they make the plant flop over when they bloom.



In other news, my tomatoes are blooming and things are sprouting and the herbs are spreading. The weather has warmed up and the plants are loving it.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Azaleas

Just wanted to celebrate the azalea bushes I inherited from the previous owners. I love having cut flowers on the kitchen table.


This weekend I turned a big pile of sticks into wood chips that I then mulched my blueberries with


And finished digging out the second of my three back garden beds. I also made a funny little house out of old windows from the garage. I had kept the windows, thinking I would come up with something to do with them, but I hadn't yet and they were in the way. I had to come up with something fast to save them from the trash. You can see it behind that garden bed. I'm going to grow beans on it this year.