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).

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.

The first rose of summer

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.

Work Weekend

My parents came for the weekend and we got a bunch of work done in the garden.

• We bought herbs to fill in my front planter beds and I distributed a bunch of additional herb seeds throughout the beds

Completed front beds- prior to additional plants

With most of the herb plants.

And another angle

Oregano and purple basil

A cilantro in the middle. Some lettuce seedlings and a tea plant in the right corner.

A trio of sages and two thyme plants

• My parents turned the soil in the back to make room for tomatoes and peppers in the backyard veggie garden.

The wonderful tomato towers my husband built for me

Cherry tomato plants

A close up 

Slicing/cooking tomatoes

• We dug out one of the planter beds that pre-existed us and was full of ivy when we moved in and planted watermelons.

• We were halfway through digging out the second planter bed of them when a rain shower drove us inside. We'll finish that next weekend and plant squash and pumpkins there.

• My dad decided he was part monkey and both cut off some of the dead dogwood branches and removed much of the dead ivy that was still wrapped around the branches

The dogwood tree last summer

And in the fall after I killed the ivy

And now

• We hung our bat box
• My mom pulled out more of the ivy near the back fence and tried to make the fence look a little more presentable.
• We built a simple fence for cucumbers to grow on and planted cucumber seeds

I am very excited to have a veggie garden again. I had a veggie garden throughout my childhood, but have been living in apartments and other rentals for the last 8 years. I tried to grow in pots, but the results were mediocre.

Garden pests

I've been focused in many ways in trying to combat the mosquitos that descended on us every time we went outdoors last summer. I've been pulling out and trimming back ivy, planting things that mosquitos reportedly don't like, and trying to be generally aware of garden maintenance, including eliminating any standing pools of water. In the meantime I forgot about other potential garden pests.

I discovered a new one last weekend, after trying to clean the ivy away on the back fence. Early this week I started developing a rash that got slowly worse over the next couple days. I finally went to see a doctor on Friday. Poison ivy. A nasty case of it. I'm on steroids and antihistamines to help with it and now jump at any sight of an unidentified vine. I thought I was pulling out Virginia creeper, which I've considered a nuisance for months. Apparently some of it, and maybe a lot of it, is not Virginia creeper.