Yankees and Others...

We've had some wonderful visitors from FL, MA and NC! It's been a beautiful summer (here's a first - Jackie had to come in from the deck the other night because it was "chilly"!), and the siding is slowly getting done. We decided to put some cedar shakes on the east side, facing the road. We've been working with Kevin, who is doing a great job.
Jackie jokes that we have a "bonzai" vegetable garden. The onions failed (maybe too much rain), and so far things have been tiny, except for my first 'taters - they are healthy!
p.s. I may have "misrepresented" the goats - they belong to our neighbors Kevin and Laurel, but we did learn to milk Juliet, and I've got a regular shift now! Still experimenting with making goat cheese...

Welcome Fiona and Norman!

We've done a little more work on the house - our bathroom is painted and the sink is installed, and Jackie did some more great tiling. We did a bit more of the siding, but we're going to work with someone who's willing to get up on scaffolding (not me anymore!). The garden's more fun than real work. I'm chicken about thinning, obviously, so that's why the beds look so crowded. The potatoes seem happiest - must be because I'm Irish! We're plagued by flea beetles, which munch green leaves so that it looks like they've had buckshot go through them. Lots of rain has given everything a healthy start.
The exciting development this month was the arrival of Fiona and Norman, beautiful Nubian goats. Our neighbors Kevin and Laurel built them a great barn. These goats are very affectionate and chatty! We're looking forward to goat cheese - yum!
Jackie's gone to visit her mom in Arizona for a few days. Deco and I are missing her!

Dog Days of Spring

No, we didn't get puppies (Deco would never stand for that!) - our neighbor Caroline rescued these Louisiana Catahoula dogs. Maybelle and Roux are overwhelmingly cute and distracted us from getting much work done on the house. But we got our garden beds planted, and Jackie made this simply beautiful gate (to keep out troublemaking puppies and rabbits, we hope). We had a few days close to 90 degrees, but our house stayed comfortable (thanks to the cool concrete floors). I'm campaigning to keep air conditioning out of the house, but it is only May...

We are new to gardening, so we are listening to all the advice there is, which gets confusing. It seems to range from scientific ("when the third set of of true leaves appears, lower the night temperature to 55 degrees for four weeks ") to casual ("just plant the seeds and they'll grow") to superstitious ("plants like the attention when you mess with them"). Anyway, there are some seedlings coming up, so we're happy. We'll see if we eat this year... I sometimes think of the Transcendalists - big on ideas, short on farming skills. It'll be an interesting experiment!

We're heading to Florida this week to celebrate Luca's birthday and see some dear friends we miss!

La Casa de Tyvek

Finally started getting the siding up! Board and batten is right for this house...

Equinox/Spring is Springing

It's easy to fall in love with the mountains when there's forsythia, apple and cherry blossoms, dogwood, and all kinds of beauty blooming. We finally finished the shower (the tub was fine, but I need a shower to really wake up) - Jackie's the queen of tiling - and now we are focusing on the outside work, like the siding (hemlock boards stacked in photo), and making our plant beds. We are excited about our neighbors getting ready for their goats, and we are going in together on a chicken coop. Lots of planning!
I had to take a day off when it was in the 70's to hike - the closest Blue Ridge Parkway area is Craggy Gardens. I thought I saw a shortcut on the map, but DeLorme lied. I just parked and walked from where the road was closed. It was a gorgeous trail, although I never made it all the way to the top. I had to include my hat in one of the photos to show I was really there. All these rhododendrons will be blossoming in the next couple of months.
We had a nice surprise when we saw crocuses (croci?) in front of the house, left from someone who lived in a trailer on this land years ago.

Jackie and I think we have crossed a line - we are thrilled to drive home with huge, stinky bags of compost (aka garbage) from the juice bar at our favorite local natural food store, and from a local vegetarian caterer. Already looking forward to next year's compost.

Mucho Mulch

We got a beautiful pile of mulch (we've got a lot of mud to cover!) from the C & M Sawmill, where we ordered hemlock to do our siding. We're going to do board and batten siding - vertical boards, also called barn siding. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there's a lot of hemlock that's been cut down because of the pest the woolly adelgid. It turned out to be the most economical option for us, and we think we'll like it better than the other choices we had considered, stucco or hardiplank.

We've been working on the office and Jackie's studio - we had a ladder/stairway built to get up to the loft.

And Deco supervises from her doggie bed!

Happy Chaos

We are slowly and gratefully making our way through boxes and bags (why can we find all kinds of useless chachkes but not the important paperwork we need), and settling into our new home. Can't remember what day it is, but it's starting to feel like we were always here. We spend time talking with neighbors about compost and squash bores (take a guess), and are loving our comfortably warm radiant floor heat on the colder days. This weekend, temps go back up into the 60's. We think it's hilarious that 2 inches of snow brings everything to a halt, but altitude does matter - we are at the cutoff, it seems, so we don't get the big snow and ice. Lotsa mud, though!

We painted with Sherwin Williams low voc brands - Harmony and Duration. Definitely less fume-y, but there are types with no voc's - harder to clean, we hear, and more expensive.

We've got a nice pile of firewood, some seasoned and the rest getting there. Getting ready to make some raised beds and start some seeds inside.

We couldn't have gotten here without the fabulous support of friends and family! Thank you all a million times - we really do wish you were here, and hope you will be eventually!