My Spring Break (Vacation?)

So... spring break is over, and boy HOWDY do I need a break!  It was a crazy busy week, and the philosopher and I got lots of projects accomplished, and we also saw some interesting things, and even had a few fun adventures!

Here's the run-down.

On Tuesday, we SOLD OUR HOUSE in Alabama!  There was much rejoicing, and celebrating, and high-fiving, and wiping of the brows.  ::WHEW::
 
On Wednesday, we started a major outdoor project.  We dug in a herb bed to the back yard, using old retaining wall blocks and a load of happy dirt.  We also went on a quest to my new favorite place, Pike Nurseries.  We bought several shade plants for the shrub bed on the north side of the house, and some happy herbs to go in the new digs we built.  (Pun *so* intended!)  You can't really tell from the picture, but it's on a hill so we had to do a lot of digging on the back side to get it level.

On Thursday, we added a square-foot garden next to new herb bed.  (And I plotted and schemed about all the lovely veggies I'm going to plant, starting with sugar snap pea seeds going down in two weeks!)

On Friday, we took a trip to another favorite place - Harry's Farmers Market in Marietta.  We were continuing our house-selling celebration and got all kinds of tasty things: locally raised steak, Mississippi sweet potatoes, hummus, brie, and lots of other yummy food.  We don't go there often, but it's a real treat when we do!

We also finished the side bed, planting my grandmother's sweetshrubs, a hydrangea, an azalea, a Pieris, and some coreopsis.  Here's a great before-during-and-after comparison:

                                                                                        

                                                                       

Saturday I went on a treasure hunt, armed with nothing but a map with no measurements.  ::heh::   The back edge of our property is a tangled piney, viney, woodsy mess.  We didn't know *exactly* where the property corners were, and wanted to know how far back we could clear into the woods.  So I took the old survey we had (from when the house was built) and made some rough estimates to find the scale.  I then put on my work boots, grabbed my hoe, and headed out, armed with my trusty tape measure.  After a few rough starts, I actually found the pins!  And we have a lot more property than was visibly apparent.  Score!!

We also got to pull out the telescope and enjoyed an early evening clear sky.  I got to say "hello" to some of my favorite objects  - the Pleiades, the Orion nebula, and the Beehive cluster.  Even better is the picture the philosopher took of the moon.  Yup - I took the first one, and he took the other one standing on our back deck.  Near Atlanta.  With the neighborhood sodium arc lights beaming bright.  Beautiful!  (Click on the second one and admire the detail!)

Sunday after church the philosopher did some major wiring in the garage, in preparation for the New Garage Doors we ordered earlier in the week.  He did a great job - it was shocking!  ::snicker::  I did a pile of laundry (we got every bit of grubbies dirty during the course of the week) and then collapsed in exhaustion.  Can I take a vacation now?  I'm too tired to be at work!

Not Much to Say (but I'll say it anyway?)

Wow.  How did it get to to be February already?  And not just February, but *mid* February?  It's a dreary, cloudy day, and both the philosopher and I are fighting bronchitis and a sinus infection.  ::sigh::  At least we have a quiet weekend in front of us to rest and recover.

The big news of course, is Selling Brown: if all goes according to plan, we will close on our house in Alabama next Saturday.  The buyers are doing a final walkthrough this weekend, so we are extremely hopeful that by the end of the month we'll no longer be property owners in Alabama!  (And yea, verily, that is a Good Thing.)

In tasty news, I have discovered a crazy-sounding but absolutely yummy soup recipe involving red lentils, sweet potatoes, and an apple.  Before you turn up your nose, you should try it.  It's reminiscent of butternut squash, but with a savor and spice that is just delightful on a cold winter night!

In gardening news, I have finally transplanted almost all the plants I dug up around Brown.  My grandma's roses, bulbs, irises, canas, hostas, and lily of the valley are all in the ground now.  The only thing left are the sweet shrubs, and since I haven't quite decided where to put them they'll have to wait a little while longer.  It's been so warm that the daffodils have already come up, so now we're hoping there's no deep cold that comes through to kill them off before they bloom.  Crazy weather, indeed!

A Birthday Present

Yesss, my precioussss.....  it's my Biirthday presssent, yess it isss....

OK, enough Gollum channeling.  Today is my birthday.  I've decided to call this my "Douglas Adams" year, since I'm turning (of course) 42.

My dear philosopher cooked me *homemade* french onion soup this weekend, and tonight I will feast on shrimp and grits.  (Nota bene: Ladies out there, if you plan to marry, here's my bit of advice.... marry a man who likes to cook!!!!)

But an EVEN MORE EXCITING present was emailed on Monday afternoon... a signed contract on our house in Alabama!  (And there was Much Rejoicing... yaaaaaayyyyy)  Now we're just waiting on the home inspection. Here's another tip - if you're selling a house, do not watch Holmes Inspection on HGTV.  Even though our house is in decent shape, I'm having nightmares about having to redo plumbing and electrical and dig up the foundation and replace the roof and.....  well... you get the idea.  (sigh)

There is even more news on the horizon, too.  You may know that I've been waiting since June for "my library" to be renovated so I can work at the campus on which I was hired to work.  (I'm currently driving 2 hours a day.)  My school just installed an interim president, and last week he sent an email listing the critical projects that needed to be done even before the permanent president is hired this summer.  Number three on his "git 'er done" list?  MY LIBRARY!!!!!!!  And it may be that it is a bigger space than previously anticipated, and yea verily that too is a Good Thing.

So I have lots to be thankful for in this new year, and I'm hoping that my 42nd year is a good one.  And on that note, I'll leave you with a couple of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes:

“We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.”

and

“There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.”

May the force be with you, my friends!  ::grin::

Ringing in the new year

Happy New Year to my faithful readers (both of you)!

2011 was a good year, by most accounts.  New job, new house, new city, new church.  The philosopher has work for the spring, and while that isn't ideal, it is sufficient for now as we pray for direction in his career.

So, a few photos to sum up the year....

Good friends.

It's always good to spend time with friends, and a delight to have visitors from afar.  Our favorite biologist came for the weekend, and much fun was had by all.

Interesting wildlife.

Our new feeder is visible from our living room, and we have lots of pretty birds come for dinner.  This woodpecker is a new arrival, and we're a bit baffled why he prefers the seeds to the tasty bugs in the trees!

Challenges.

The year was full of challenges, indeed.  But none quite so tricky as this puzzle the biologist and I put together on New Years Day!

Unexpected gifts.

For Christmas my father built us this beautiful mission style tv stand.  He knew I wanted a new one, and he surpassed all expectations when he showed up with this on Christmas Day.

Christmas Bling

This past Saturday we went to Coker Tree Farm and found ourselves a happy Christmas tree.  Yay!  We brought it home, and after a bit of struggle with the stand, we finally got it upright.  The new stand we purchased is much deeper and more narrow than our old one, and for a change the cat can't get her head in it to drink all the water!

This is also the first year we've been able to put our tree in the front living room window so you can see it at night!  The problem, we discovered, is that the light coming in through the window put the whole tree in shadow.  You could see the shape of the tree, and the lights on the tree, but because most of our ornaments weren't shiny, you couldn't see anything else.  So I toddled off to Walmart and bought some bling - pretty gold ornaments and garland to add some shine/reflection.

And.... voila!

(The philosopher was playing with different camera settings - can you tell?  These pics were taken not two minutes apart....)

The Pinhoti Trail: Georgia Edition

A couple of weekends ago the philosopher and I trekked to our beloved Pinhoti trail - this time in Georgia, between Rome and Summerville.  We went to Taylor's Ridge, and parked at the Mack White Gap trailhead.  Unlike many of the other trailheads we've visited, this one required no forest service road nightmares, or muddy bogs, or other things most unfriendly to small compact cars.  Yay!

From the trailhead we headed south towards a side trail that goes to Sloppy Floyd state park.  We didn't *quite* make it that far, but it was still a six mile hike in the back country!

We saw wild turkeys (though we weren't fast enough to get out the camera) and some rather creepy fungi:

Of course this one reminds me of Alice in Wonderland...

Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went, `One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.'
`One side of WHAT? The other side of WHAT?' thought Alice to herself. `Of the mushroom,' said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. 

I could relate to you the adventures we shared when we were three inches tall and descended into the rabbit hole, but I'd bet you wouldn't believe for One Second that we actually nibbled on a wild mushroom.  My husband was a boy scout - he knows better!  ::grin::

There were also some very cheerful late fall flowers, which were quite encouraging after the mushroom encounter!

But the ground did not hold a monopoly on beautiful things - late fall in the Georgia mountains is a gorgeous sight to see.  Who needs New England foliage when we have the Blue Ridge Mountains and Piedmont?

The trail took us along a ridgeline, and we came across a mountain meadow .  We stepped out from the trees and walked into this clearing.  If the ground hadn't been wet from yesterday's rain, I would have stretched out on the grass in the sun!

So that's our first "real" hiking adventure since we moved to Georgia in the spring.  (State park trails just aren't the same, somehow.)  But I've added a new list to our hiking log, and on those warm winter weekends you may just find us venturing forth to find another trailhead!

Halloween Fun

I'm a crafty kind of person, so of course I love the challenge of carving a halloween pumpkin "old school" style - no template, no pattern, no fancy carving tools.  Just a steak knife (freshly sharpened) and a pencil.

This year I think I created my Favorite Pumpkin Ever.

In the afternoon....

And late at night...