Hydrangeas, the Fire Pit, and other things popping up in the yard

In my attempt to begin landscaping and in order to have less lawn to mow I planted this pink Hydrangea bush in the yard. Lauren cannot understand why I decided to plant it where I did and I’ve accepted the fact that this is just one of those things which we’ll never agree on. I did give it a lot of thought however. On my late evening walks out to the yard with Dusty I surveyed all the possible locations for it prior to planting. I thought of how it would look from different viewpoints around the yard and from within the house. You can easily see it from inside the house looking out the kitchen window, the bathroom window, and the living room window. I would like to plant two more of them by the stone wall but right now this is still designated as my bamboo killing zone and I’m afraid anything I plant in this area would suffer.

This year we’ve decided to make our fire pit fancy. Instead of having just the exposed truck tire rim in the yard we bought some concrete blocks to put around it. These blocks are better designed for retaining walls than the tight radius of the fire pit but for now they’ll do. I would like to mortar some permanent rocks around the pit but we have to keep the pit mobile at this current location. This is because before the snow flies it has to be moved so that our snowplow guy can begin pushing the early snows as far back in the yard as he can. But I shouldn’t be talking about snow right now…Memorial Day is Monday.

Let’s talk about summer and things popping up in the yard. Besides dandelions growing in the yard we’re beginning to see our first crop of golf balls compliments of the golfers across the street. The first ball of the season I’m saving for Eva because it matches a tattoo she has. Go Red Sox! Ahhh…the beginning of summer…this is what we’ve been waiting for New England….so clean off your grills….open the windows….slap those mosquitoes and Enjoy!

Fiddleheads and The Last Two Feet of Snow

On Friday our good neighbor Pease brought us over a bag of fiddleheads he had picked that day. They made a great veggie dish to go with the delicious soup Lauren had created Saturday night. Fiddleheads are another sure sign of Spring and as I was surveying the back yard this morning with Dusty I admired the last two feet of snow. There’s a warm breeze blowing today and my guess is that by 8:00 AM tomorrow that snow will be history.

So good-bye snow

You’ve been nice to know

Bringing pleasure to the skiers

Aiding the economic flow

See you next season

When the cold winds blow

Cooking with Gas

Amber and Tommie bought us a very nice Anniversary/Birthday gift in the form of an Amana gas cook stove. What a pleasure it is…not that I do the cooking, but it is just nice to see Lauren using a real cook stove instead of what she referred to as the “Easy-bake” oven she’s been working with for the last year.

Once the realization set in that we were not going to be able to “remodel the whole kitchen” worthy of a photo shoot in Better Homes and Gardens we’ve begun to make the kitchen “workable” and this cook stove takes it to a new level. It’s a funky kitchen to be sure but with this new addition it seems…well, wicked nice. Thanks Amber and Tommie.

Tommie helped me get the stove surround started. Our buddy Dennis from Community Energy installed the gas line and got the stove working. A few weekends later we have a finished product. What’s really nice about this design is that I can stand on the back side of the stove and very comfortably rest my arms on that shelf and watch Lauren cook. I used 2” x 6” framing for the surround which allowed for the built in shelving you see in the photos. Do you like the two little shelf brackets near the top? I thought it needed this finishing touch so I drew and cut them out on a piece of pine. The bead board wainscoting on the back side is actually solid pine tongue and groove plank paneling. The pieces are about 3 ½” wide but they are only ¼” thick. I had a plywood backing behind it to add strength and stability to the half wall so I just nailed the bead board to the plywood but if you’re going against sheetrock you will want to use something like “Liquid Nails” to install it. The plank paneling is easy to work with but because it is so thin you may find that at some of the knots you have a see-through hole. Because we were painting this I just filled the few holes with latex caulking but if you were going to stain or clear finish it you would want to use wood putty.

Leave a comment telling me what you would love to see Lauren cooking on the stove when you come for a visit. I’ll be providing the wine and a cheese ball.