If half a tree falls...

If only the top half of a tree falls in a back yard, does it still do damage? Well, of course it does! And we were even here to see and hear it.
Never a dull moment around here, that's for sure.

Thankfully, the tree did not hit the house...the deck (on the other people's half), though, and the swing set (the tree fell onto the other people's "half," but it's technically joint property). The falling tree gods were on our side, though, because the mom and 5-year-old who were out in the back yard were not hurt, and it fell four hours before the birthday party for their 11-year-old took place in that same backyard. So if it was going down, it went down in the best way it could.


Can you believe that's only part of the tree? You can see here that it was just one portion of the top half of the tree that broke off. We're thinking from looking at it that it had been traumatized at some point (maybe lightning?) and that weakened it.

It's windy again today and I find myself looking at the remaining trees with a wary eye.

I saw the yarn harlot!

Isn't that a funny name? She's very funny and she writes knitting books. She's on a book tour right now.

If you look closely, you can see me in a picture on her blog. I'm in the fourth picture down, standing behind the girl with the bright green sweater and purple scarf. I'm wearing a blue sweater.

New house color!

Look! Our house is a new color! (See earlier post for a reminder of how ugly it used to be) This is not its best angle, but it keeps drizzling at the time of day when it's best to photograph.
Here's a photo of the back with our new (matching) umbrella, courtesy of my parents. Oh, and notice the deck, of course.

It looks SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better!

Visit Extraordinaire!

My parents came for a visit! We had a lot of fun during their stay.

We went to a botanical garden:

We loved this flower, but it was the only unmarked flower in the whole place! Anyone know what it is?We went to the driving range:
We went to the Boston Marathon:

We played bocce and cribbage and ate ice cream and Easter dinner. All was very fun. We miss them already!

New Front Door!

We're very excited because we're getting our house painted over April vacation. We had thought we'd do it ourselves, but we got a really reasonable bid (and we only pay half because it's a duplex) so we're hiring someone. That will be an interesting experience...to have someone else doing work on our house, that is.

Just in case people haven't seen just how ugly the color of our house currently is, here's a photo: (no offense to anyone else with this house color, but on a place as devoid of architectural detail as ours, it looks atrocious)

Because we're getting the house painted, it made sense for us to replace our front door before the painters arrived. We'd already been planning to replace it, because once we replaced the windows last summer, it became very clear that the door was leaking some major cold air into the house. When we took the door out, this is the insulation we found:

That's right...it's about 1/2 inch thick, and 1 inch deep. What a surprise that it was leaking air (insert sarcastic tone).

I was laughing when I read on a webpage that you need to be ready when you take the door out, because it's very disconcerting to have a hole in your house that you can't close. Here is our hole:That hole is gone, of course, and is filled by this lovely door:It won't stay white for long!