Down for a while

J's slugging out in front of the TV...his wisdom teeth removal went well for the top two teeth, but the bottom two were real buggers. Evidently there was drilling involved in trying to get them out. He's doped up on painkillers and has ice packs on his cheeks. Poor guy. He did enjoy some chocolate pudding for dinner, so that's good. His doctor also called tonight to check on him...I thought that was impressive.

Did you know that you have to show an ID to fill a perscription for percoset? I learned that today.

On the happy side of life, our garden is FLOURISHING. We've already been enjoying garden-fresh veggies. We even made pesto using our basil. The cherry tomatoes have been ripening these last two weeks....they're so tasty! The first of our "big" tomatoes is turning orange, so we should have a ripe one next week....

Outdoor photos

I mentioned yesterday that we've done some work outside. Here are some photos:
The new deck benches were made completely out of materials we had left over from building the deck last year (well, except for the cushions, but that's it, really!):




We also expanded (by about 4x) the size of our planting bed in the back:
(The first is a far-off shot, the second and third are two close-ups)

Outside Adventures

We've been doing a lot of work outside at our house, and I'm pleased to announce (on J's behalf) that we have our best lawn ever! Now, I'm not talking 100% grass or anything (let's not be silly, people), but we're definitely at about 85% grass, 15% random junk that floats in and decides to grow. Compared to 40% grass when we moved in two years ago (and I am being generous with that 40%), it's a TREMENDOUS IMPROVEMENT! I can actually walk barefoot without it hurting! To add to that, we were recently gifted a Toro lawn mower very similar to my dad's. It is 20 years old, but in working condition. It was sitting in our neighbor's father's shed and he no longer uses it, so now it's ours.

Besides that, we expanded our back planting bed and built two benches for our deck. More details (and photos) on those two things later. Until tomorrow (when I can photograph said things), here are a couple of photos of the things we've got blooming around our house right now:

Compost Bin

We've been composting for the past year or so, but we didn't have a proper receptacle for the composting. And now that we have wonderful stuff from last year that we can use in our gardens this year, we needed two compartments for new compost and ready-to-use compost. So, after the AC guy left at 8:00 a.m. yesterday, we got to work. It's amazing what you can accomplish by noon when you get started at 8:00!

We also cleared out another bit of space (on the left) for additional vegetables in our garden:

Did we mention that the rest of the tree got taken down? A man we refer to as "the crazy guy with the chainsaw scar on his cheek" climbed up that thing and then proceeded to take it down BY HIMSELF.
We helped our neighbors construct the replacement swingset this afternoon...the boys were very happy swinging away tonight.

Finally, a nicer day...or at least this morning was.

We got some pictures of the finished deck, so here they are, finally. :)

From the driveway:

Here's from inside the kitchen:

J was happy to see that the deck is still sitting level:

We got outside this morning to try and clean up some of the thousands of pine needles that have fallen in all of the recent storms. Here's a picture of needles that were on the driveway:

We know you thought we were joking about all the rain we've gotten, but these extra garbage cans were open during all of the rain and you'll notice that they're full to overflowing:


I just looked out the window and IT'S SNOWING!!! Not hard, but still, there is snow coming down. That is not right, especially since they're forecasting 60 degrees for tomorrow.
I just finished an adorable fall knitting project..I'll post pictures tomorrow.