Fruit

We are in full strawberry season here. Here's our current daily haul from the patch. It's more than we can eat, which means crisps and freezing galore for the next couple of weeks! Eating these as you pick them straight from the patch makes you a believer in B. Kingsolver's arguments. It's worth waiting for these to be in season locally, the difference between these and the red tasteless things from South America you get in February is just huge. The early's are producing now, the ever-blooming are still flowering (I think, they're pretty mixed together these days). We probably have another two weeks of the early's left, so it's lots of strawberries on cereal!
Our patch has continued to expand itself this year. It has completely taken over the front garden and has made it all the way around the apple and has even made it into the side garden by the neighbors driveway. I guess the strawberries and hops will fight it out. All of that jungle low greenery around the privet and hosta is all strawberry plants. At some point we'll have to draw the line at their expansion and probably this year we have to do the "kill the mothers" thing. Strawberries supposedly have a three year cycle, and this is year two, so we're supposed to dig the older plants (mothers) and leave the new offspring (daughters). Speaking of the apple tree, I have apples!
I've thinned the apples out so that there's no more than two apples per cluster and trying to keep on top of the aphids. The espalier tree's haven't started producing yet, but I'm hoping they two will be producing next year.

Spring is Here?

It snowed on my very first Mother's day! Admittedly, it was not a lot of snow, but still! May 10th and there's snow? Fortunately, we've also has some great weather thrown in there so spring did sprung, but then it kind of took a break for a few days. All of our tulips have come and mostly gone, they were beautiful. Last fall Nate and I planted tons (100's?) of tulips bulbs - fancy ones from Breck's and regular, but still colorful ones from Lowe's. A lot of them came up and our front and side gardens looked awesome

Check out the cool green tulips!

Fionna is crawling around like crazy - she really gets around. She's very adept at pulling herself into a standing position and a few weeks ago she started clapping her hands. She loves the dogs and wants to climb up on them. Let's just say that they don't like it as much as she does, but they are being very good and they tolerate a lot of abuse. Here she is eating an Easter card from Memere - she loves eating paper!

Pulling herself up on the windowsill is fun, but it really tires her out!

The Tax Man Cometh

Well, here it is, already March and I'm feeling myself begin to thaw from winter. After Christmas, Nate and I were able to get our stuff together enough to purchase a small vacation house up in Keene, NY. Its a small A-frame, just enough for us and the dogs to enjoy the High Peaks and rent it out for others to enjoy when we are not there.

It was completely stressful trying to get everything together for closing, but now that its done, I think we can both say that its so great to own a place up there. We got to XC ski in Mount Van Hoevenberg (http://www.whiteface.com/activities/xc.php), which was quite enjoyable, and just this past weekend I took the dogs to hike a trail around Marcy Field. We are looking forward to spring and doing some hiking and maybe doing some landscaping projects up there.

On another note, I did our taxes last weekend. Ouch. Turns out Fionna wasn't as big of a deduction as I had hoped and who knew that there was no Border Collie deduction? Either way, a large bill is looming in our future. So the impetus is to save money before April 15th. I'm from Worcester, MA where "frugal" (read: cheap) is pretty much a birth right so I think we can do this. Plus frugal living is green living which is something I try to do anyway, but this puts my money where my mouth is.

1) We disconnected DirecTV. This was hard for me, since I love TV, but its close to $100/mo. and Fionna doesn't need to watch it anyway. Internet TV from here on out. Luckily for me, Nate is really good at getting all that kind of stuff up and running.

2) We're not using our dryer. Yes folks - we bought a drying rack and as we speak it is set up by the fire quietly drying our clothes. I'm not sure how much money this will actually save, but I hear that the dryer is one of the largest energy hogs in the home. We shall see, I suppose.

3) Our "heat" is set at 57. Good-bye 60! See above - we're using our wood stove (mix of wood and envi blocks). Cold? Put on a sweater, grab a dog or a cat. At least we're moving out of heating season!

4) Smarter grocery shopping. We're pretty smart about grocery shopping as it is. And some things I will not sacrifice - eating meat from our local farm, buying local whenever I can (dairy, eggs, CSA veggies) that can be more expensive, but I would much rather give my money to other NYS businesses that employ people from NY and pay taxes in NY. For other things though - store brands (store brand cereal can save you almost $2.00 a box), eight o'clock coffee beans (it was good enough in grad school), no more soda, and coupons if I can use them. Even the dogs may not be getting the top shelf dog food anymore. I guess everyone has to sacrifice.

We already carpool (with the Jetta TDI which gets pretty awesome gas milage (38-40 mpg), and pretty much everything Fionna owns is from craigslist, but I'm sure we'll find other ways to save money so when the tax man cometh - we will be ready.

Holiday Time!

Christmas has already come and gone, and we are in that delightful time between Christmas and the New Year. Our Christmas was quiet this year, as we did all of our traveling during Thanksgiving. It is very cold here today with wind chills down to -1 F. Here's a picture of our beautiful tree (with Max).

Fionna's first tooth is visible today (bottom left-central incisor). Fionna enjoyed her very first Christmas - she got lots of gifts from generous friends and relatives. She loves holding books and at least looking at the pictures.






Nate and I have had some time off so we have been tackling little projects around the house and finishing those unfinished projects. For Christmas, Nate made me a spice-rack addition to the pantry. This is great because for those of you who have been to my house and tried unsuccessfully to find spices - worry no more! My spices are now visible and alphabetized - from allspice to vanilla extract! He also made me some cabinets dividers to organize my cookie sheets, cutting boards, trays, etc. Now, my kitchen is more organized which makes me more happy!

Pantry-tastic!

After we recovered from a Thanksgiving adventure to New England, we have slowly gotten back to working around the house. One thing that I have wanted is some more pantry space to store small appliances and canned goods. There were some shelves and peg board on the way down the cellar stairs, but it was kind of dark and gross down there and there wasn't enough storage. Its really the perfect place to store winter veggies like potatoes, carrots and beets because it stays pretty cool. Nate installed two new lights and we put up a new wooden shelf along the top of the foundation wall on the way down the stairs, and then put up new wire shelves. Here's a picture of me working on it.
I painted everything with porch paint so it would look brighter and clean up more easily. Nate also built me a great canned-goods shelf which holds a lot of stuff. We covered all the exposed insulation with more pegboard. You'll also notice the awesome veggie bins on the bottom shelf - those were just two cheap plastic bins that we cut the front of and then melted the plastic a bit so it wouldn't be sharp. Now I can just reach in and grab a beet or two! Now we have room for things like the dehydrator and I have plenty of room for my winter CSA veggies and lots of cans of salsa and apple sauce. I even have room for paper goods and cleaning supplies. It looks so much cleaner and more organized down there now, its great.

Fionna and the Mobile

Yes, its bees awhile since we've posted. But we've got a good excuse - really! Our lovely daughter has been keeping us busy. Nate has still found some time to work on finishing up some projects around the house - more on that later.
Fionna is 2 months olds now, its hard to believe. She's really starting to notice things now. And she smiles and laughs. She seems to be a mostly happy baby. She likes to listen to the "Coffee House" channel on XM which is this acoustic/folk music channel. She sleeps for ~ 6 hours a night before waking up and wanting to be fed - which is great. She is a great sleeper, at least right now. She really likes sleeping in her "doughnut" which is what we call this breast-feeding pillow thing. She digs it!
Over labor day weekend, we took Fionna and the dogs up to Lake Placid. Fionna did really well traveling. She still slept and ate well and we were able to take her on a gondola ride up Whiteface! Her first mountain!


Last week, Nate bought her a mobile for above her crib - she really seems to like it. I took a video - check it out!

More Fionna

Well, its just Fionna and me today. Nate is at work and the parents have left (thanks for all the help!). I'm hoping for a relaxing day, maybe I'll be able to take a nap or get outside for a little while and play with the dogs. It looks like it will be a beautiful day. I thought I'd post a few more pictures from last week - our little girl is just so cute. She's sleeping right now, so I'm actually able to sit down at the computer for a little while!