My husband, the carpenter

The Pacific Northwest rain seems to wreak havoc on our wooden fences and gates. We've had to replace several pieces in our fence, and our gate was completely destroyed a few weeks ago.

It began with a huge windstorm that battered it, and it was finished off by a friend of Christopher's, who apparently was practicing his tae kwon do on it...encouraged by Chris, I guess? He felt horrible about kicking it to its death...so he left $3 on Mike's pillow, thinking that this would help pay for its repair.

Mike spent about 4 hours yesterday working to repair it. I asked him why he didn't just use all new wood, but he said that he didn't want to be wasteful. I'm okay with that!

He also repaired the gate on the other side of the backyard, which wasn't in quite as bad of condition but needed some TLC.


Kieran was very helpful in helping Daddy to hang the gate. It's nice to have kids who like to help outdoors.

The oldest, of course, was inside the whole day, doing homework, reading, and watching video clips of Survivor. He's always been more of an indoor kid, which I can remember about myself...

After cleaning the kitchen and working in the yard, I made halibut tacos for dinner, with homemade refried beans and guacomole. They were delicious! Leftovers for dinner tonight.

This afternoon I'm going to work on the main level of the house, and this evening while watching my guilty pleasure, "The Celebrity Apprentice," I'll continue on the family room.

Bounty in the Garden!

I'm posting this in my organizing blog because it's the first year in eons that we have really been organized about our vegetable garden. Years ago, we actually dug out a patch of grass to put in a garden, but ever since that peak year, it's never been quite what we intended.

This year Mike built raised beds and purchased high-quality soil and compost, and it has made a tremendous difference in our harvest. We also planted a wide variety of organic vegetable starts and seeds. In addition, Kieran has been engaged and helped to put in a number of the plants and scatter seeds. It's been fun to see how well our plants have done this year. Take a look:


We planted TONS of tomatoes, since that's my favorite garden-fresh vegetable. So far, only the cherry tomatoes are riping...but I see a lot of tomatoes in our future!

The corn "hatching," as Kieran put it...

Lovely lettuce! We won't have to buy lettuce for quite some time at the rate it's growing...

Mint and rosemary contained in a pot between the two raised beds

An eggplant with blossoms

Mike and I laugh about the fact that we've NEVER been able to grow zucchini! Well, this year we did it, at last!

And some nice yellow squash coming in as well...

Tabbouleh, anyone?

A little cucumber coming in...

A baby green pepper:

We've never tried to grow corn before, so we'll see how it turns out...it sure looks pretty though!

Tomatilloes:

Kieran's scarecrow keeping away the crows?

While I was finishing up the boys' room today, Mike was outside in the glaring heat fixing the back gate. The gate had been falling apart because of rotting wood, and a winter storm really whipped the bejeesus out of it. There was basically nothing left of it. Mike took the scraps and used some new hardware and wood to reinforce the gate. My handy husband! (He was not taught how to do this kind of thing when growing up, so these are wonderful accomplishments for him!)