Surprises of homeownership

Tags

back fence, hot ashes, nature, outdoors, plants, rain water

In our first home we had to strip our backyard down to dirt and level everything out before adding grass and landscaping. One day while I was digging, or weeding, or leveling, because that’s all we did in our backyard for many months, I was around our back fence when suddenly the ground below one of my legs collapsed. In that moment, my life flashed before my eyes as I saw myself falling into a giant sewer and being carried out to sea! Fortunately I threw myself backwards and landed on the ground with only my leg in the hole… a hole that was (luckily) not a sewer, but was caused by a rusted out, old, buried aluminum trashcan. We have no idea why there was an entirely buried trashcan in our backyard just waiting for me to fall into it, but there ya go.

Where exactly am I going with this rusty things buried story? Well, we have a back corner of our new yard in the new house that was being taken over by ivy. Some was starting to climb up trees so before it got too far I wanted to cut cut it off. Meanwhile, there was something kind of large and entirely hidden from view under this plant.
Now our new backyard and our old backyard have at least one thing in common, I just wish it wasn’t cylindrical and rusty. But at least I didn’t fall into it this time! The above is actually after I already started cutting away at the ivy since it was completely unnoticeable before. Can’t tell what it is yet?

That’s right, a rusted out steel drum. It looks like at one point it had a lid to it that disintegrated which means, bonus: it was completely full of disgusting rain water. And why would this be hanging out in the yard?

I believe it may have been used for the hot ashes from the fireplace that it’s right next to. We’ve been told that the fireplace actually is something the city technically allows as something that has been grandfathered in but this one is under the canopy of some trees so we’re not likely to use it for backyard get togethers any time soon. The fireplace and the drum appear to have been here for long enough that the tree has started eating it. You can also see how high the water was in the picture below.

I don’t think the tree wants to let go.

Since I wouldn’t have been able to tip it over to drain the water with the tree growing into it, I had to use a chisel and hammer to make a hole so that the water could drain. Because standing water is kind of a disgusting no-no.

It just took a few whacks with the hammer and chisel to make enough of a hole that the water pressure allowed any sediment to clear and water came gushing out. It’s now drained but still quite full of tree debris. I’m thinking the entire removal of this guy is probably going to be a husband job? After all, I was the one who had to use the hammer to smash some of the monstrous spiders that emerged from this ancient artifact. Sometimes I have to be a team player! 🙂

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Famer Friday: Pears Aplenty

Tags

cooking, food, pear salad, pear tree

The old house hit the market today. Pretty exciting stuff. Allow the nervous sweating to commence and please, oh please, someone buy our house! But in less stress inducing news, how about a Farmer Friday since there hasn’t been one in forever!?

With the new house came several fruit trees, a pepper plant and yesterday’s Cape Gooseberry plant. The biggest surprise for me was just how many pears this pear tree was producing! I’m not ready to let go of summer, I thought pears were supposed to be a fall fruit!

I started picking up pears when we got our keys and collected about five gallons on my first visit. We made it through those with the help of others and lots of pear salad, pear tarts, pears with ice cream, eating pears, etc. It didn’t take long to get peared out so I starting stashing them in the drawer of our fridge until they overflowed that. I was going to preserve these pears some way, some how. But it didn’t occur to me just how many I had. Here’s the first 10 pounds:
As I set out to preserve these pears, I started weighing them out (about five pounds was equal to eight cups which was the standard requirement for most recipes) and came up with 25 pounds and then some of pears. Holy smokes! Here is 15 more pounds and a view of the five gallon bucket I use to pick up pears which was more than half full several days in a row when I went outside:

Maybe luckily, because some were older than others and this is just a backyard tree, not every little bit of every pear was usable so there was some waste. And since this huge collection, the trees have been dropping less frequently so we can keep up with the fresh pears better. I see a few more pear tarts in our future. Do you have any favorite uses for fresh pears to recommend?

Now that I’ve made it through the brunt of our fruit harvest I’ve been eyeing the neighbor’s fig tree…

Our New House

Tags

before and after, diy, home, house, new hosue, ouse, projects, real estate

The big reveal is finally here! This is our new house!
And in case you can’t tell by just that one picture, it’s a bit of a 1940 fixer. But a move-in-ready fixer (as evidenced by the fact that we’ve been living there for about a week!). I’m using some of the pictures from the listing (like above) and some I took, I don’t know how to attribute pictures from a real estate listing so if anyone knows… let me know?

On to the fun stuff! We’ve now got a larger and still flat lot. Our first home also had a flat lot, something I only mention because in our area there are lots and lots of homes built precariously on hills. The new house has a rectangle piece of land where most of it is behind the house so instead of big side and front yards, we’ve got tons of usable backyard! In the front yard alone we have a grapefruit and another citrus on the other side of our yard. Can someone tell me what kind of tree is in the left of the above picture?

Here’s a good look for your garden: A leggy rose on a tipping over chainlink fence gate. NOT. We’re going to need to work on the landscaping around here. Not pictured, there’s a hedge along the street side of the house (just like our last house!) that I already loath. You’re going down, hedge. Let’s enter the house:

You guys put kitchen cabinets in doorways too, right? No? That’s weird? That’s what I thought.

In the image above, to the left you see the dining room (there’s another doorway on that side) and to the hard left unpictured is the living room. We’ll return to that, but we’re going to go right, up the stairs since this is a split level home. Also to the right behind the entry door is a giant closet (with no light?) but we’ll skip that.

Up the stairs we go! You can see into the bedroom we’re using as our “master” for now, to the right is the 2nd bedroom/office and to the left at the top of the stairs is the world’s smallest full bathroom.

The above picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s so small you can only turn in a circle and that tiny toilet still means my long legs touch the tub when making use of the facilities. So how are we going to upgrade? Well, I like the bathroom in this location but as you can see the roof line starts to cut into it (and there’s a closet basically behind that tub in the bedroom) so right now we think that left wall gets pushed out into what is currently space made in the roof so there could be a full window. It may bump out into the kitchen headroom but I’ve already thought of a solution for that which I’ll explain further down. Before that, check out these fun bathroom features which make us not use this shower for now:

While I may be a little down on the bathroom, rest assured it’s because I’m stoked to get started on changing it which makes my heart flutter. I see white subway tile in our future.

In the “master” bedroom we’ve got some paneling and a ceiling following the roof which I will admit, I find charming and like it. I know it’s not everyone’s style but I think it’s cozy. However I do believe the paneling lets the sounds of the house settling come through louder than drywall, so not on our short list, we may need to check out insulation options or possibly drywalling at least part of the room.

All floors throughout the house need to be refinished but we’re waiting until construction stuff is finished since we don’t know where we’ll land with that work. The bedrooms up here were originally carpeted so you can spot some carpet glue and nasty spots. When the house was painted they didn’t cover the floors (they meant to refinish them) so there’s also paint spray in some places. The closets kind of got it the worst but they’re still functional. This is the rest of the bedroom and my closet (the husband took the one in the other room).

The other upstairs bedroom is in the front of the house and is our office. The staging picture below makes it look super tiny with a twin bed but it’s actually about the same size as the other room.

The quirkiest thing about this room is that the linen closet is in here, you can see it behind the entry door below.

Back downstairs, let me show you the living room. This is one of my favorite parts about this home.

Big open beamed ceilings. And that fish? It’s (allegedly) real and though this is staged, it was the previous owner’s. We’re told he caught it. I asked to keep it. Martin the Marlin is now still in the house!

Below is a picture taken from the dining room looking at the living room. It’s a good size and while I still am perplexed by floor vents, it will definitely accommodate plenty of seating. Again, these floors eventually will get worked on. And I haven’t picked any colors yet in the house. I’ll figure it out down the line…

This is what I call the “sunroom.” It’s an unpermitted structure attached to the house that will need to come down. It wasn’t built on a foundation and since we live in earthquake country, we want all structures to be safely permitted. Plus we have some big plans for this part of our lot (hint: they involve kitchen and master bedroom) so this structure needs to be removed anyhow. For now it’s just extra storage space.

Back inside, from the dining room looking at the kitchen:

Looks can be deceiving, the cabinets in here appear to be mostly original but with a newer wood veneer applied to them. Translation: Disgusting cabinets on the inside. But the granite countertops are actually nice looking and may have some repurposing in their future.

Remember me talking about the bathroom upstairs and kitchen headspace? If that becomes the plan, the wall you’re looking at above will jut out on the top of the wall. Which would be awkward except that we could add low cabinets that look built-in to make a large pantry. Maybe add a shorter wine fridge. I kind of am in love with the idea but we’ll see where it goes.

The layout of the kitchen is a little piecemeal and as hinted at, will be changing hopefully soon. This ain’t my first rodeo with kitchen renovation so I’m looking forward to tackling it, knock on wood! I’ve been Pinteresting it up on the kitchen lately. See the doorway above with stairs down? We’ll head there in a moment.

Oh, that old Wedgewood stove? It’s likely original to the 1940 home and is in great working condition. Plus now I never have to wonder how long to leave my rib roast or biscuits in the oven.

Outlets in the oven? Makes perfect sense. By the way, I don’t really understand the griddle on this thing. Do I use a pan ON the griddle or cook directly on it? Or is that just a cover (I don’t think that’s it). I’m just going to stay away from that for now.

Okay, down the stairs from the kitchen into a space that used to be garage. The door on the left below goes outside, the glass door on the right is a pantry and the door directly ahead is a full bathroom.

A rather nice but low ceiling-ed bathroom. The bathroom, pantry and a finished garage “living space” were unpermitted and added to this two car garage. We’re hopeful about keeping a half-bath down here (removing the shower) and probably will need to remove the pantry.

Here is our two car garage! The rest of the space is to the right and that wall at the end with a door is maybe 8-inches from the actual garage door. The ceilings in here are super low due to heating and AC ducts which may or may not remain that way. I’m looking forward to this being an actual garage again even if it is just because we want to put a bunch of shelves and storage in here. And a laundry area.

Back through the house to the backyard, the crowning jewel of this house:

There’s some work we’ll be doing ourselves back here but I can say that the deck comes out with the sunroom and my garden lives next to that (dilapidated) white shed. That other building you see? Totally stinky (smoking…something) and totally unpermitted. It will come down. And the greenhouse? TBD but likely will be removed and if I want a greenhouse, it will probably be smaller and not located right in the middle of the yard. The good news is: there’s plenty of room for a chicken coop!!! As long as the building removals reveal no skunks this time, we’ll be all set.

This next view is from the upstairs bedroom and gives you a better idea of the layout of the yard. On our “someday” plan will be extending the patio or a deck from the house about as far out as the sunroom and deck go out now (because remember, the sunroom/deck all get removed). There will still be plenty of room for some croquet playing and gardening.

My other current favorite thing about our yard is the peach, plum and pear trees. I’ll get some pictures of just how many pears we’ve gotten so far but it really amazes me. Looking forward to preserving some this weekend!

Here’s your final view of the house from its back side:

There are plenty of projects to keep us busy, just how we like it. We prefer to own a home that we can make our own and we are truly looking at this house as a blank slate. While we only added about 100 square feet to our living space (not including all those unpermitted spaces) we greatly improved the neighborhood we live in. We’re a few blocks from a wonderful park with a community center that has bocce ball, softball/baseball fields, tennis courts, a skate park and even a community garden! Two blocks away is a little commercial area with some restaurants, shops and a post office. Our commute is also a little better now so we’re doing better all around! Welcome to our new home!

We bought a new house!

Tags

first house, nature, plants

That’s right, we bought our second home! Almost four years ago we bought our first house and here we are moving on up.
This new house is in the same city as we live now but in a nicer neighborhood with a larger and more usable lot. It’s not a ton larger than our current digs and also has some projects for us on the horizon but we are looking forward to moving in this weekend! It’s been less than a month since we even knew this house existed but we received the keys on Friday and already moved my garden (read: lots of tomatoes) to the new garden so now we’re all set to really move in– because naturally I wasn’t moving without my tomatoes!

I’m excited to share more about this new adventure (and the adventure of selling our first house!) here soon. In the interim, we’ll be trying to use up pears from the new tree and zucchini from our current garden, wish us luck!

Nothing Says “Welcome Home” Like Giant Zucchini

Tags

cooking, dinner, food, food processor, nature, plants, seed packet, shred, travel, vacation, vegetarian, yikes, zucchini bread, zucchini muffins

Been away from the blog for a bit so I’m making a comeback with the same thing that welcomed the husband and I home from a week of July vacation: gigantic zucchini!

Not the first time we’ve come home and been terrified by the crazy sized zucchini growing in our absence but this time was an extra surprise because I thought I had planted a very dark green zucchini! It appears some other seeds got mixed into my seed packet and I think these are actually “Segev” or Lebanese summer squash.

The seeds in a squash this size are as big as a pumpkin’s and when squash gets this big, you can’t grill it. So what to do?

Take out the food processor and shred away! I brought half (8 cups total!) to my co-workers and we had a zucchini bread bake off. At home we used it on pizza, in a farro dish, and more zucchini muffins than are good for us.

And I still have one more giant zucchini to shred then use. And several more are now growing on the plant. Yikes! When you spend all winter dreaming about tomatoes, basil and zucchini you forget how hectic it gets trying to use it all up when it hits. At least it feels like summer now.

Farmer Friday: Delayed Harvest

I might have waited too long to take these beets out of the garden?

Farmer Friday: Spring in the ‘Burbs

Tags

california poppies, nature, plants, suburban yard, summer fog

Our friends moved from San Francisco (urban) south to about 10 minutes from where my husband and I live (suburban). Whenever they bemoan the fact that they are no longer urban dwellers I point out all the wonderful things about living where we do. Like having a backyard! With sun in the summer (it’s fog in SF during summers)!

Walking around the yard that my husband and I enjoy year round, noticing things in bloom, I feel happiness. I would be hard pressed to give that up for city street noise and summer fog. And in the other extreme direction, would the smell of cows on the wind and sharing the road with tractors be an improvement over the suburbs? For now I’ll stick with our suburban yard which means fences and a house in most shots of what’s in bloom because I have a little of both worlds. Above, my grapes– fruit varietals not wine varietals — look like they are doing great on the trellis I built and moved this one to.

The asparagus has done its thing but still doesn’t get very thick. I’ve let it go to fern so it’s strong for next year. Every year it seems to produce a little more.

All the roses are starting to bloom. This remains one of my favorites but I say that about more than one of them.

My grandma has hundreds of orchids and she’s sent me home with some. This is one of the only two that I can get to bloom but it blooms every year!

Another flower from my grandma, an iris. Absolutely beautiful, I’m loving this addition to my irises this year.

The irises that bloomed for the first time last year despite always being in the garden have bloomed again and I believe there might even be more of them? It’s very exciting because these purple ones still smell like “fake grape” to me.

I let the front little garden get purposely overrun by California poppies which look nice around the irises. It’s great spring filler and then once some of the other flowers start showing up the poppies can easily be pulled out but will still come back!

It may not be a big ol’ plot of land on a farm, it’s certainly not an urban garden, but I like it. I squeeze in everything I can into my garden and Spring sure does make me happy here. How about you?

Farmer Friday: Daffodil Hill

Tags

bulb flowers, flowers in bloom, nature, photo ops, plants, volcano ca

Is there any better time of year than when spring shows up with budding leaves and blossoms? Sure, fall brings us lovely foliage and summer brings sun and my beloved tomatoes while winter brings… cold? But I think spring takes the cake for most exiting season. Heck, if you’re not in California spring is still surprising you with snow!

This past weekend my husband and I joined family and friends for an annual trip to California’s Gold Country and the first signs of the season were coming into full bloom everywhere. Starting March 15th, a local attraction opens up, Daffodil Hill, and we ventured out to Volcano, CA to experience 10 different types of the flower.

Generally each type of daffodil was planted in a section of its own but there were a few sneaky outliers. Of course there were some of the standard flowers you see normally (like the yellow ones that live at our house) but there were a few varieties I had never seen before like this cream one with a sunset colored cup!

It was still a little early to see absolutely all the flowers in bloom but there were enough of each type that we could see all the varieties. I also was impressed with some extra large yellow on yellow flowers that were really the size of a cup and saucer. Should have seen if I could have taken some of those home!

The one below is an interesting variety that had multiple blossoms on one stem!

Plenty of daffodils to take in and enjoy. A perfect way to take in a little spring on a sunny but still slightly chilly morning.

Of course there were also some photo ops requiring our significant others to take pictures of the women folk. I call this, “Four Cameras, Four Men.”

Back at my homestead I’ve been enjoying the freesia blooms from the bulbs my grandma gave me! This is one of my favorite bulb flowers because they smell amazing and these ones are the most vibrant fuschia. they are sprouting alongside reddish orange giant poppies and red nasturtium right now so it’s quite the site. While I love having the flowers outside, I had to bring a little branch inside and our living room smelled lovely.

I’m looking forward to seeing if the irises that surprised me last year make another appearance this year in April and May. What’s blooming in your garden this spring?

Spring Gardening Time!

Tags

egg carton, egg cartons, food, grape vines, nature, plants

Around this same time last year I was already planting my egg carton seedlings but I learned the hard way that it was just too early for them to go in the ground. As in, they all died. They had been started in February so this year, I’m a few weeks later getting them started but hopefully that means I will have significantly more success with my seedlings!

That huge stack of egg cartons? Yup, I asked my husband a while ago to start saving them for me. He’s so good to me! I took my egg cartons, my potting soil (you can also use garden soil), my trowel, Digz gloves and of course my seeds outside to get to work. I didn’t buy any new seeds this year as I have a pretty good stash so I plan on trying to make it through a few more of what I already have before I buy anything new but I sorted the seed packets (and saved seeds) into sections first.

Once everything was laid out in categories– for example all squash-type things went together like pumpkins, cucumbers, watermelon and zucchini– I could decide what was a late spring crop that could go directly in the ground like Brussel’s sprouts and what needed to be started in the carton like watermelon.

It’s as simple as adding dirt, labeling and popping in the seeds. Later, I lined the lid of each carton with foil so that it holds the seeded part and keeps the bottom dry. But before I could do that, I was precariously carrying my three cartons into the house all together just asking for this to happen:

That’s right, I completely dumped out one and a half cartons. Arg. So what I actually did is refilled one carton with what seeds I could see and emptied out the third carton. Looks like my surprise squash planting last year is becoming a tradition where I plant some seeds and have no idea what I’m growing. Makes it more exciting this way???

Are you working the garden yet? I’m looking forward to seeing our grape vines start to grow little leaves and to see if the peas I planted in a new spot this year do well. What are you planting?

Bits of My Weekend

Tags

cinder blocks, food, grape vines, pint jar, pint jars

Instead of traveling over the long weekend my husband and I stuck around while I did some of my favorite things: spent time in the kitchen, time in the garden, built something, and took a little drive. I can be very predictable. I took some phone pictures along the way and thought I would share some of my sunny weekend with those of you who had snowy long weekends, instead!
While I was initially intimidated by making my own yogurt (any recipe that requires over an hour of waiting scares me off at first pass) I finally got around to it using this recipe. It’s exactly like the store bought stuff and it so much cheaper that I will definitely be doing this again. Using four cups of milk and four tablespoons of yogurt yielded two pint jars and a not-quite-full half-pint jar. This method can be used for ANY type of yogurt (soy, coconut, goat milk, etc.) by using the “milk” and yogurt of matching types.

I strained my yogurt to get thicker yogurt like the Greek stuff. I save my whey as I’ve mentioned before to add to beans, bread, soups, and anything else I can think of. It still has vitamins and nutrients in it so I either freeze it to use later or in this case, I made a big pot of soup last night and it all went into the pot!

While I didn’t take any pictures of the finished product, I built a simple trellis for one of my grape vines over the weekend. The first step was to do a little digging and put in the posts but as is true in our backyard, before digging we always run into a few cinder blocks. Luckily I only found one and it came out of the ground pretty easily. Digging out the grape vine to transfer it to this new location was not as easy and I’m hoping it makes it after all the cutting I did. Oops. At least it won’t have to share the arbor with a rose, wisteria and another grape anymore.

So I guess it’s spring-ish around here? Came across the first (and always tiny) asparagus shoot in the garden. For size comparison, that’s one of my Digz gloves you see it on. While small, it was delicious fresh from the garden.For my grand finale, I give you my new favorite tile: glass and travertine. Let me explain how I came across this: The husband and I like to take Sunday drives occasionally and explore the area. There is a really, really, fancy, expensive neighborhood a short drive away and as we found ourselves purposefully getting lost, we saw a sign for an open house. The conversation in the car went like this:
Wife: “Ooooooo, open house. Let’s go!”
Husband: “What? Why? That house is going to be sooo expensive.”
Wife: “I know, I just want to see it, it’s an open house. Look, there’s another sign, we’re already here, let’s just go!”
Husband: *Begrudgingly drives to house*
As soon as we pulled up out front we knew we were soooo way out of our league. Someone had bought a house here, razed it, and built a brand-new fancier (exponentially more expensive) new construction home with all the premium finishes throughout. After we both embarrassed ourselves with the real estate agent showing the house (we were the only ones there since the house was so darn expensive so we had to chat and expose our out-of-league-ness) a neighbor showed up to see the house and we snuck off to see the place. And the highlight was this tile. I love it. Maybe it’s not too late to put a backsplash in our kitchen?

How was your weekend? Any cooking going on? Have you started gardening yet or is it still too cold? Are you an open house crasher, too?