Wow. What a moment. Today we paid off the mortgage and the moment looked like this: We bought this house on Court Street 30 years ago when we were young and buoyant and ready to do some work: We removed the aluminum siding, changed the front doors, gardened, reworked the interior and put on an […]
Category: Court Street
The Weather…ugh (and the Gilbert House Garden Tour)
I hate to talk about the weather but it REFUSES to become late spring/early summer here in Oregon in every way except for the delicious light, with us until 9:30 p.m. or so. Last week was the Gilbert House Garden tour with about 400 people through the gardens in 2 days but, AMAZINGLY, the sun […]
SPRING!!!
Camellias were my first Oregon revelation. Yesterday the camellia in front of our lovely historic house reminded me of another little house…and that spring was on the way: We came to Salem in 1970, and in January of 1971 moved into a rickety little wooden rental house over on Statesman Street. The next month I […]
The Red Quilt…
There’s nothing like settling in on a winter evening in a big comfy chair, pulling a quilt onto your lap and just quilting away for an hour or two. It is possibly one of life’s most calming activities (along with freecell). Just now I’m working on a quilt which combines some elegant Dutch fabric (the […]
A Swedish sort of day…
Rain rain rain. January. Get organized. Went to IKEA today. We loaded about 700 pounds of desks and shelving into the Swedish car with the Swedish wife, and headed south. Here’s my new desk and file cabinet and here’s the shelving for the new office suite upstairs: I think we’re kind of hoping that while […]
Solstice…
Today the darkest, shortest day–the longest night. Here is a look out our front door at 9:30 a.m.–living up to the depths of winter here in Oregon: As I begin to look forward to the increasing light (starting tomorrow!)I just turned all the Christmas lights on for cheer. I think it’s working.
The New Lawn, finally, complete
Well it just POURED yesterday morning. Torrential. But, in the afternoon the guys arrived to do the final work. Cleaning the walks, patching and trimming the grass, testing the sprinklers. Even if it’s raining the sprinklers will run twice a day for a few weeks. Roger has had a test run on the “system”. By […]
New Lawn, the Penultimate Day
Considering they laid the sod in the dark, it looks pretty good this morning. They covered the walk in sod as it can’t stayed rolled up another day. Tomorrow, Monday, the LAST day of this process, they will come and use the grass on the sidewalk to fill in little spots, trim, clean up, etc. […]
New Lawn, Day 5
Well the fog and mist of the morning kept the guys away until noon. Then began the long process of preparing the dirt to take the sod. We went off to do errands and came by mid-afternoon to check the progress: Home about 5:30 to find the sod just being spread out and the stepping […]
The New Lawn
Finally even we got tired of the dirt-with-a-few-weeds front lawn we’ve had for several years. The suggestion from a friend of a good guy to do the job pushed us over the edge so this week–sprinkler system and new lawn go in. Yesterday was removing the old lawn (hooray!!) and digging the trenches. Today is […]
On The Way 