Welcome To Orange Blossom Cottage!

Thought I'd give you all an updated peek at our little house, which I have named Orange Blossom Cottage. This is the view, when you roll up and park in the spot out in front of our house as an overnight guest! Please, feel free to imagine....

And then this is looking to the right so you can see the whole little front yard and all the gorgeous roses along the fence. I think our little town is the perfect climate for tea roses and lemon trees. You wouldn't believe how lushly the roses are blooming, with no special care or encouragement beyond a heavy pruning this winter. Someone planted them long ago, the stems are bigger around than my wrist at the ground....and so covered with craggy, old bark that I'm not sure I'd identify them as a rose in a photo. There are pinks and yellows and reds and oranges and they smell wonderful too. I'm so lucky. On the front of the house there is a beautiful bougainvillea that I trimmed waaaaaaaay back with the help of a local landscaping man and arranged to no longer block the front window and instead to coil around the window on a trellis and also over onto the fence that leads to the backyard. This is a big change in yard space for us....this is our only "lawn" area with classic swathes of grass. We mostly have paved space and garden beds in the back. I am astonished by how freeing it is to have such a tiny area to mow. So lovely. Welcome to our cottage....consider booking a room soon!

Peonies and Microwaves

Just put a load of laundry out on the clothesline, and I can see it out the window, hanging limply in the sunshine. I have done far too little clothesline using this spring so far. It is finally getting consistently warm and sunny though so I have decided to put my toe over the line, test fate and plan on hanging things out. Seems like the appropriate summer equation, cut the electric bill by giving the dryer a break and then jack it up a little by using the window unit air conditioners. Right? We haven't hit the time of year when you feel the need for blasts of cool air so, so far I haven't turned on a single window unit....but it's early yet. We shall see what we shall see.

The microwave died and I need to figure out what model to buy. So far, after a very small amount of review reading it looks like microwaves aren't terribly easy to rate. Most models get vaguely positive comments and all of them are below five stars. Is this a message from The Great Beyond to give up the radiation machine and live back-to-the-basics like my pal Nutmeg? I'm not sure I'm listening. I am lazy. I forget to thaw out meat for dinner. I heat water for a single cup of tea. I like reheating leftovers without dirtying any pans.

I can hardly believe it is June already. Time for the roses. My peonies are just finishing, the surprise peonies that were here already when we moved in. There were two varieties. A fragrant almost white, barely pink and then a deep lipstick one with gold stamens but no scent. Next year I plan to move them over to the flower beds I'm creating in the middle of the lawn. This will be the first week of our new CSA share. We will walk down the street to pick up our box and meet the folks from the farm. Lookin' forward to it!

The tomato plants have all migrated outdoors at this point, the corn I planted, right in the lawn (I am bonkers!) is coming up and there are lush, potato plants, climbing out of the soil in the two potato bins I made. Now I just need those late bloomer pole beans I put in the ground to get a move on and show their heads. Time to climb boys! Summer is a comin' in!

Let Summer Begin!

Happy Memorial Day! We're celebrating all the ways we know how...lost of grins and giggles...

....loads of roses blossoming in our garden.....

....loads of fresh peas being stripped off our pea plants by hungry boys who waited all winter just for this.

And then a salad with roses and peas....along with a lot of lettuce, also from our garden. Ah! Nothing like growing your own. This is the first of our produce for the year.

 

The baby is still cute! (gratuitous infant moment)

The pool is fabulous! Ah!

And the grill, she is fired up. Steaks or shrimp or burgers? Such choices....

And this morning I was so proud of my sons, soaking up the parade with glowing faces, asking me what each of the uniforms meant, impressed by the bigger boyscouts, thrilled about the helicopter fly-over and clapping enthusiastically when the marching band came thrumming past. Such sweet boys! I've always love love loved parades but, there's something really magical about sharing parades with your children.

Garters and Goodbyes, With A Side of Roses

Yesterday was perfect weather for all the outdoors gallivanting we did. I did a little garden exploring, catching up on what I'd missed since I took to my bed and buried my nose in all the roses that are indeed blooming. So lovely to see them all flourishing! I really was wincingly nervous that all this rose anticipation and hope and apparent incoming blossom avalanche would somehow manage to come to nothing but, instead, I'm happy to report we are enjoying a regular storm of rosy petals. When you step out onto the patio it smells like a perfumerie that specializes in old rose scents. Mmmm...

And then...tiptoeing past the garden bench I noticed this little garter, all curled in the sun, pretending earnestly that he wasn't there and hoping I'd think he was only a leaf. I ran in and got the boys, hoping I could show them but he was too nervous and quick for two rowdy little men and had managed to dematerialize quickly by the time I had them both on the bench, peering over the side. Oh well. I thought later that I should have taken them back indoors and read them the poem that kept rattling through my brain after the encounter. Note to self: when poems in my brain insist on being heard over and over, maybe they will be satisfied if I read them aloud to small boys. Dickinson would be good for us all, I think.

Little Bird was exhausted after the errand running because part of what we did was take him to the pediatrician for his first basic exam. This visit is always kind of fun...they weight, they measure, they tell you how incredibly gorgeous he is and you sit and chat congenially about parenting. He's a little big for his age and he's gaining weight beautifully (totally impressed the nurse with an 8 oz gain since birth) and he scored perfectly normal or above average on all the checklist points so, now its confirmed...our newest son is practically perfect in every way! What else would we expect?

And then of course the saddest duty of the day was saying goodbye to our dear Grandma/Mama at the airport. Ru cried as we drove out saying, "I just want her to stay with us! Why does she have to go?!?" He's a rambunctious little boy who can be a real handful but he is a lover deep inside and he does hate goodbyes. Good thing we're headed to Michigan to return the visit in just a few weeks...July, here we come!

Not Thinking and Other Clever Plans

Have been doing a good job, up until now with being quite perfectly patient with this baby. Promised myself I wouldn't get antsy and ridiculously self-indulgent and whiney like I did with Dee but then....I'm slipping just a touch. I still don't feel like I did with him and I am hopeful that I'll return to my thus-far normal state of placid floating onwards. But, really...tonight, I'm teetering on the edge of feeling a little disappointed and slightly sorry for myself.

The last couple of days I have really felt like things were starting to pick up and like labor was actually beginning. Just the very tippy toes beginning, mind you...but, beginning nonetheless. I was feeling lower back achey and kind of pre-menstrual crampy and having slightly painful contractions pretty frequently around the clock (as recently as this morning when I woke up) but yes, now things have calmed right down and the ripples are pretty well gone from the pond. I am big and awkward and just feeling like eating a lot of pizza, not really like I'm about to have a baby. Oh well. At least I don't hurt anymore. So, tomorrow I have another midwife appointment and see the chiropractor for another adjustment and I really do need to think about what I want to do for Mother's Day since I'm not going to be in labor after all. Hmm....nothing very inspired coming to me.

For now, the plan is, Think of Other Things. Lots.

That's about it. Wish I had some other brilliant solution but, that's pretty much all I've got at this point. Honestly, if Baby came right now, he or she would technically be early and as exciting as it would be to hold the new little person in my arms, I really, really want my baby fully-baked and at least in my mind, I'd rather go over than delivery early. That means I sit tight, I drink water, I make lists of productive things to do and I try not to stay awake too late at night stuttering through lists of all the things in the house that need organizing and cleaning. Heh.

So, what else is happening around here? Well, today I spent some good time in the garden, I clipped the black raspberry vines back a bit and tied the new shoots to the fence, I spread grass clipping mulch, I planted two clematis vines and my biggest project: I wove this year's twig arbor over our wicker bench. The grape vines are coming back (both made it through the winter!) which makes me very happy and the clematis will join them, clamoring over the little woven hood. I like this year's rendition quite well and so proud of myself for finishing it before the baby comes. It was a slightly superfluous project that was really bugging me. Just the sort of thing I lie in the dark thinking about at 3AM.

The lettuce in the garden is officially big enough for harvest (now if only I hadn't bought that industrial sized box of washed California salad greens). Blast. Maybe we'll have to eat what we have and snip these leaves when they're palm sized for covering burgers fresh off the grill. Doesn't that sound delicious?

Ru is so cute. Love the rabid story sponge he's become. He's been obsessed lately with Winne-the-Pooh. We were just home today with lots of good flex time so we hauled the big book of Pooh stories around the house and read in the garden, and on his bed and on the couch while I folded laundry and a few million other places. I think I read him five of the stories just today. He's determined to finish the book as soon as possible and cries every time we have to take a break and then retires to a corner with the treasured tome to re-work over E.H. Shepherd's brilliant illustrations and mouth his favorite quotes silently to himself. My family was rabid about Pooh...Milne is still the secret trade language my sisters and I quote back and forth to each other so, it is indescribably good to see my own small boy practically bathing in the same stories at the tender age of four.

And then just a few floral moments from the garden this morning. I tell you people, look at those rose buds! I swear to you, every rose bush I own is budding out fit to be tied at the moment. I'm half worried some ridiculous plague will strike and wipe them all to the ground but IF they all manage to bloom we'll be simply rolling in roses...it will a June to remember. I cannot wait to see my old homestead moss roses bloom that I dug up two years ago with my sister Foxy. They haven't bloomed for me yet but, they're all covered with little  teardrop buds and I just can't wait to dip my nose into the blooms. There is nothing in this world like ancient, nameless roses.