finally a look at the present state of good ol’ garden plot N10:

as you may be able to tell, we are having a bit of a challenge with a few of the boxes on the left, but we have discovered the problem and are just going to start over in them with some fall plantings. let’s just look at one of the boxes that is doing well, shall we?

there is plenty of yummy stuff growing:

i even did a little knitting to help transport the bounty from garden to kitchen:

do you see the crazy mess that is the garden plot just behind where the bag is hanging in the above picture? our garden-neighbor planted a few things in april and never came back. it has weeds as tall as 5 ft. and is now officially ours. she has finally given it up and we were able to take it over. here is how it looked…

…until we spent three hours this morning cutting it back, pulling stuff up, saving the carrot patch and mowing.
stay tuned for further exciting tales of N10 and N9

the title pretty much sums up all we have been up to lately.

we have had our old boiler replaced and central air conditioning installed over the past 2 weeks. though we are thrilled with the results, especially considering the icky weather on its way, we were not prepared for the amount of dust the job was going to create:

so quite a bit of time was spent monday and tuesday cleaning out dust from every imaginable spot.

in addition, we harvested our first crop from our community garden plot:

and tom attempted pickles from scratch:



they turned out to be a bit too sweet for our tastes, but i do believe there will be more pickles in our future.

it’s ours! it’s all ours!

N10 was the exact garden plot that we were hoping to get at the community garden new-gardener sign ups on saturday. we weren’t too sure that we could snag the one we wanted once we saw that we were approximately 30th in line for the sign-ups - despite having arrived 15 minutes before they opened. who knew gardening on the grounds of the old psych hospital could be so popular?

here it is in all its glory:

(we have the left most half of the dirt rectangle containing the brussel sprouts.)

it was a good weekend filled with meeting new people, getting some fresh air and unpacking long-ignored moving boxes.

spring is springing in western massachusetts so it was time to scope out the community garden plots to figure out which one we are going to request as our very own at this weekend’s open sign-ups:

it is a big decision, because once you have a plot, you can keep it forever (unless you don’t take care of it). so we went to a garden committee meeting and found out which plots are free and then took a walk around:

which to choose? M10? O11? perhaps the one with the brussel sprouts?

we’ll have to get to the sign-up early. tom started his seeds almost two weeks ago and there are quite a few…we are going to need somewhere to plant them.

up here spring also means that the bears wake up. we had heard that there were bears in our area and that it is a good idea to only have bird feeders in the yard during winter. the general rule is to take them inside by the end of march, so it made sense that last weekend should be our last bird buffet of the season and we planned to take them down on sunday. a good plan, no?

sunday morning we woke up to find this:

the bear tore the tops off of most of the feeders. but this one proved a bit more tricky, i guess:

lesson learned: when you start your seeds, you take down the birdfeeders.

when we were in MA on wednesday for our house inspection, we found a little treasure just a few miles from our future house, a community garden:

tom checked out the rules:

and the best part (for me and the pups, at least) is that there is a 5K dog walk through the woods just a few steps away. that sounds like the makings of some fun weekend mornings!

oh…and does anyone know what kind of tree/bush this might be?

there is a giant one in our future front yard. the berries are so cute!

what to do when there is nothing to eat for dinner? turn to the back yard, of course!

pick some tomatoes and basil which are in full bloom in the garden:

gather some stuff:

mix it up in a pan:

change your mind about the type of pasta you want and…
ta da!

gorgeous and yummy pasta a la tom:

(i never think to just throw things in a pan…pretty nice that he is so willing to feed me, huh?)