Bye Bye Hot Tub!

We've been talking about it practically ever since we moved in (almost 4 years ago now), and we've finally done it. Well, Michael has finally done it. :) He cut up the hot tub and removed the part of the deck it was sitting on, so now we have room for a tool shed and also to expand our garden for next year. So exciting! He did the majority of the work in one day--while I was working at The Barefoot Sage--and had it all loaded up in the truck by the time I got home. Our biggest concern was how to get the thing out of our yard. It was an old hot tub that didn't work really well, so we figured that no one would want to come and haul it away. Michael called around and found out that a landfill in Hillsboro would actually accept it for $35 and be able to recycle some of the parts. Awesome!

So now it is gone and we're planning our next steps . . . who's in favor of a red tool shed shaped like a barn?

The Great Gardening Experiment of 2008

Well, we finally did it! Since we moved in, we've been talking about having a vegetable garden, but hadn't do it mostly because of the fact that the neighborhood cats like to use our yard as their personal litterbox. Until now, we've been getting our veggies from Trader Joes's (love their snap peas), and in the summer, the Beaverton Farmers Market. How I love the taste of freshly-picked, cherry tomatoes! It's like tasting summer itself.

After I read Barbara Kingsolvers's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last year, I was more determined than ever to have a garden. If you haven't read it, check it out. She and her family decided to live for a year on only what they could grow and buy at their local farmers market, or from neighboring farmers. They wanted to see how much it would cost as opposed to shopping at a grocery store, and they also wanted to live sustainably--almost all of the food at stores is shipped from hundreds of miles away, costing money for gas and polluting the air too. Kingsolver wanted to get in touch with the earth. She wanted to really see where food comes from (the ground, not a cardboard box or a tin can), and get creative with recipes for using whatever was in season at the time. One thing I learned from her was that if your neighbors are growing zucchinni, don't bother. By the end of the summer, they'll be leaving bags of it outside your door to get rid of it!

My plan of attack for the garden was simple: buy the plants and figure out where to put them later. Actually, I hadn't seriously planned to have a garden this year because of the cat problem, but when I saw those rows of young plants at Farmington Gardens (our local nursery), I couldn't resist. I started small, only two tomato plants, but took Michael back later and loaded up a wagon (the nursery has red wagons for people to put their plant selections in--I think that's the coolest idea!) with more tomatoes, cucumbers and two kinds of zucchini--our neighbors aren't super friendly, so we probably won't have to worry about them trying to pawn off extra veggies on us! Besides, the tag said they're easy to grow, and easy is good for beginning gardeners like me. :) We also got a pumpkin! It's a French variety, so of course I couldn't resist it, and I think it'll be fun to watch it grow and see how big it gets by Halloween.

As Michael stood by at the nursery watching me load plant after plant into our wagon, he asked me where I planned to put them. I said that I thought I could do a container garden--buy some really big plastic flower pots and fill them with veggies. He reminded me that the cucumbers and zucchini would need room to spread out. My crestfallen face must have softened his heart, because he said, "Well, maybe we can build a garden and fence it off to keep the cats out." Hooray! I was back in business!

Luckily, Memorial Day weekend was coming up, and we'd have a couple of days to get our garden set up. We decided to put it on the south side of the house, in the exact spot where we had piled the old flooring from the kitchen--our plan for the huge pile was to dispose of it little by little in our garbage can each week. So first we had to move the pile of plywood and broken tiles, sodden from recent rain, to a new place a few feet away from our intended garden.

Here's Michael hard at work moving the pile of debris

I pulled up the weeds and we were down to bare soil. Because the folks who built our house back in 1994 decided to go cheap and use clay landfill to make our yard, our bare soil meant thick, hard clay which turns to mud when wet. Definitely not your first choice for a garden, but we could deal with it. We turned to our local Home Depot and rented a mid-size rototiller in order to break up the clay enough to get some real soil in it

The rototiller. We were probably stretching its limits, with our tough clay and should've opted for the full-size model, but it did the job

Hard work for Michael!

The next step was building the fence. We had 3 foot chicken wire from Home Depot, and some wooden stakes to build the fence. It went up pretty quickly and then all that was left to do was dig holes for each plant, fill them with potting soil, and nestle the baby plants in. There were three rusty plant cages left over from the lady who lived here before us, which we used around our tomato plants. They'll definitely need the support as they get bigger.

Pounding in the stakes--notice the freshly-moved pile of flooring debris in the background.

Stretching out the chicken wire

The finished product! Yay!

The baby plants with a garden angel in the background to help them grow.

Now we just need some sunshine to make those tomatoes!

Flooring Fun!

We've been in our house now for almost four years, and we've been wanting to redo the flooring ever since we moved in. Eventually we'll take out all the carpet and (hopefully!) put in Pergo, but we decided to start with the kitchen and dining room. There was dark green and brown linoleum in there that some of our family and friends liked, but we definitely did not. The good thing was we both agreed that it needed to go.

Michael has been the push behind all of our home improvement projects (I always think of more fun things to do like read a book, go for a hike, watch a movie, clean the bathroom . . . ), and really, I am thankful for him. Because of him, I have freshly painted walls in the kitchen, dining room, living room, upstairs and downstairs hallways, and two bedrooms, as well as the laundry room. I also have a new washer and dryer, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, front and back doors, microwave, toilet (!) and a really cool faucet that will be installed when we buy a new kitchen sink sometime in the future. So, I am very appreciative of all the improvements--I just have trouble getting motivated to do them!

About a month ago, Michael started pulling up the previously mentioned ugly dark green and brown flooring downstairs. We picked out some beautiful cherry wood Pergo at Lowe's and debated doing the whole downstairs in it. After we got the stars out of our eyes, we realized that it would just about blow our whole home improvement budget. So we decided to use it just for the entryway and then do the rest of the floor in "Harvester Slate" linoleum. The name doesn't really do it justice--the squares of tile are several shades of brown and tan, and remind me of what you might see in a Tuscan villa. Very nice.

Here are some before and "in-progress" pictures of the flooring project. Enjoy!

The not-so-chic brown and green flooring (nicely complemented by Michael's RC helicopter and Chloe's food and water dishes)

The entryway after the linoleum and subfloor have been removed.

The special paper that helps provide insulation.

The new subfloor! Chloe loves to lay on it.

Did I mention that Michael has done almost all of this flooring project by himself? I helped with the ripping out of the old floor (which involved a crowbar and lots of elbow grease) but other than that, it's all him. I'm very proud!

Stay tuned for more pics and flooring updates!

Getting Up Close and Personal With a Really Wild Bunch!

The past few days have been sunny and hot--quite a change from the gray, wet skies we've seen all winter. It's been so nice that we were inspired to take a trip to the Oregon Zoo today to check in on our friends, the animals. I'm sorry to say it had been at least a couple of years since we'd said hello, and we figured it was time.


Not surprisingly, many other Portland-area folks had the same idea! The parking lot was completely full by the time we arrived (about 1:00pm) and we were directed to the overflow parking lot.

We joined a long line of other sun-starved Oregonians in tank tops, shorts and sundresses to wait for one of the yellow school buses that were serving as zoo shuttles. It was a good thing they were available, because otherwise we would have been hoofing it for nearly a mile just to get to the zoo gates!


Michael and I got a seat in the very back of the bus; this proved to be hilarious because our driver thought it would be a good idea to hit the gas as we approached one of several speed bumps, then brake abruptly as we cleared the bump, then speed up again on our way to the next one. We got jolted and bumped all the way to the zoo and I couldn't stop laughing!

We waited in a super-slow line to buy tickets and when it was finally our turn, we could see that the zoo's digital reader board said the temperature was 78 degrees. It sure felt much hotter than that! I could feel the top of my head burning--it was the only place I hadn't slathered with sunscreen. We were very, very glad we'd worn shorts!

We said hello to the animals--the seals and penguins, the monkeys and a giraffe who showed great determination to reach a leafy branch just over his head. Did you know that a giraffe's tongue is super long and blackish-purple? We didn't either but it is!

Michael's friend, the penguin

Me feeding the little parrots juice that you buy for $1

The giraffe with the really long tongue

What has 12 legs and 6 horns? I'm not sure either, but they like to follow each other...

Does this fence make my butt look big?

M's favorite animals were the penguins, but a close second was the sea otter that was engaging in some very interesting self-grooming, if-you-know-what-I-mean.

My favorite animal experience was being right in front of the plexiglass window when Pachy the elephant was brought in for his lunch--some hay and brown pellets (yummy!) which was on the floor directly in front of me. When the zookeeper let him in, and he stood for one very brief moment framed in the doorway, I had to remind myself that there was a barrier between us. He was enormous, or, as the zookeeper put it, "a mountain with legs." He was very glad to see his lunch waiting for him, and trotted right up to it--straight at me. It's the closest I ever hope to come to being charged by a bull elephant. He was absolutely breathtaking!

Sadly, we could not find the rhinos or the hippos that used to be at the zoo, but we saw every other animal there, even the bats and the naked molerats. We left 3 hours after we arrived, tired but very happy.

It was a great day!