Our first peony blossom of the year!

Here is the first blossom in full bloom.




And Here are more blossoms yet to come.


I'm posting them here now because I'm afraid that they'll all fade before we get back from California and I need the picture here to remind me what they looked like :)

Catching up...

So it's been a while since last I blogged... I was sick, and then Paul went to Ireland and I got more sick, which I didn't think was possible, but it was, so I spent a good part of that week sleeping in a restless Nyquil haze and eating Chocolate Velvet Soy Delicious because it was the only thing I really wanted, and then eating various noodle soups because I thought I needed the hydration... Then I spent the weekend with My String Bean and her dog Rocco and they both wanted desperately to be held, but an Auntie X only has so many arms. We managed to compromise by me holding Charlie and Rocco lying across my legs so I couldn't go anywhere :) I used my captive time taking advantage of my brother's cable and watching the first 5 episodes of Big Love and thanking the gods that I neither have to share Paul with anyone, nor feel any sort of religious obligation to go forth and multiply :)

Then Paul came back and we spent the week celebrating his birth in various ways and just generally being grateful that he got home safely. This past weekend I weeded, fertilized, and planted some new things in my herb garden. My life is way too chaotic right now to do a full vegetable garden, so I figure as long as I have my most commonly used fresh herbs in my mini garden, my store bought food never has to be boring and I don't have to worry about buying them and then not using them before they get slimey. Here's the pic: From the top left we have a lily of some sort that was there when we moved and survived, a row of Italian parsley, a patch of oregano that is struggling to thrive from last year, a lonely dill plant that I planted this year, and a giant bunch of lemon balm that came back from last year in the top right. In front of that is a bunch of basil plants on the left and a small clump of cilantro in the front left corner. We love cilantro but it doesn't transplant well. The big mass in the front slightly left of center is a purple sage plant that is doing rather well from last year. The front right are 4 creeping thyme clusters, 2 red, 2 white that I'm hoping will fill in that area. Behind those are a couple of clumps of chives that keep coming back year after year, though they're a little less full this year. And last, but hopefully not least are a couple of rosemary plants that I'm hoping will thrive and keep coming back. I'm shooting for a fairly low cost, low maintenance garden.

On Sunday we went up to Paul's mom's house and helped her plant her vegetable garden and strip the sod off a strip of lawn that she just didn't want to mow anymore :) After all the hard work we had a BBQ dinner (boca for me), some birthday cake for Paul (chocolate cinnamon and raspberry go surprisingly well together), and I turned the heel and made lots of progress on my very first sock! I'm using microspun in lilac on size 4 needles. On Monday, Paul had to work, so I slept in, did some more knitting, and then cleaned up the remaining rubble from the hearth and ripped out more of the old felt insulation. We rented a jackhammer over the weekend and Paul did most of the heavy lifting to break up the concrete that was left over after the brick was removed. Here's what's left now:

And just for completeness, here's the sink area:

The past couple of nights I've been ripping up more of my house to make room for the forced air heating system which will eventually go in a closet next to my snazzy new combo laundry machine. It goes "bing!", or rather it makes Zelda noises according to Paul.