When I first told my family they get could a dog as long as I didn’t have to be involved, I failed to fully think that through. Turns out, Betsy beagle has become my mostly companion which somehow wasn’t a surprise to anyone but myself. We even became those people who bring a dog on a college tour this fall and when I expressed surprise at this, I was generally met with ‘uh-huh’, as if we were the only ones who failed to recognize this about us.
As years go, 2019 wasn’t entirely a bad one. But I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a good one either. Like any year, it had its ups and downs, celebrations and disappointments. We lived through a construction project, I had a milestone birthday and we toured colleges with our not-so-baby girl. We slide into 2020 knowing it’s going to be one filled with changes – change being the one constant you can count on in life. Having spent the last 18 years with my world revolving around being a mom, my every day is clearly about to undergo a vast shift so I’m not going to bother making any sort of sweeping declarations of what I’m going to do in 2020, beyond of course, promise you that I really am not coming back to run the orchestra poinsettia sale, so please, stop asking. Really.
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We went over to Urbanna for the Oyster Festival this past weekend. It had been a few years since we had been, but the beauty of Oyster Festival is that while it evolves, at heart it doesn’t change.
Continue readingWith construction wrapped up on the sunroom, all that’s left is the cleaning and unpacking. Also, the reupholstering, because you simply cannot put the same old grimy furniture back in the space that you just spent so much money into getting spruced up. But, scope creep meant rolling up my sleeves and reupholstering furniture myself.
Construction has wrapped up on our little renovation project so now we are down to setting the house back to rights. Which at first glance probably seems like no big deal, but scope creep combined with the realization that the back half of the house looks so good we now want the rest of the house to match means the remaining part of the project – our portion – is bigger than we had initially realized.
Continue readingWhen I last reported on our back porch/sun room renovation, it looked something like this:
With three (!) busy summer work schedules and a house under construction, an actual, proper vacation was shoved to the back burner this year. Having spent the better part of the last year working 6 & 7 day weeks, I wanted needed a few days off. With school related activities starting just a few days after Edie came home from camp, I knew we needed to make the most of those last free days.
The thing about living in old houses is that something always needs work. The back porch was iffy when we bought the place twenty years ago. But as long as it stayed relatively intact, it was the house repair can we kicked down the road. Until one day this spring when a sizable enough chunk fell off that we realized there was no more putting off getting a new back porch. A temporary repair was made with a sheet of plywood, but clearly, the porch needed attention because someone, most likely the dog, was going to fall through it sooner rather than later.
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We are at that point of July where the Fourth is a pleasant memory and the lazy, long, hot days of summer roll together. The other day, the 5:00 p.m. parking lot at Barracks Road had more parking spaces than cars in it – a tell tale sign of exactly how things slow down around here this time of year.
Without the structure of school, our days feel looser –alarms aren’t always set so mornings are quiet and casual. No rush.
No matter how hot and muggy the day is, there is an outdoor happy hour in the front yard practically every afternoon/evening, while a steady stream of teenagers/friends/neighbors and their dogs pop through to say hello. Dinner involves some version of corn/squash/eggplant/tomatoes with herbs from the garden that we linger over while we watch Betsy beagle lay in wait for lightning bugs as dusk sets in.
Bathing suits and towels hang on the line in hopes of drying between afternoon thunderstorms to be worn to the water again tomorrow. Walking the dog after dark, you can feel the heat of the day still rising off the pavement. There are always popscicles and Klondike bars in the freezer, melons, berries and peaches in the fridge. Summertime and the eating is good.
The lazy, hazy days of summer seem to stretch on endlessly, when in reality, they are fleeting at best, their time cut short by the responsibilities of work and school.
But we soak them in while we can, squeezing in as many picnics, barbecues, baseball games, berry picking, road tripping excursions as possible, swimming every day. The magic of summer may be fleeting, but thank goodness it comes around every year.
I regularly hear from friends who only see my garden through my highly curated social media photos who think I have this wonderland yard.
Okay, so it’s kinda glorious, but there is a lot you don’t see.
