The First Spring Weekend

Oh what a glorious way to enter into spring. The first tulip bloomed on the first day of spring. There were rain showers, blue, blue skies, billowy white clouds, March breezes, drinks with a new friend, dinner with an old, dear friend and days spent together outside.



The mustard is just starting to fade.

Soon to be cherries.

Soon to be peaches.

Muscari growing wild below our apple trees.
Did you have a good first weekend of spring too?

Insulating our House

This is why my blogging frequency has decreased, because we are making swiss cheese of our house. When we bought this house, it was our first home purchase so we didn’t take into consideration somethings that we would consider now. Seven years ago, we wanted a unique (as in not cookie cutter) three bedroom house with a bit of character, within walking distance to town and with a big backyard. This house had all of those features. But it also had a few features which we completely overlooked. Like single paned windows that were painted shut, walls and floors that weren’t insulated, doors with gaps at the base so large that we could see if someone was standing behind it, a flat top tar & gravel roof with no western shade and no air conditioning. Needless to say, our house got mighty uncomfortable during the summer heat waves. It was like living in an oven. On the 100+ degree heat waves it would easily be 95+ degrees, inside(!). And I made the wise decision of being at my most pregnant through our oven like summers. Twice. Not smart!

So we started with the windows. We replaced them with double paned windows that we could actually open. Glory Be! That helped a bit. The next year we installed ceiling fans in every room, which was lovely. The following year we replaced the doors with weather tight solid doors. That made a considerable difference. But it still got bloody hot in here during the summer. So with a crummy real estate economy and the realization that we are going nowhere soon, we decided to take the plunge and have the house insulated yesterday. After less than 24 hours we’ve already noticed a difference. This morning I didn’t go running straight for my slippers when my feet hit the ground and the walls that faced the outside weren’t bitter cold like they used to be.

Because we never like to keep things easy nor simple, we decided to have an electrician come and replace all of our old brittle wires with new ones and also to install some overhead lighting and a new ceiling fan box in our family room. We took down the old yucky ceiling tile and took the opportunity to take out the 65 year old rock wool insulation and add not only new insulation but also new radiant barrier. Have you heard of that before? It’s like bubble wrap encased in aluminum foil and it’s supposed to keep the heat of your attic off of your insulation, so that the insulation has less of a chance of heating up and therefore transferring that heat to the room. It was fairly inexpensive and easy to install and is supposed to make a world of difference. In fact our electrician said that one of his friends installed it in her attic and she actually got rid of her air conditioner! I can only hope.

And while we were at it, I decided that I didn’t like the baseboard nor the trim around the doors so we’ve been taking it all off, room by room to be replaced by nicer wider trim and baseboard. Oh, and since we’re at it the doors have 65 years worth of paint jobs on it, so we’re stripping the doors down to bare wood and giving them a clean coat of off white paint. It’s a huge laundry list of projects, but I can’t wait until they are all done. And I’m even looking forward to our summer heat for once to see if this new insulation really works.

Summer? I’m ready for it!

It has been a very long time since I’ve last posted, hasn’t it? But the truth is, that it has rained pretty much every day since I last wrote that post the our drought and besides being insanely busy, I’ve been feeling like maybe it might jinx things if I wrote over that drought post. I think today might be the last of the rain though, so I’m taking my chances. It hasn’t been just a little rain either. The newsman said last night that in the previous 48 hours Sonoma has received 4.53″ of rain. And it rained all night long and it’s raining now still. So while I think water restriction is still a certainty, maybe we won’t have to cut back quite so much.

Meanwhile, since we can’t be outside, we’ve come up with an almost impossible to-do list inside the house. How does one simple little project, like having insulation blown into our walls (we have none!) turn into an almost all house renovation? We spent our long weekend taking off 65 year old stuck-like-glue baseboard, door trim, ripping out parts of the ceiling and sending it in for asbestos testing (negative!), talking to electritians…oh my. Just what have we gotten ourselves into.

But I will be back soon with more garden talk. The hens are going a little nutty with staying in the coop for so long and so are we! We have new Baker Creek seeds to discuss and so much more. I hope your long weekend was a good one.

He Hunted Down a Few Porcinis

After those rains we had the other week Scott was itching to go mushroom hunting along the Sonoma coast. The first time I ever heard mention of this Scott fellow was from some mutual friends who said that their friend was going mushroom hunting that weekend. I was fascinated, who was this mysterious mushroom hunting guy? Well fast forward a year or so and there I was with him accompanying him after each first fall rain and every spring into the woods along the coast.

You have to put your mushroom eyes on to see them. They grow up under the grasses many times so you have to train your eyes to be able to see these slight bumps in the ground. I was never very good at spotting them, so I mostly went along for the scenery and the fresh ocean/mountain air. Now that we have a house full of chores and two young boys who put everything in their mouths, our mushroom hunting days have dwindled. I’m not quite ready to teach the boys that picking wild mushrooms and eating them is okay. They are too young to understand that some could kill them and some are just fine. We’ll wait a few more years for that.

But Scott went with a friend. They went a full week after the rains which was a little too long to wait. He found lots of cut off white porcini stumps from previous hunters and the ones that were left had many bug bites, but he did get a few. We haven’t eaten these yet, but we are looking forward to nice risotto and porcini dinner sometime soon. And if you don’t see a post from me in a while….well, then maybe you should call poison control for us, would you? Thanks.

Something we haven’t seen since last March

It’s been quiet around this here blog hasn’t it? Sorry about that. It’s been raining in this Sonoma Garden, and in every other Sonoma garden too, I’m sure. It’s been an incredibly long time since it rained last. In fact I think I’ll be so bold as to say that I really don’t think it’s rained here (beyond a few light sprinkles) since I’ve started this blog. Back in March! That’s a long time. It’s been a dry year and our water bill has shown for it too.

All the plants look so green and alive after a good rain. You can water with a hose until you are blue in the face, but it never quite revives a garden like a good rain can. In fact I think this might inspire me to go back into the garden and write about it again. In the meantime, my rainboots are drying and I’m heading out to vote. Don’t forget to vote!

Harvest Celebration

We’ve talked about having a harvest party for a long while now, years even. But this weekend we finally did it. It just so happened to be a certain young boy’s second birthday too, so on top of eating and visiting we also got to do some singing and cake eating.


The weather was gorgeous, cool enough to have pumpkin soup but warm enough to enjoy sitting outside in the warm sun. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the frame of mind to take photos of the food Scott made for everyone, but he truly outdid himself. We put our dining room table outside, put the two extra leaves in it and every last inch of it was filled with platters of food. Five different type of crostini, shrimp ceviche, fennel and grapefruit salad, tomato and mozzarella salad, fruit platters, cheese platters, deviled eggs, and the curried pumpkin soup. We made sure that each dish contained something from our garden, even if it was a small thing like herbs.

Peeling eggs in preparation for deviled eggs
Thank you to our fine friends and family, some of whom drove over an hour to come, for sharing with us. We are so lucky to have you in our lives. Thank you for celebrating our favorite season and for wishing our little guy a happy birthday.

Happy Autumn!

Some people, I think, are hard wired for different seasons. There are some people who live for the summer and love the heat of the mid-day sun, others love to curl up to the rainy day window ledge of winter, but we are autumn people. We welcome the coming of fall with enthusiastic cheers of delight. It’s the advent of wearing fleece vests, enjoying the weight of a down comforter, pouring a glass of deep red wine and viewing all the splendid fall colors that energizes us. After a day spent at the San Francisco Ferry Building, we came home and made an incredible meal of egg pasta with shaved Italian truffle paired with a heavenly Barbera d’Alba. We gave a high toast to the coming of fall.

Which season is your season. Which one brings you extra energy and enthusiasm?

For a great write up on her views of fall, read what Amanda of Soulemama has to say.

Have a good long weekend

Just a quick post to share with you this hot, hot sun that was rising over our valley oak this morning. Today’s a record breaking day in terms of heat. And we’re packing to escape to the beach. Have a great long weekend friends. I’ll see you next week and we’ll talk all about late summer gardening.

Sharing the Harvest

Those that know me know that I’m a dreamer. Head in the sky, full of lofty ideas – a true daydream believer. What’s been in my head lately has been this house. This 100 year old farmhouse for sale just outside of town on four and a half acres. A few months ago, on a whim, I decided to go to its open house and completely fell in love. I guess the whole romance begins on the long lavender lined drive up to the front, just that alone lets you know that you are in for something good. As soon as I opened the front door I could just sense that we belonged in that house. Maybe it was the old wide planked wood floor that creaked just so, or the original built ins or the huge country kitchen that demanded daily fried egg breakfasts. But I can’t get this place out of my head.

If we lived in this old house we’d certainly breath a little deeper, speak with a little more thought and walk a bit slower. At least that’s how I see it in my head. The boys rooms would be upstairs. Up creaky steps to pitched roof rooms. With some new windows to open for a breeze and some old windows so they could spend boring rainy days looking out at the world through melted glass.

The property around the house is flat and surrounded by large trees – perfect for a future apple orchard and vegetable garden. I walked out of the backdoor, off the back porch, past the lawn through a gate to the back of the property where a creek runs. Stepping over the hap-hazard stepping stones to the water, I brushed by some wild mustard and onions and it just overwhelmed me with the thought that this is what childhood should smell like. And what it should be made of. Swimming and exploring in that creek, smelling those wild smells and moving about your day with the secret thought that maybe ghost wonder around those old pitched roof rooms of theirs.

So, you’re wondering, why haven’t we bought this dreamy place already? Well, four acres with a dreamy farmhouse in Sonoma doesn’t come cheap. Even in these hard economic times. But, I think I have figured out a way to make it work, thanks to this book I’ve read for Green Bean’s Bookworm Challenge called Sharing the Harvest: A Citizens Guide to Community Supported Agriculture. We are going to start our own CSA. And you are all invited to join! Its going to be just wonderful. This book explains everything you need to know on how to start and operate a CSA and I think, in my dreamy mind, that it would be great fun. We’ll grow acres of fruits and vegetables to shower you with and since there’s already a chicken coop there, we’ll bring our chickens and provide eggs for you too. I’ll bake you all tarts and Scott will make you all jam. You can all come over on the weekends to help and we can have picnics in the orchard and bonefires during harvest parties. And after doing all the math, this will only cost you a cool $1000/month. Hmmm, what’s that? Oh, I guess that is a little pricey. And I suppose running a farm wouldn’t be all fun all the time. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

It makes me feel good though, that even though we can’t afford this place just yet, that it exists. That in this world of shiney homedepot granite and mcmansion newness that there still are small, authentic houses on large pieces of land that are to be had. And someday we’ll own one, but maybe not quite yet.

sore and achey with broccoli

Happy Memorial Day! I write to you all achey, sunburned, sore, calloused and hands full of splinters. I’ve been digging this weekend. Digging post holes for a new fence to go behind my flower garden and in front of the veggies. Post hole digging is a lot of work! Especially in clay soil. But this fence is something I’ve been talking about for years now and I decided this weekend that I was finally going to do something about it. For now it looks like a big mess, but soon I will post pictures of all its hoped for glory.

Last night after hours of digging I picked up a gardening book and read a little blurb that said that 45 minutes of gardening will burn 200-300 calories. I suppose they included that to make you feel better about all that work you just did, but I quickly exclaimed, “That’s it?” That doesn’t even cover the brownie I ate as a mid-dig snack. I think post hole digging really must burn much more than that, don’t you agree?

I plan to post soon with more garden updates and a book review for the Bookworm Challenge, but for now I’ll share a picture of broccoli which we picked a bunch of this weekend. I’ll be back once I let my body rest a bit. I hope you all are having a great long weekend!