This Old American Foursquare

 It's been a minute. So here's a few things that happened since my last blog post.  We got in touch with our patriotic side with some fun bunting, which surprisingly held up during multiple summer storms including a microburst! We had a few trees milled for future projects including window trim! What did we learn? Stacking boards is a lot of work and you can never have enough stickers. The smell of cherry, ash, maple, and apple seasoning in our garage is beautiful. We seriously need a truck. Our test pollinator and wildflower garden is surviving! I tested using weed tea as fertilizer but couch grass is persistent.  I planted a second test garden and the deer demolished half of it even with deer-resistant  plants like black eye susans, mint, and salvia.  I'm discovering more wild flowers that have come up in the seed bank and we have four wild blueberry bushes!

One of the treats of experiencing our first spring and summer here is watching the variety of Flora that pop up as temperatures rise. Daffodils were the first flower to come up in April and seeing those bright pops of yellow made the arduous task of planting 500 bulbs last fall made it worthwhile.  Since then, I have simply been an observer to the flowers and plants that follow. There have been fox-and-cubs, ox-eye daises, foxgloves, and forget-me-nots. Now I'm seeing white yarrow, five-finger cinquefoil, and white aster. Thank you Google image search for helping this armchair horticulturist. 

A few bright spots to note: - My chigger bites are finally healing and I don't look like I have the bubonic plague. - Our pollinator garden is finally showing leaves!  And the biggest story to tell is that of our cherry tree. She was not in the best condition, likely around 80 years old, and a bad storm away from falling towards the house. So we made the decision to have her cut down and her legacy continues because we will mill the wood for future furniture and window trim!  Side note on renovations: nothing started and waiting for the kitchen designer to update dimensions so we can finally get a price estimate for that, a full estimate for the rest of the house work, and put (clap) those (clap) orders (clap) in! Back to Cherry...we left the expert work to the tree guys who swiftly and safely cut her down. It was bittersweet to see her go but we know that she will live on in a different way. The next forest project is in a few weeks. A forest consultant will walk the property advi

Wow, I've really slacked on updates. Here goes: - work still hasn't started inside the house  That's it! Just kidding...the weather has been gorgeous lately so we've been soaking it up with outdoor work: moving logs, removing dead trees, planting native plants, mowing the lawn, power washing the deck, and getting chigger bites in the process.  We also built and put up a bat house to attract those cuties to our property and help us keep the mosquitos under control. Did you know it can take up to two years for bats to find your bat house? And that timeline is short if you meet all of the other factors: nearness to a body of water, high placement not on trees. 

Back in September 2023, Matt and I noticed we had about 9 apple trees on the property. They even bore fruit in October, were a great prop for our dog's autumnal photo shoot, and tasty too! Our house is located in Catskills Park and we learned about a local nonprofit called Catskill Forest Association, which specializes in forestry education and services. More specifically, they offer apple true pruning. So, we joined the CFA and had two of their arborists come evaluate our trees. The bad news is that our trees are on their last leg...or branch. They're likely over 100 years old and some appear to be volunteer apple trees, which means they were grown from seeds spontaneously without direct human control aka maybe seeds in deer poop led to their growth. The good news is that the presence of volunteer apple trees means our soil is nutrient-rich. To Matt's disappointment, these senior trees didn't prove to be an heirloom variety surprise but on the bright side we had two ar

If that blog post was click bait, let me reel you in. It's not a human baby, it's a tractor baby. Before I dive into our newest family member, here's the update on renovations. Drywall demo is on pause because we want an electrician to evaluate all the electrical in the walls to see if any outdated wiring needs to be replaced. We also need a new electrical panel installed; that requires a permit to be approved by the town which our electrician has filed and so we wait for that bureaucratic process to do its thing. Matt and I removed all the cabinets in the kitchen, found an old flue in the kitchen that takes an obnoxious amount of space. We decided she needed to go but in order to do that, we needed to figure out an alternative way to vent. And we can't order our kitchen cabinets if the original design accounted for the flue in the kitchen (which was hiding behind drywall). So, at this point things are on hold until our electric water heater and new vent are installed.