Where Did Summer Go?

This summer flew by for us! We spent tons of time improving our yard, hanging with the pets and hanging with each other. It was nice to make a home and not travel, and I think our pets loved it too. 

An afternoon spent with my mini chicken, Notorious B.I.R.D.

Mike and I also celebrated 10 years together this September. It was a reminder of how old we are getting (haha). It feels like we just met the other day, but we're both getting gray hairs...

We decided to do something special but local, so we rented a decommissioned fire lookout here in Oregon. It's about 7 miles into the forest, on rutted out roads, and you definitely need 4 wheel drive to get there. Our 18 year old Subaru performed like a champ!

Mike spotted wild blueberries on our way there, so we stopped to pick some.

The fire lookout was located on top of a butte (that's pronounced with a long "u") and was used in WWII to spot enemy aircraft. We were at about 4600 feet elevation. Since we live at 3500 feet elevation in Bend, we didn't feel any difference.

The forest service road on the way there.

We did have to hike a bit at the end of the road, pretty much directly uphill! It was a thigh-burner, for sure, but only about 3/4 mile. As usual, you can't even see Mike in the pictures because he is so far ahead of me...he likes to get the tough parts out of the way fast, and I'm a sloooow but steady hiker. 

The single track trail to hike up to the fire lookout. Mike nowhere in sight!

Mike was waiting for me at the lookout.

The lookout had glass windows on all 4 sides, with a catwalk that wrapped all the way around. 360 degree mountain top views - for $60/night. You can't beat it! We could see Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, and the Three Sisters.

It was the perfect place to spend a day, sitting, chatting, and reflecting. Clouds moved in and out, covering Mt Jefferson. We were treated to a gorgeous sunset and a gorgeous sunrise. Pictures (especially my pictures) just can't do it justice.

The lookout was immaculately clean and had a twin bed, a few cots, a two burner propane stove, and a little wood burning stove for heat, with a woodshed nearby. The outhouse was the cleanest outhouse we have ever seen - without one single scary spider or bug! 

The fire lookouts are maintained by volunteers and the guests that stay there. But not every guest sees the bigger picture, and in the journals/logs (they go back several years), some guests reported seeing vandalism, gunshots through the woodshed and outhouse, and trash. But hopefully those very few incidents will motivate future guests to try even harder to help, or to educate the ignorant. We did our part and cleaned the lookout, Mike cut a bucket of kindling, and we made a donation to the Sand Mountain Society when we got home.

The cute little woodstove! It was so tiny it went out twice throughout the night.

Mike enjoying the morning view.

In other summer news, we got our house repainted (special thanks to our friend Dylan) and gave it some personality. 

Circa May 2015 before we had the trees removed

Circa June 2015 - after getting rid of some dead trees

September 2016!

It's a light aqua color (tropical spray), with a coral colored door (coral reef). We removed the shutters and got new industrial looking lights to try and modernize the house a bit.

We are still working on the yard but I am more than a little excited to see what pops up next spring! I've got tons of perennials and wildflowers that I reseeded, and tulip bulbs in the ground. And don't even get me started on the backyard...I'm completely addicted to this new hobby!

Spring Has Sprung...A New Dude and New Chicks!

Spring is a fickle season in Central Oregon. Sometimes it's sunny and blossoms are blooming, and other days it's flurries and frigid winds. Either way, we're taking advantage of it - on snow days Mike hits the mountain, and on warm days we get busy exploring or working on our yard. 

One new addition to our house is our friend, Josh, who has temporarily taken over our guest room. He is now an enthusiastic Bend resident, and the first, but hopefully not the last, of our friends to move up here! 

Josh and Mike discussing fat bikes while we run errands.

It's nice to have an extra set of hands around the house. We have a million and one projects left to do, and about half of those involve the yard. We got zealous and ripped up all our grass, and installed boulders. It was so expensive to water the grass that I paid a couple thousand to have rocks dumped on the yard. Makes sense, right?

One day, our yard will be covered in drought tolerant flowers.
It just might take about 3 years for them to all grow in.

One other bonus of having Josh here is that it makes us appreciate our neighborhood more, and reminds you of things you've gotten used to seeing. Although, I'm still in awe when we go hiking in places like Smith Rock.

The view as you walk into the canyon.

Walking along the river trail.

Loved this "balancing rock!"

The sun setting; you can see the "balancing rock" on the right.

There's people to the left behind Mike up on "Misery Trail" for scale.

One new "spring" experience we're going through is that our favorite hen went broody. Basically, she wanted to hatch out some babies and she refused to get off the nest. Even when we pulled all the eggs out, she'd just sit on an empty nest and get all irritated if we opened the nest box door. The problem with a broody hen is: we don't have a rooster. So our eggs aren't going to be hatching anything. 

After a month of her refusing to get off her nest and eating minimal amounts of food every day, we started to get worried. She was losing lots of weight and looking awful. We finally gave in and bought two baby chicks at the feed store. She immediately perked up when she heard the peeping and took them in as her own! She is the best momma hen.

One of the babies - "Two Spot (Tupac)" at one day old.

It's hard to tell but this is the other chick, "Notorious B.I.R.D."

It's been a fun experience with the chicks so far, and we don't have to do a thing except feed them, give them clean water, and make sure predators don't eat them at night (hence the reason they are in a cardboard lined cage). Otherwise, the momma hen does everything. We are crossing our fingers that at least one of them is not a boy...

Chick update in the next post...We should know by then if they're roosters or hens!

What We Did On Our Summer Break

I can't believe how fast the summer went - my last post was in early June and it's already mid August! Whoops. I guess we just got wrapped up in home life here in Bend. Although it doesn't feel like we're getting much done, when I look back on the last couple months, we have been moving forward, slowly but surely.

We've taken a little break from interior home remodeling and moved our attention to the outside, which is really refreshing. The inside stuff started to feel like homework.

Mike mowing the lawn with our new lawn mower.

We put in an all new fence, which you can see was desperately needed! The old fence was original from 1992, had never been taken care of, and the posts were just plain wood, so it blew down in a storm we had in February (our neighbors put up the lovely black plastic to show where their property line is). 

Side fence and back corner, before

Side fence and back corner, after

Mike did all the work of clearing the yard, getting rid of the weeds, raking up the gravel, and supervising the fence guys (who we found off Craigslist - we never learn). They weren't the most professional, but hey, they did the heavy lifting. And now our yard is a blank slate to start designing!

Back yard and fence, before

Back yard and fence, after

One thing I'm working on is making our whole yard edible. In with food - out with grass (mostly). We will have one little area of grass in a shady spot in the backyard, where the cats can lounge. But I'd like for everywhere else to have native plants or fruit/veggie/food bearing flora, and pavers/woodchips/etc. 

We have a good starting point with our fruit trees. We've got three - red plum, large crabapple, and Bartlett pear. The plum tree is being strangled by an aspen, and our neighbor hates the crabapple (and keeps bribing us to remove it), but the pear tree is doing well.

the plum tree in the background and the one delicious plum I ate!

the crabapple tree - I'm going to attempt crabapple jelly.

the pear tree in July

the first pears I picked, in mid August

I'm already learning so much about pears - for one, they have to be picked unripened, because otherwise they ripen from the inside out, and get all mealy. You turn them 90 degrees and if they snap off the tree easily, they're ready to be picked. Then you put them in cold storage, and after that, take them out as you want to ripen them. Whew! If you want to can or preserve them, that's a whole other process (which I'm going to attempt here in a few weeks).

In the meantime, we have lots of fallen, wormy pears and crabapples, so we got going on our compost bin. Mike built it from all the scrap wood and leftovers we had from the fence.

Having a garage is the best!

Framing it out - these are leftover 2x4 scraps.

Creating sides with leftover fencing strips

repurposed the old fence for slats in the front, which slide in and out

I love that the sides and the top are all thin slats, I think it gives what could be a very rustic and disgusting compost bin, a little bit of modern urban flair. 

Mike in his handiwork!

In the backyard and ready to be filled!

We still have to get some chicken wire or something for in between each bin, but I have already started filling box #1. I saw this method online and it sounded awesome - basically you start with one box, and once it's filled, move on to box #2. At some point, you can shovel out box #1 and dump it into the next empty box (hence the sliding front pieces). This way it gets turned/aerated, and composts faster. Once you're done filling box #2, the first box you aerated should be done composting and you can empty it into your garden. Then just repeat!

Hopefully by next growing season, we'll have some nice compost for our raised beds. It's pretty awesome to have this box for our veggie/fruit/coffee/egg/paper waste. We're cycling stuff back into making our food, which is way better than having it sit in a landfill somewhere. Our garbage has already reduced by half.

Now I'm off to go chop up some of our tree trimming pile to throw in my new bin!

The Scourge of the Neighborhood

You know that neighbor with the overgrown yard, peeling paint, and crumbling front porch? The one that's a total eyesore and is dragging down property values? 

Well, hello! That's us. While we've been busy prettifying the insides of our so-very-humble abode, the outsides have been a bit neglected. 

It's not entirely our fault, since the former owner never laid eyes on the place or took care of it. And I'll ask for a little leeway since we did just move in, in January. But now it's May, and everything is in bloom, including our lovely dandelions, which we are growing for market. You didn't think we were just letting random weeds grow in the yard, did you?

Here's where I post some embarrassing pictures of our yard:

Those two fir trees on the left are just the worst - half dead, and I'm pretty sure the 25+ years of dog pee that they've experienced hasn't helped anything. The birch (white trunks), while pretty, has a trunk that is leaning into our roof and needs to go. And that tree in the foreground? It's dead. Yep. We figured that out after it refused to blossom this spring.

Our side yard is just as awful, if not worse:

The fence is from the 90s, part of it blew down in a recent storm (where you can see the neighbors trashy - pun intended - temporary "fencing"), and we have a disgusting mixture of old gravel and random weeds growing out of the ground. But you know what this is? A blank slate! I'm imagining a sitting area, strawberry beds, and a fire pit...

I found an arborist doing work at the house next door, and scheduled them for the following week. For $400.00 they cut down no less than 7 trees in our yard and hauled them away. For another $75.00 they came back and dug up the stumps. Worth every penny.

the arborists at work and a glimpse of our crappy backyard.

The front of our house now looks so much better...you can actually see the house now! 

Before

After

See that crazy storm cloud in the "After" picture? Mike had to hurry and get our roof patched up - it's been leaking in the garage. We're planning on replacing the entire roof, but probably it'll happen later this summer. In the meantime, my super handy husband took care of it himself:

A house is definitely a labor of love. It's never-ending, and while rewarding, it's also exhausting. I'm happier than ever that we bought a small house. Less to maintain, less to clean, less place to store useless "stuff." Less is more, for sure.

While we'll continue our daily mini-projects and figure out how to haul away all our yard debris, it's time to take a break. We're excited for this upcoming summer, and we've got lots of hikes and local vacations planned, starting this weekend. More to come!

Every Day I'm Hustlin'

OK, so we're not hustlin' as hard as Rick Ross, but making that "To Do" list on the last post really made us accountable for our actions. I highly suggest stating publicly (or on Facebook, because that's practically the same thing) what you're going to do, because wow, is it motivating. 

I'm still learning how to do new things with the remodel, and on this particular day, it was electrical wiring of our outlets. My boss, who is an electrician, told me it'd be simple - just pull out the old outlet and look at how things are wired, then just pull out the wires and plug them into the new receptacle the same way. Sounds easy enough...

I pulled out the outlets (after turning off the breaker - that is the most important step!), and there were yucky cobwebs in some, the wires require some muscle to get out and push in, and there would be any number of wires, from 3 to 7, that might be connected to any particular outlet. I managed, with a lot of help from Mike, to figure out how to do it, but it took me about 2 hours to finish six receptacles. I also electrocuted myself because I forgot to test the outlet before touching it, and it was wired to a different breaker. I am officially the worst electrician ever.

My electrical outlet progress and Mike installing the trim.

Mike worked on the trim all afternoon, and got the living room mostly completed (minus wood putty and paint). It got difficult around the bullnose corners, but we'll figure that out another day. For now, it's enough that we're making progress.

I also got some seeds started for our "garden" this summer. Our yard looks like...well, it looks like the yard of a house that's been a rental for 25 years. So it needs a lot of back-breaking work. Since we're already toiling away on the interior, with a guest bathroom, roof, and siding to finish this summer, we're putting off the yard until next spring (which, if climate change continues on this path, may be even earlier next year). This year, I'm growing food in pots, which will give me an opportunity to work on my atrocious gardening skills. 

you can see my successful regrown green onions at the end of the sill.

I repurposed some old egg cartons for the seeds and planted lettuces, mâche, yellow strawberries, eggplants, and little Mexican cucumbers. Everything is specifically for this climate and ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. We'll see what sprouts and what I can keep alive! If all goes well, I'll be able to transplant these babies into pots in a few weeks.

In preparation for our DIY landscaping, we've been checking out garden centers around town. This one, Tumalo Garden Market, was so unbelievably cute! They had greenhouse kits, beehives, tons of fruit trees, and even a mini "canyon" you could walk through, to get ideas for your yard.

this place was like a garden amusement center - loved it!

I'm hoping we'll keep up the hustlin' into this upcoming week. But today, we're headed to the movies! Fast and Furious 7...and I'm bringing a box of tissues.