Mid-May and Crazed With New House Renovation

Ah, the new house renovation bug has bit. We're feverishly taking on 2-3 projects each weekend. Perhaps because the list is sooooo long. Still each day brings a welcome sense of progress to the new house. Someday soon we'll have a front and back door without the gaping holes beneath them!!

Early May was mostly taken up with travel for Sara. Off to the Association of Children's Museum conference in chilly St Paul, MN. Thank God for layers! One year of living in CA and I'm barely prepared for snow and sleet in mid-May. Good think I brought my winter coat, just in case. The conference was a welcome chance to catch up with many museum colleagues. A presentation and a meeting were a small price to pay I suppose. (The above picture taken on one of the few non-gray days.)


Native Plants
Back in Callie friends and I went to tour gardens in the East Bay which have been planted with native flora. I'm eager to learn more about this since water is in such short supply out here. California native wildflowers are very attractive and don't require the same watering regime as all the lovely lemons, bananas, and fruit trees one sees planted. I'm hoping to transform the front yard of this house into a native plant landscape. We're also looking at the option of having some native fruit bearing plants in the yard. Kristina and Michaela were kind enough to purchase me some native strawberries and a lovely native current during the tour. Now I just have to do my best not to kill them. Nye and I have already worked on putting the plants into pots and getting them situated into the proper sun regime in our new yard. Now we'll just have to see if they're happy.

So far we've managed to get most of the boxes unpacked. Curtains are up in a few of the rooms. We're moved into key rooms and fixing up details in the kitchen, bathroom, etc. Nye is putting a lot of pressure on us to purchase a grill so that we can cook up his favorites in the back yard. I'm sure that we'll get there but maybe grilling is more of a summer thing, right? For now we're enjoying the evolution of the fruit in our yard. We had a young friend Elise over the other day and introduced her to the joys of home made lemonade. Yumm!

All the best!

Sara, Nye and Archil