Hay Mary Anna
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@mary-anna It looks lovely! Lots of personality in those old homes. Not cookie cutter!
I know you're are super busy with other projects, but the "g" in "wtg" is wondering if you are planning a veggie garden.
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I think I'll leave the thumbnails for now. Every time I start to post pictures, I fall down into a rabbithole of user error. lol
wtg, I haven't done any serious gardening, because there are a lot of deer in the neighborhood (plus voles, squirrels, bunnies, and there have been bears seen elsewhere in town) and I'm afraid of investing a lot of time and effort, only to get my heart broken. Also, we have a lot of shade.
So I've been getting my gardening yayas out with my indoor hydroponic gardens. Right now, I've growing tomatoes, eggplants, jalapeños, cucumbers, and lettuce in quantities large enough to use (now and then), and I'm experimenting with collards, mustard greens, banana peppers, snow peas, fenugreek, and squash.
However, I noticed that one flower bed, which had nothing planted in it, gets more sun than I thought, so I threw a few seeds out there to see what happens. We had a very cool spring, so I'm only now seeing seedlings, and I really don't know whether anything will survive the shade and animals. But seeds are cheap! It's a big experiment. I've got a few plants each of okra, trombocino squash, carrots, garlic chives, lettuce, and peas, and I've got quite a number of tiny seedlings of arugula, mustards, and swiss chard. And one potato plant. If they continue to survive, I'll post pics of my experiment in gardening in the north under pressure from predators.
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That's quite an assortment!
I feel your pain on the critter front. It's a never-ending battle.
Potatoes are really easy to grow in pots. Critters seem to pretty much leave them alone, though a couple of years ago my neighbor found a bunch of his potatoes harvested by some enterprising chipmunk and hidden in its den under the front porch, quite a distance away from the pots in the backyard where they had been growing.
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A potpourri of thoughts:
Pet pictures are never gratuitous. My biggest challenge at work these days is access to my laptop. Cosmo has decided I pay much too much attention to it.
The house looks great. Victorian? Will look forward to the kitchen pics.
What's got Quirt so busy? Must be interesting work or I can't imagine he'd stay at it.
I'd have a garden if we, like you, didn't have so much shade. We're also under constant attack from the local fauna, and some of the flora. Deer, coyotes, bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks, woodpeckers of all types (cedar sided house), snakes, mice, bees, ants.... I suspect the yield would be minimal, but I'd still try if I had the sun. As it is I just grow herbs on the deck. Janet grows Anthuriums and Begonias, and beautifully.
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Awwwww, Cosmo looks so sweet! Loki, Muffin/Amanda, and Rogue say hey!
Quirt does securities law, so he's working with people who want to get their businesses listed on the stock market. On the whole, they are very anxious for him to do things yesterday, and they wish he weren't so persnickety about following all the rules and regulations. However, it's very challenging and interesting work for him, and I'm glad as a person who owns stocks that he's on the job, keeping the people who issue it on the straight and narrow.
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Oh, and yes, the house is Victorian. The only question is when in Victoria's reign it was built and whether it was all built at the same time. The front door is off-center, as if about half the house is an addition that isn't quite the same size as the original house. We are pretty sure it was built without electricity, water, gas, or a sewer connection. Some of that history is visible. There's a huge fireplace in the basement where we think the servants cooked, and there are flues for potbelly stoves that make us think they also lived down there. The house itself would have been heated by fireplaces in the four chimneys on all floors. There's an added room that's just out-of-frame in the pic above of the front of the house, and I feel sure it was built when they got indoor bathrooms. We're told that somebody ran a boarding house here at some point, and there are five rooms on the top floor that are finished, but not luxuriously, that are probably where the boarders lived. I guess with all that history, it should feel haunted, but it really doesn't. It's very bright and sunny and has good vibes.
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I took that last photo standing in the double pocket door between the living room and dining room. (The pocket door still works great after all these years.) Then I turned around and took this one.
Front of house
Back of house
At some point, I'll take some pics of the kitchen that was a big focus of the renovation. None of the pictures really capture the thing. The tall ceilings, slate mantels, porcelain doorknobs, etc. just don't photograph well, or I don't have the skill. I'm working on a new Faye story, so I reread the old ones and was struck that the house I created for her in 2002 had plaster ceiling medallions, faux painted mantels, double door topped with a palladian window, plaster walls, moldings...I gave all those things to Faye, and now I live with them. It's kinda cool.
@Mary-Anna I love that you’re living with Faye’s house accoutrements! And that you’re working on a new Faye story. I miss hanging out with her. But I can always go back and do it again!
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@mary-anna your house sounds wonderful! And the full size piano pic is indeed glorious!
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Thank you, @shirokuro !
@wtg, I went out to look at my seedlings, and something has been rooting around out there.
And it's brassy enough to do it in the broad daylight. There was an uprooted okra seedling that hadn't even wilted yet. I put it back in the ground, but sigh.There are still some things bravely hanging in there. I planted a ton of onions, green onions, and chives, because they're supposed to repel animal pests. If they'll just come up and start being smelly, maybe the other things will have a chance!
The best-looking part of the bed is in the heaviest shade. The arugula have come up in full force, and I guess they're smelly enough to scare the critters away, but they need at least some sun. I'll be shocked if they produce much. I keep telling myself, "It's all an experiment."
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@shirokuro, I'm working on a Faye novella, because it's a small story, but it's one I never told. Faye and Joe got married between Books 5 and 6, so I'm writing a novella that fills in that gap.
I'm calling it [i]Something Old[/i], because that seems right for two archaeologists getting married.
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