A Visitor from the Past

This afternoon a stranger knocked on our door. She's the niece of the two ladies who once owned this house -- the Crowley sisters, Veronica and Madeline. We invited her in and she looked around the house, telling us all about what the place used to look like. Apparently the craft room/spare bedroom was once charcoal grey and red! The sliding glass door in the kitchen wasn't there, and there was in fact a door at the top of the basement stairs, and then another, smaller door that went outside to the back porch from the kitchen. The built-in cabinet in the dining room used to have glass doors (oh how I wish it still did!). It was pretty neat.

Garden Update 2009

Here's our little array of plants for this year. We kept it a bit smaller and are trying to focus on stuff that will keep coming back, hence, rhubarb!

Speaking of things that come back, last year, we planted some Jerusalem artichokes. We harvested them at the end of the season. When we dug up some of the garden to put in the patio, we discovered a ton of new Jerusalem artichokes...apparently they send out a lot of "volunteers" and it's likely we'll never be rid of them now. Anyone have any good recipes for Jerusalem Artichokes?

Since the backyard is a bit of a jungle, we decided that it made some sense to move the grill around to the front. Since it's hard for us to find much time to spend in the garden, we thought we'd give over some of our garden plot space to the grilling area. Jake put in a small patio area using some randomly shaped flagstones. It looks great and it's very convenient to the kitchen for grilling purposes!


We got a few tomato plants -- sunny yellow little ones, something called "Mr. Stripey," and "Sweet 100s"


Here's Carter, checking to make sure we've put everything in the right place. This is the herb patch.


We put in some oregano and some loveage (yup, that's really the name of a plant!). Last year's sage and tyme and chives came back -- they're actually pretty huge. Nice


When we put in this year's plants, we discovered that last year's strawberries had really taken over the plot (along with the mint!). We dug up a bunch of the strawberry plants and put them in this lovely strawberry pot. They are thriving in their new pot. YUM!


We did all this on Mothers' Day weekend. Everything is looking good so far. We're still trying to find a couple of tomatillo plants. We grew some last year and they did great, providing us with green salsa well into October. If you get lead on tomatillo plants in Lowell, let us know!

New Orleans Retrospective

Ahem.

It's been way too long since I've posted, so I thought I'd set about rectifying that situation. A month or so ago, I went to New Orleans to attend a conference. I'm just now getting around to sharing some of my photos from the trip.

I was struck by how completely different the architecture was from anything I've encountered elsewhere. For instance, the house where I stayed, with my kind and lovely friend Shannon, was a BRIGHT cheery yellow:
(yes, it matches her car)

Here's a fairly traditional scene:
Yes. It's really that bright.

I took a lot of photos of things I noticed on the streets. Here are a few:
Many of the downtown streets have these street markers imbedded in the concrete at the intersections.

Instead of filling this tree-root area in the sidewalk with gravel or bark mulch, it's filled with oyster shells.


I thought they looked like ears. Ew.

Here's some art-y graffiti:



And an art-y piece of metal in the sidewalk:


And some disturbing art:



OK, so this isn't a terrific shot, but I was stopped short while waking by this on the street. Look closely:


that is the H. W. Johns-Manville Co.'s building, which, apparently, specialized in ASBESTOS. Sign me up for an apartment in that building!

The crazy display below is made up of tiny filled macaroons of various flavors. This is in the window of a candy-maker and sweets shop called, appropriately, Sucre:


And yes, we did order a few macaroons and they were delicious. I had chocolate and orange, Shannon had chocolate and hazelnut (I think). Yum!

I was also struck by the VERY different flora in this neck of the woods.


I think it looks like that tree has hair and tusks. It might be a wooly mammoth in disguise.


Some lovely purple flowers. Everything was in bloom!

Below is my favorite shot. We saw some weird things in New Orleans. Among them was this man walking down the street in a top hat. Tamara, this one's for you:

{I was trying to be all discreet about taking his picture; we actually saw him close up and he looked a bit hobbit-ish. Strange.}

That's about it for today. New Orleans is very beautiful and quite unlike anyplace else I've ever been.