it were a busy time
sorry about the lack of posts lately, it's been a bit on the hectic side here. this will be a long post to try to catch up. lets begin 3 weeks ago.
we spent the first half of the weekend up north for Michael & Kim's respective bachelor/bachelorette parties. much fun was had by all ... not much sleep was had by us though. we headed by to Indy/N'ville early Sunday morning to meet my family. Nate & Deb had flown in from Portland for a visit so we decided to have mom and the other brothers over for lunch/hang out time. again, much fun was had by all. it was great to have all the brothers & families together again ... finally. it had been about a year and a half. and, we just found out yesterday that it will be getting harder to all be together ... Jim & Roxane have finalized their plans to move to an Indian reservation in Arizona to do missions work for a while (leaving late summer). we are definitely going to miss having them around ... but respect their following through with what they feel God is calling them to. what a strange thought, none of the brothers living within 2 hours of each other. sigh.2 weekends ago was the big wedding. congrats
to Michael & Kim! we had a lot of fun hanging out with Chrissy's family, especially those we don't see that often (out-of-town aunt, uncle, and grandparents). the wedding went off great ... and they are successfully married folks now. i think they are also successfully sunburned married folks now that they have returned from their week in Cancun. i'll remind them that we were in Indiana the whole time they were gone. after the wedding, Chrissy's grandparents spent a few days here in Noblesville checking out our house, the town, Chrissy's cooking, etc. again, good times had by all. have i said that already? it sounds familiar.in the few spare moments in between
all those other activities we were working on the landscaping or, well, working at, you know, work. we had 6 yards of mulch (AA hardwood for those curious) delivered and got that put down on the grasses bed and the flower garden at the back of the house. we wanted to wait on the front beds until we had the dogwoods. on that subject, we got them! almost didn't though. the place we were waiting for re-stocking said they hadn't been able to locate more at their wholesalers so thought it could be fall until they had more. yikes. so, we were waiting for some free time to call around to track down what we could at other places (2 here, 2 there). by chance Chrissy glanced at the nursery when driving by last Friday and thought she saw some sitting there . she called and indeed her eyes did not deceive (they had 16 of them)! so, this past Saturday morning we went and picked up our 7 missing children. there was much hugging and kissing. good times were had by all. by the end of the day those were in and the beds were mulched. we tossed out some grass seed to fill in some dirt spots around the new beds and i added another layer of bricks to my little drainage system. finishing touches are nice. especially because the word "finish" is part of them. i like finish. maybe we move to finland, ja?some updates on the other various landscaping
projects .... the grasses bed is starting to look better. all the plants are definitely growing, yeah! since this picture was taken we've gone through all the plants and trimmed out the dead/broken stems. it had a remarkable effect really ... they look ... alive. that's a novel thought. we didn't put edgers on this bed. not sure yet if we will. probably eventually. they are slowly doing work on the ugly adjacent property. either they need to work faster or these karl foersters need to grow faster. another couch and shopping cart appeared the other day. i think the tenants of the one house got evicted, hopefully marking the beginning of repairs to that place. hopefully they are tasteful renovations.the garden is doing well. we've had much lettuce. MUCH lettuce.
with more coming. most people that visit here leave with lettuce (can we send you some?). is that incentive to visit or what? the peas have come and gone. they grew well, but you need lots of pea plants to get reasonable quantities of peas. the tomatoes are growing like Barry Bonds on steroids (hi-yo!). in about a week Chrissy will have more tomatoes than she can possibly eat. i think people will soon be leaving with lettuce and tomatoes after they visit. we're a bit disappointed with the number of carrots that grew. i think we must have planted too deep so most of them never germinated. dang. the green beans are up and starting to, well, make beans. maybe a week til the first beans? mmm, fresh squeaky beans. i think we're only a few days from picking some small tasty cucumbers. a couple of the plants aren't looking great (less sun? bad vibes from the adjacent walnut tree? in a low spot so get too wet?), but still have flowers. go figure. even if they don't make it i'm sure we'll have more than enough to eat.the back flower bed is also doing really
well. when we planted the rose bush it was looking a bit rough (had lost some leaves, others were yellowing). it lost a few more after planting and was just kinda hanging in there. then about the middle of last week i noticed just an explosion of new leaf growth, followed by over 20 buds! today the first one started opening up. there rest of the plants are doing good too. it's amazing to think that everything else was just starts from mom's flower beds. the blanket flower has been blooming off and on for a couple weeks. the shasta daisy is about to open up. salvias are starting to send up their shoots. looking good, looking good. especially nice when it's free -- thanks Mom!today we put in a little bed of butterfly bushes
around the a/c condenser... to hide it from view and hide it from the sun. not sure how long they'll take to fill in/up. we also bought a few geraniums to fill in the front beds, just didn't get a chance to put them in. sometime in the next few days i think. we also have some mulch left, so we'll be able to top the beds off in a few weeks after the initial covering settles a bit. i also got to play electrician today and put in a new porch light (old one was rusty to nothingness) and a security light at the back door (old one didn't work). sorry, the pictures of the porch light didn't turn out well and the security light isn't a very interesting picture. especially because i'm afraid the amount of caulk i used would show :-) the original light never had a junction box for it. the wire just kind of poked out the wall and to the light (wire connections out in the open, nice). i didn't feel the desire to tear the wall open to put in a box so i just kind of dealt with what was there (don't tell my dad or brother). i did hide all the connections behind the light so that is good. the attachment method i employed was somewhat shady, but it worked. because it sits on top of the siding, it's not all flush ... so i filled some major gaps with caulk. i think i did a pretty good job of making the whole works watertight so i think we're good. can't be worse than what was there before. oh, and the porch swing is at a more sittable level now.we have decided that our fellow Noblesvillians really like fireworks. it's been virtually non-stop fireworks for the past 2 days. not just little stuff either. its crazy. we watched the city's fireworks display from an upstairs window. much drier, mosquito & crowd free than the real thing. they were close enough to rattle things in our house though. it's midnight and the neighborhood is still a war zone of bottle rockets and such. sheesh. i'm going to bed. later all.
posted by Chris and Chrissy Miller @ 1:15 PM
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