Schooool's out for summer!

Quite a bit has occurred since I last wrote. The chimneys have been rebuilt as has one of the skylights. The large skylight from the bathroom has been removed.

Skylight being hauled down as seen from kitchen

Skylight on the ground

The roofers delivered it to New England Skylights and is currently in the process of being re-fabricated. The new skylight will be even better than the first one because it will be made out of copper. The old one was made out of steel, which as you can see, eventually does rust.

This is probably one of the sources of the leak, if not the source

We have had some good rain with no leaking so far. Here's to hoping that this fixed the problem. We haven't been using the third floor bathroom since it is only capped with plywood for now. I personally can't wait to be able to use my own bathroom again.



We have also been steadily working in the garden. I finally have a job to do to: Master Weeder and Controller of the Grape Vines. As I think I have stated before, I do not care for rose vines. A carefully controlled rose shrub is o.k. Wild rose vines are difficult to control and don't even look that nice. At least not to me. The Good Mr. Dr. likes anything that grows. Except grass, which we both agree on.

Here's what I've learned in my new gardening job: rose vines do not die. They are like zombies. Actually, they are worse than zombies because at least zombies die when you cut off their heads. Rose vines will simply sprout new shoots up from the roots that have spread wide and deep underneath the garden. This past week I decided to do a little bit of weeding. That turned into the Great Battle of the Rose Vine Roots. It was epic. Our neighbors next door were witness to it. I believe I only partially won that particular battle. This will likely be a life long war between me and the rose vine roots. There will be songs and poems written about my War with the Roses. Curses to the person who planted those damn weeds!

I will begin to start pruning the grape vines this week. As you can see, they are growing quite vigorously. Since the Good Mr. Dr. can't get himself to kill any living thing that is not suffering from poisoning (because he is a good man), I have volunteered to be the one who does the dirty work on that one. As we learned last year, if we don't control those vines, we will end up with a ceiling over our garden and it will kill all of our newly planted trees and perennials.

This picture was taken a week ago and there are even more today

The Good Mr. Dr. replanted the rose bush that was in the back in order to make room for our new vegetable patch. It isn't doing as well as we'd like, but the french marigolds that the Good Mr. Dr. planted in the wine barrel with the rose bush have started to sprout.

The transplanted rose bush. We're hoping it recovers.

Those little green things are the shoots of French Marigolds.

Our pansies must also like it here, since they've sprouted seeds.

Click on the picture to see the seeds.

And, among our proudest accomplishments: the geranium is back!

The secret is to water it, keep it in the sun, and tell it that it is loved.

We have finally planted our vegetable patch. We are starting modestly this year, which just one vegetable.




It should come as no surprise to anyone that we would try to grow pumpkins. These are Connecticut Field Pumpkins. They are heirloom pumpkins, your classic jack 'o lantern pumpkins. If everything goes well, there will be enough for us and to share. And if not, well, there are plenty of pumpkin patches around.

One row of three pumpkin mounds.

Second row of three pumpkin mounds.

The Good Mr. Dr. also planted Sunflowers, because we are need to keep up our Latino cred.

All sunflowers were planted along the fence.

In other news, I have another position at my university which started this weekend. I'll be working with students in our executive doctoral program helping them with getting their thesis completed. It should be interesting. I realize that this bit of news belies the title of this post, but it's a part time gig. As far as I'm concerned, I can still go to the movies at noon on a Tuesday, sit in my garden and read fiction on any random day of the week, and stay up as late as I want, which is the definition of summer.

Two quick shout outs before I end. I want to recommend a company to those living in the Boston area. If you need someone to do small pick up and deliveries, I suggest a company called Small Haul. I just bought one of those big lateral filing cabinets off of Craiglist. It is not something that would fit in the new car. And, the thing weighs more than 6.5 times what I weigh, so there was no way I would even be able to get it into a Zip Car. Matt and his assistant picked it up, took it apart, brought it up our narrow stairwell to our second floor office, and put it back together again. Great people and incredibly affordable.

And last, but certainly not least, I want to make a big shout out to Lt. Big Sister for getting her dream job. May I offer a paraphrasing of a snippet of a poem by Lucille Clifton (originally titled "we are running"):

I pray that what you want
is worth this running,
and pray that what you're running toward
is what you want

Weather dependent activities

Living in this part of the world, you learn that all outdoor construction is "weather dependent." What that means is: when there is weather, there will be no construction. So, we lost a couple of days to storms...

I had just watered the blueberry bushes when this storm came in.

But by Friday, the roofers had managed to complete the second of the two chimneys and replace one of the skylights.

If you look closely, you can see one of the new chimneys stealing a peek of the budding grape vines.

This seems to have been effective in stopping the leaking, but there wasn't enough rain to really tell. They will have to go back to the skylight and do something because it shakes and rattles in the wind, which we do not believe it is supposed to do. Frankly, I don't care what it is supposed to do because it kept me up half the night last night. The Cat was so freaked out that she slept on my head most of the night. Two steps forward....

The 41 mph wind gusts also knocked all of the petals off of our tulips.

As you can see, no petals. We put the flags there to help us locate the tulip bulbs at the end of the season. We plan to transplant the tulips so that this space can be used for vegetables.

So, there were no Mother's Day flowers to send to the family via text. Sorry guys.

However, I can happily report that the blueberry bushes have been planted.

The red arrows are pointing to the blueberry bushes. Please memorize their shape and position. There will be a test later.

Yesterday, it rained cats and dogs throughout the morning. But we managed to get out during a break in the afternoon to purchase the materials for the next phase of the garden remodeling.

This is lavender. We plan to put these in two different spots to see how they do.

The brick in the middle came from the chimneys that were just demolished. This is only 2/3 of the red stones you see on the right that we've bought for the new hardscape design.

In other news, The Cat seems to have developed new habits. For one, she seems to be turning into a lap cat. Of course, she still has many of the same old habits. For example, she just prevented The Good Mr. Dr. from sitting in the reading chair.

That's all from here for now. I hope all the mothers and the mothers-to-be are having a good day.

Construction Season! Garden Season! Construction Season!

After the torrential flooding rains in March, April seemed relatively tame. We certainly took advantage of the the sunny weather by picnicking with our favorite people at the Lyman Estates in Waltham.

Uncle Dr. taking his turn at reading to Little E who forgot his sunglasses

They thought this would wear out the child. These gentlemen quickly learned that children have way more energy than can be accounted for in their body mass. Physicists are still working on the explanation.

The Good Mr. Dr. and I were also in D.C. for a weekend for the Association of American Geographers conference. As usual, it was a great conference. We got to meet up with friends we haven't seen in a while, including Dr. B who is now in teaching in Chicago. We had dinner at Lebanese Taverna, which we highly recommend. It's not a quiet restaurant and I would stay away from the grape leaves appetizer. It is a little vinegary for my taste. But everything else was great.

A man and his new toy. It took almost 10 minutes to get the right picture.

We happened to being staying at the Adams Inn, which is a very nice, and reasonably priced, B&B. It is located in the Adams Morgan district, which means that we had our pick of restaurants. We chose to eat at Las Canteras, a Peruvian place. We both highly recommend it. We started with the Tiradito Criollo ceviche. I had the Parihuela, which is very close to cioppino. It was excellent, but it will give you very vivid dreams.


The Good Mr. Dr. had Pescado a la Macho, which was also excellent.


I would only criticize the coffee for being so-so. But everything from the atmosphere, to the service, to the food was awesome. You will leave stuffed, so make sure to be properly dressed to take a long walk after dinner. We highly recommend it to anyone in D.C.

This past week, we took advantage of a short reprieve from the spring rains in order to get started on rebuilding our chimneys and skylights. The guys from the new roofing company started on Thursday and so far have managed to demolish and rebuild one of two chimneys. You might be tempted to criticize them for taking too long. However, you have to remember that we do not have fire escapes or any easy way up to the roof. These guys had to haul all of the new bricks in a bucket up three flights of stairs and then up the ladder through the skylight. And then haul all of the old bricks in a bucket down the same ladder and four flights of stairs into the basement (we are going to try to reuse the brick as part of our new hardscaping in the garden). The Good Mr. Dr. inspected their work on Friday and was only upset that few people would be able to see the wonderful job they did. I will try to get him to take pictures next week.

We are also planning some exciting stuff in the next month for the Garden. We bought four blueberry bushes which will be planted in the ground this week. We'll be starting on some hardscaping too. Lots of work, but it should look great once it is all done.

The only other exciting news is the boil order for 28 cities and towns served by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. There was a massive break in one of the pipes that brings clean water to Boston area cities and towns. Right now, we must boil all water for drinking, cooking, and washing dishes. We can bathe in it, but we shouldn't brush our teeth. We count ourselves lucky that there were emergency reservoirs and that it doesn't affect the plumbing. The boil order is mainly because they cannot guarantee the cleanliness of the water. Washing dishes was an interesting exercise in creativity. But everything was washed and rinsed in clean water. We don't know how long it will take to restore the water. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to cope without the need to buy bottled water.

That's all for now. Two quick shout outs before I end. First, to my mom who gets to keep her job. Whew! And second, to Ms. C who finally moved into a safe and secure place in Manhattan! Woo-hoo!