July

Here we are on the last day of July, and I'm not sure where the month went!  Here's a rundown of all July had to offer around. We celebrated the 4th of July at my sisters house and I made a slab pie to bring with Grace's homemade ice cream. 

We attended a local music festival with friends, it was so incredibly hot but lots of fun!  And Bryce helped to celebrate a friends birthday!

Emma came to stay with us for a few days before going to NYC for training for her new job.

Grace discovered Friday deals on oysters and has decided to learn how to properly grill.  She makes a great smash burger!

We've been harvesting from the garden and eating really well!

And last, but not least, we celebrated the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with friends!

Not pictured: Harris working a lot as a dive coach and lifeguard, many flavors of ice cream that Grace has made, Al's visit, a trip to the shore for the night to visit Kristin and Tim, tears being shed over how dry it is, my friend Candace and her daughter coming to visit for the night, and, finally, Bryce and I starting rabies shots because we had a bat in our room!

A Feel Good Story

It's been a little rough around here!  It feels as if the world is burning down (literally, it's so hot outside!), up until recently we had no rain, our political landscape is a terrifying mess and some friends have had some hard things happen.  Therefore, I want to share a sweet little thing anecdote from the farm!  

We've had a broody chicken for weeks but since we do not have a rooster, she was hopelessly out of luck.  However, we came across a random guinea egg (they lay them willy nilly around the farm) and feeling sorry for the broody hen, we popped the egg underneath her.  And guess what??  She managed to hatch it!  Mama hen is taking her job very seriously, and doing a fine job of it, and baby guinea hen is doing great.  So far, neither one of them seems to know, or care, that they are actually two different birds.  There's definitely a lesson for us somewhere in there.  

A Frog Fountain

This spring I set out to do a little glow up on our patio.  Part of the glow up was an addition of a small water feature!  Bryce gave me the antique lead frog for Mother's Day last year and we've only just this spring gotten around to putting it into action!

We knew we wanted a stone trough but they proved a little difficult to source.  Our favorite antique garden store had a few but the ones we liked were thousands of dollars!  I scoured the internet and found some, but they too were very pricey and outrageous to ship since they are so heavy.  Finally, I mentioned to our landscaper (he did the plans for the patio) what I wanted and he mentioned that he thought he saw one at a local stone dealer!  I raced over and sure enough they had exactly one stone trough that she said had come in on a truckload of antique pavers and had been sitting there for over 8 years.  She was so ready to get rid of it, I got it for a steal!  I suppose most people would not think to look at a stone supplier for a trough, I sure hadn't!  It was even better than I could hope for because the stone is brown, which compliments our stone on the house so well!

I went back to the antique garden store and got three feet to put the trough on.  Notice the little faces on the end?  Creepy or charming.. who's to know!

Previously in the fountain's spot were several shrubs that were struggling and looked a bit pathetic, we pulled those to make room for the fountain.  While Harris was home for spring break, he and Bryce put it into place.  Then as soon as the risk of a freeze passed, Bryce went to work getting the pump and electric all set up.  

All in all, it was an easy process and I love it.

28 Years

28 years married

2 children

4 homes

1 Airstream

2 states

3 cats

1 dog

0 regrets

A Celebratory Dinner for Grace

Once we got home from Scotland, we wanted to celebrate Grace's graduation with family and a few of her close friends since they couldn't attend her graduation (seriously, originally we only got 2 tickets!).  We decided on a dinner on the patio and the best decision we made was to have it catered!  It took all the stress right out of the night! 

I did take care of the flowers for each table.  The two round tables got an arrangement and the long table had what I thought of as a deconstructed arrangement- the individual flowers in bottles lined down the table.    

I did a terrible job of taking pictures of actual people, just getting a few as the party started! I didn't even manage to get a photo of all the grandparents; Paul, Al and my Mom were all here!  

Grace and I made dessert!  She made Lavender Honey ice cream and I made shortbread cookies (as a nod to Scotland) to put together in delicious ice cream sandwiches.   They really hit the spot since the party was during a brutal heat wave!  We put them in little bags to hand out with a sprig of lavender to garnish.  

And that concludes my graduation posts!  I just managed, in the month of June, to post more than I have in a month since spring of 2019!