Too Sore to Knit Tonight

 So I'll blog instead.

We spent our weekend enjoying the gorgeous weather(high 60's!) and working on the new dining room.  We installed four new windows by ourselves and it really couldn't have been much easier.  Aside from the very last window, they slid in easily and, thanks to my Dad's expert framing job, were perfectly level both vertically and horizontally and required no shimming.

The first window went in on Saturday evening, the second had to wait until the next morning due to noise regulations.

 One side all done!  The big hole in the middle should be filled later this week by. . .

 This beauty that we picked up this afternoon, the glass is about 2/3 the height of the door.  The outside is going to be painted a gorgeous red, and the trim around the window will be the same tan as the siding.

The handsome husband nailing in the very last window, which was only trouble because the sheathing was cut badly and dipped down into the window opening.

All done with the windows!  This next week's challenge is going to be hanging the front door and a hanging the patio door on the back side of the dining room.  It's so nice to see this coming all together and starting to look like an actual room instead of just a weird porch.

What to Grow, What to Grow. . .

The Farmer's City Wife has gotten me thinking about what to plant in my garden this year.  Now I'm not feeling as ambitious as she is (47 vegetables and 12 herbs!!!), but I would like to grow something this year now that I've learned the limitations of our yard.  Our nice little city lot is only sunny in the front of the house and the whole backyard is so shady that the only thing that really grows well back there is moss.

So in the front yard, in planters we're going to have broccoli and lettuce, also possibly cauliflower because I find the grocery store prices appalling.  In the backyard we're going to be putting trellises up in a couple of places to cover gaps in between the fences.  They'll be in partially sunny spots so we're going to get peas and pole beans to grow up them.  I'd rather have morning glories but there's no way they're going to grow back there.

Photo Credit

Next summer, once we've finished working on the house, we're going to be working on landscaping the yard.  Once that happens I'll have plenty of space in the front yard to plant more vegetables.  We'll be building a retaining wall along the sidewalk and filling the space behind it with soil; I'm hoping to have flowers along the front edge and lots of different greens and herbs on the house side of the garden, possibly a cute white picket fence in between the two rows.  Something like the above but with gardens instead of grass.  I'm hoping that the dozens of hostas that previous owners planted and the lilies from my MIL have survived and will continue to fill in all around the foundations of the house.  We may also try to culture some more moss in the backyard since we've long since given up on grass.

And then there's all of the landscaping to be done in the backyard as well, which is a whole other post.