Yard work, light fixtures, and rangetop hookup

Sorry it's been so long since the last posting. Spring arrived and all of a sudden there was a lot of yard work to do! Dave's parents came for a visit in the end of April. They were a huge help and we are very grateful to them! They helped us get our yard work on track, and Dave's dad showed Dave how to hook up light fixtures and dimmers. We also went to Rhode Island two weeks ago to visit Megan and Craig and to run a 10K on Block Island. Block Island is beautiful and we had a wonderful time.

We are excited to have a functional gas range. The downdraft system is awesome and we are really happy with the rangetop in general. The downdraft is amazingly quiet and effective. This morning Dave made sausage and pancakes on the griddle: Note the downdraft, now you see it...

now you don't!












Here are the light fixtures that are installed courtesy of Dave's parents:



































Dave and his dad also hooked up our dishwasher! (We are waiting to take off the protective plastic until the kitchen is done.)

Last week our stools arrived. We are excited and relieved that the stool height works perfectly with the island. Dave was particularly excited about the stools because they are made from retired wine barrels. I was nervous about kitchen looking like a bar with these stools, but I really like them too!

Up until about a week ago, we had a weedy sideyard on one side of our house that we were prepared to just ignore for a long time. But then one of the neighbors from down the street, Joey, came by and offered to mow down the weeds and rototill the area so that we could plant a garden. The area is way to big for us to plant the whole thing, so we offered space to our next-door neighbors- unfortunately they already had a garden in place. Today we planted in a portion of it that we thought we could handle, and we will let the rest of the space do what it wants. We planted some vegetable seeds that Megan gave us (swiss chard, beans, carrots, and beets), herbs (dill, chives, cilantro, basil, sage), flowers (sunflowers and something Megan gave us), and tomatoes. We put in more tomatoes than we can eat but we can always share them with friends (and visitors). Our dream is to someday plant a ton of green chiles out there. This is Dave hard at work.


I also took some pictures recently of the sunset sky from our house. We love the views from our front 3 rooms and the front porch. We found out recently that the farmland around our house is designated as protected farmland, so we do don't have to worry about big housing developments around our house.