Ten on Tuesday - Home, Sweet Home

Today's Ten on Tuesday topic is 10 Things I Love About My Home. I live in an old house, which means tiny little corner closets, one bathroom, and lots of maintenance, but I do love many, many things about it.

1. My kitchen. It's not the granite countertop, six-burner stove kind, but my husband and father-in-law knocked down a wall and redid it themselves when we moved in, and it's just about perfect for me. This was a huge upgrade from having one cupboard and about nine square feet of countertop!
2. Our mud porch. This is what we call the room where we enter from the side door. It used to be a small open porch, but it's now enclosed, and makes a great place to hang your coat, take off your shoes, and hang my plants in the winter. 
3. The front porch. It's a wonderful place to sit and knit, read, and watch thunderstorms from.
4. Our new furnace. We replaced our 36-year-old one last year and it was such a relief last winter to not have to play furnace lottery. We still have to replace several hundred feet or more of cast iron pipe that winds around in the basement to carry hot water to the radiators with copper pipe, but since this is almost as expensive as the furnace, we're saving up.
5. The attic fan. We don't have central air, but we do have a gigantic attic fan that can help cool the house somewhat (as long as there is cool air outside for the fan to suck in!)
6. The sounds in my home. This old house has squeaky floors and doors, and the lovely clanking and comforting hissing of steam radiators in the winter.
7. The yard. We live in a small borough "in town" but are lucky enough to have a big double lot, so it feels a bit more rural. I may occasionally complain about mowing the yard, but it's good exercise, and we also have some huge shady oak and maple trees, the garden, and the perfect place to view fireworks from.
8. My clothesline. I really enjoy the process of hanging my laundry out to dry. The first thing that John did when we moved in was put up my clothesline, and it's served me well. Today I'm racing the rain to see whether my clothes dry first or get wetter from yet more rain.  
9. The barn. Even though we live in town, we're lucky enough to have a barn. It used to serve as the home for a large herd of dairy cows, and then housed circus animals when one of the previous owners of the house was a veterinarian with Ringling Brothers. Too bad the town ordinances won't allow sheep!
10. My family. It's mainly just John and I that live here now, but this house will always be home for Ryan and Justin when they visit. The measuring lines on the kitchen doorway clearly state that!

What do you love best about your Home, Sweet Home?

Radish 911!

All available equipment has been dispatched to deal with this year's radish crop!

Those really are radishes (not potatoes!) 

and we're going to be eating them for quite a while.

Friday Flowers

It's been a long week, so all I can muster is a photo of my multi-purpose

 anniversary and birthday flowers. Happy Weekend!

Book Bingo 2015: The Plan

My goal for Book Bingo 2015 is to try to cover all the squares on my card. I'm not a competitive or terribly goal-oriented reader, but for Book Bingo last summer, I ended up reading 24 books (without any planning beforehand!) and read some of the best books ever. I'm hoping that something similar will happen this year. I'm trying to not buy any new books (Our Souls at Night and Go Set a Watchman are the exceptions), so I've scoured my to-read list, perused my bookshelves at home, gone through books I already own in my Audible and Kindle libraries, and borrowed from the library to arrive at my plan.

What I've Read/Am Reading So Far:

• With a protagonist/narrator over the age of 50 - Our Souls at Night
• Western - Across the Great Barrier
• Young Adult Novel - On the Far Side of the Mountain
• With an animal on the cover - An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World
• 10 Short Stories - Tenth of December
• Biography or Memoir - Do No Harm

What I Plan to Read Next:

• With time travel - The Memory Painter
• At least 800 pages - Centennial
• That your parents wouldn't let you read as a kid - My Left Foot
• Currently on the bestseller list - Go Set a Watchman
• With an animal as a key character - Frightful's Mountain
  
• Has an animal in the title - Never Cry Wolf
• Revolves around a holiday - Thanksgiving
• With a number in the title - How to Bake Pi
• Published the year you were born - 4:50 from Paddington

Unplanned Squares (So Far):

• An academic/campus novel
• Borrowed from the library
• Found in a used bookstore
• Graphic novel
• About a disease
• With food as the theme
• That you chose because of the cover
• Cozy mystery
• An audiobook

Hmm...Seeing this all written down, I can see that I better get reading, especially with that "At least 800 pages" book looming in the future, and nine unplanned squares. I do have some ideas for those, but they seem a bit easier to fill in so I'm leaving them open for now. I welcome your suggestions, especially for the academic, disease, and food squares!

The planning and reading have been enjoyable so far, although this seemed almost effortless last summer. I'm betting that the next time I bring home a big stack of books from the library and settle myself on the front porch swing, the real pleasures of summer reading will return!

Ten on Tuesday - Sum Sum Summertime

This week's Ten on Tuesday topic is 10 Things On Your Summer 2015 Bucket List. I honestly haven't thought too much about what I want to do this summer, so this is a good place to start.

1. Visit Ryan in Fort Collins. Sadly, this one is already over.
2. Visit Justin at Mainframe Whitetails. Gladly, I still have this one to look forward to.
3. Scrape, sand, prime, and paint the front porch. I don't really want to do this, but it is a necessity.
4. Read enough to cover all the squares on my Book Bingo card.
5. Finally finish knitting the Hitchhikers that I've started. (Also, the pair of socks I started long, long ago.)
6. Don't feel guilty about time spent reading and knitting.
7. Spend a minimum amount of time sitting in hospital waiting rooms. Hopefully, much of this will be done after Thursday, but on the plus side, it does provide plenty of time to work on numbers 4 and 5.
8. Really, seriously, intently, purposefully clean out my yarn stash. The amount of yarn in that closet has been weighing on me for too long. I want the yarn in my stash to make me feel happy!
9. Grill something new for dinner - pineapple, peaches, romaine, plantains, zucchini, pizza...
10. Eat from the garden as much as possible. This one is easy, as I'm already happily inundated with spinach, lettuce, and snow peas. Next up will be beans and tomatoes. Mmm, fresh, red, ripe tomatoes!

What do you want to do this summer? Whatever it is, I hope it's enjoyable!

Objects In Mirror...

May Be Younger Than They Appear!

(Hopefully they don't appear too much older than 58.)

It Would Be Lovely...

If summers were completely carefree and without worries, like when I was five.

I guess I could dance on the beach now if I chose, and now I don't 

have to worry about wearing that horrible bathing cap!

Flowers, Flowers Everywhere

I spent the weekend watering, pruning, and weeding my flower and vegetable gardens. Once I was done, I took some time to smell the roses.

 

Peonies

Begonia, Orchid cactus, and Lamium

Poppies, Marigolds, and Snow Pea blossoms!

I hope you're surrounded by things blooming and the delights of early summer!