The Rain. The Frogs. And me.

We're having weather. We-interrupt-your-regularly-scheduled-broadcast, flood-warning weather. 

This is Texas. That's pretty common. Once you've lived here for a few years, a flood warning barely pricks your ears.

But it's spring, and the drip-drip-drop got all the frogs singing.

Sitting in my living room, the frog songs drowned out the thunder and lightning that was such big news that my mother in Washington state texted me that I needed to be careful.

No really. Mating frogs will drown out thunder.

I went out on my covered porch thinking that I would just stand and listen for awhile. Then, I got sight of a frog sitting out in the middle of the pavement. 

I barefooted it out to the middle of the street, watching this little creature sitting there breathing.

As I made my way back to the house, I realized where I was. I live on a half-acre in an urban oasis, a haven for baby doves and color-changing lizards and bees and hawks. The empty lot that's part of the property I rent shimmered in the night light, as a temporary pond formed.

I waded out into the field, sinking up to my ankles in mud. As I did, the water - two or three inches deep at least -- shivered and braided  away from me. Frogs. Hopping away at my approach, cutting patterns into the water with their wakes. 

I stopped to watch them, and was startled into laughter by a huge BURRRRRP just a few feet away. I looked to see one of the frogs, air pocket under its chin ballooned out, preparing for its song.

After a few minutes, soaked by the rain, I waded back to the house.

Isn't it magic, when a lawn turns into a pond, when the air is full of singing, and the night gives way to laughter?

SPRING!

What's Happening at The Farm

In Houston, we treasure every precious fallish day like the gem that it truly is. These are the days that make you think, "Hmm... why would anyone ever live anywhere else?" Those days work to counter-balance those days in August when we think, "Tell me again why I live in this fetid swamp?"

I cope by treating summer the way people treat winter in northern climes. I don't worry about  the fact that I'm staying indoors watching movies and reading books. I know that in December I'll be able to have outdoor fun while my friends back home are huddled up with their cocoa.

Now that fall is here, though, I've started puttering around the farm again, working on improvements.

Garden
I'm in my third season of attempting a small garden in a raised bed. I'm someone who learns by doing, which means this gardening process has been a lot of trial and error. My friend Sara from Feeding the Soil is the opposite: she's just planning to have a garden and has already started researching which books to read and asking for advice. Sometimes I wish I was more like that! However, each person has to learn in her own way.

So I'm on my third gardening attempt. I've been most successful growing herbs. I had three basil plants that did well this summer - I was proud because the one that did the best was the one that I started from seed, rather than a transplant. 

The basil just started bolting (or flowering, which takes energy from the leaves, making them less tasty if you allow it to keep growing), so I harvested the basil, washed it, chopped it up, and froze it for use this fall.

This rosemary plant is the
garden's longest-term resident.

The back steps are where I do all my transplanting.
I started  summer squash and cucumber seeds this September.

These are the squash seedlings in the ground.

Around the yard:

We've been having lots of rain -
this toadstool grew this size
 in ONE NIGHT.

I just like this picture of the door to the chicken
coop - no chickens yet. I'm waiting until
I get my gardening skillz solid before I take
on another outside hobby.

Inside the House

My friend Melanie is great at thinking through how to decorate your home. She's been helping me out with my decor by creating Pinterest boards and pinning lots of inspirations. I think I'm a constant source of disappointment to her because I'm always going on and on about money and priorities when she suggests ideas (someday, Melanie, I will get a new couch!)

Right now the priority is the blinds in my house. Like most rentals, my house is decked with the cheap mini-blinds that a small animal - let's say, a curious cat - can destroy by constantly brushing past them to look out the window. Wily pulled down one set of blinds and that window is currently covered by pinned up shelf paper. I definitely need to do something, but I don't necessarily want more blinds but I HATE curtains, especially because said window-sitting cat sheds all over them. 

Melanie pinned some cool tutorials on my board to make DIY Roman shades out of your mini-blinds.  I'm thinking I might go that route. I couldn't do anything, however, until I figured out how the blinds had been installed - the owners used some metal brackets  that I just could not figure out how to release. This morning I got creative on Google and I figured it out. Now I'm ready to rock.

I have added one piece of furniture to the living room - this IKEA Strandmon wing chair. It's now become the living room chair of choice for all of the house's residents.

Even when I'm sitting here, Wily likes to sit on the ottoman at my feet. 

He's learning that this is NOT a piece of furniture that he can sharpen his claws on. I realize that this post is making him seem like a destructive little guy, but he's always just doing cat stuff. Cat stuff just happens to sometimes be incompatible with human stuff. It's because he's a descendant of jungle cats!

I also got some new sheets.  These are organic cotton and came from Target. Traditional cotton production is bad for the environment, but it also makes a stiffer fabric. I find that with organic cotton you get soft sheets with a lower thread count. 

Wily decided to try them out as I was making the bed for the first time.

So things are slowly coming together around here. While sometimes I shake my head at how much more work it is to live in a house (especially a house on a half-acre!) than in an apartment, it has also made life easier in many ways - having a full-sized kitchen in itself makes this home-gourmet much happier. I think Wily (obviously) is much happier too, with all of the windows looking out on the squirrels and birds. If only he would become better at bug-catching, he'd really pay his way around here.

Farmhouse Tour: Kitchen

Time for another installment of the tour of the farmhouse: the kitchen.

In my old garage apartment, I made the most of my teeny-tiny red-painted kitchen. I had a small square of counter space, and during big cooking projects, bowls and dishes of the components would be scattered all over the living room.

The kitchen at the farm is much more convenient for someone who does a lot of cooking - which I do.





For the first time in my life, I have a gas stove! It took some getting used to; I admit I burned a few things in the beginning. Now, I love it.

There's plenty of space for me to store all of my utensils. The lazy susan holds the spices that I use most often: cumin, cayenne pepper, turmeric, coriander... I make a lot of Mexican and Indian food. 

All of those canisters hold dried beans, lentils, and grains. Of course, buying these items in bulk and cooking them yourself is much more economical and eco-friendly than buying canned or boxed versions, so I try to keep staples like black beans, pintos, lentils, and bulgur on hand at all times. 

There's also room for the SodaStream and the speakers where I can dock my phone to play music. I alway play music while I cook.









When I first moved in, I was not a fan of the buttery yellow walls in the kitchen. I wanted to paint them right away. After painting the office, however, I was done with painting for awhile. The color has grown on me over time. I especially like it with brightly-colored blues and pops of pink and orange.






The kitchen wall wall is a great space for vintagey prints and colorful artwork that doesn't fit with the science and exploration theme in the office and living room. I got this vintage sign at an Antique Mall.

There's also an outlet in the wall at just the right height to put the ironing board - I keep it set up in the kitchen when people aren't coming over. I iron almost every day, which lots of people find weird. My mama taught me well!.








You can just see through the window here into the mud room. Probably one of my favorite rooms in the house! I love having a washer and dryer that I'm not sharing with any other tenants.  However, it has created some bad habits. I'm not going to lie; there have been a few weeks when I got my clothes out of the dryer every day!














The kitchen window looks out on the garage, garden, and back yard.  It's so peaceful to look out in the mornings and see the doves and jays in bushes. Wily likes climbing up on the counters and looking out at the wildlife.

I keep stones and antique bottles on the window ledge.

Right now, none of the windows in the house have window treatments, except for some cheap shades in the main part of the house. Next project will be some cafe curtains for the kitchen. I'm thinking blue and white stripes - what do you think?

 The appliances in the kitchen are black - it's a little weird with the soft yellow. However, I'm just happy to have a dishwasher and a newish refrigerator.

I keep all of my cookbooks here, along with the microwave. Buying cookbooks is a guilty pleasure of mine. I do actually use them.









So that's the Farmhouse kitchen. It's definitely one of the cheeriest, most-used rooms in the house.

Farmhouse Tour: The Office

I've shown very few pics of the inside of the "Farmhouse" - mostly because I haven't felt like the inside of the house was "finished" enough to share. However, I've been here almost a year and just signed my lease for another year (yipee!) and so I thought it was about time.

I truly believe that having a nice space - not fancy or expensive - but just right for you, can bring a lot of peace and calm into your life. It's important to me that my home is a place where I really want to be day in and day out. 

There are still a few things I want to do - right now there are no rugs anywhere, and all of the windows have those crappy three-dollar shades that every rental has. However, those are small things compared to the state that it was in when I first moved in.

I first wanted to share: The Office!

Part of the reason I originally began looking for a new place was that my beloved-yet-janky one bedroom garage apartment didn't have enough space for me to have an office/place to do crafts. I occasionally sew, and my two-foot by two-foot eating table just wasn't conducive to cutting fabric or setting up a sewing machine. However, what my garage apartment did have was lots and lots of built-in storage, so when I moved I realized - despite a great deal of library downsizing -- that I didn't have a place for all of my books.

Over the months, I've worked to purchase enough storage to accommodate all of the books, comic books, notebooks, knitting magazines, etc. that I just couldn't part with. Last night, in a flurry of industry, I finally brought it all together. So the last room to be assembled will be the first I show you.

The desk area. I got the desk from World Market, and the drawers were salvaged from my old office when we moved into a new space. I got a big table-like desk so that I can set up the sewing machine as needed. I definitely need a new chair - will have to hit the thrift stores.

Wily likes the new desk too - it's right next to the window so he can look at all the squirrels and birds.

This little contraption on the closet door is because Wily's litter box is in the closet. I tied a ribbon around the doorknobs, so Wily can get in to use the facilities, but the door isn't wide open all the time.

I've been trying to find a litterbox that isn't too messy, and finally settled on the Booda Dome Cleanstep Cat Box - it has a tiny kitty stairway that leads into the litterbox. This helps contain the litter somewhat, despite being a little ridiculous.

This corner was the last to be figured out. I needed a small cabinet, but discovered that any kind of furniture with doors and drawers is mega expensive. I got this little guy from Joss and Main and it was reasonably priced. (Joss and Main is a flash sale site and they have lots of farmy-type furniture. While many flash sale sites get negative customer complaints, the two that I use most often - Fab.com and Joss and Main -- have been fast, friendly, and easy to use. This cabinet came two days after I ordered it!) I don't really like those anchors as door pulls so I'll change those out at some point.











I wish that more of the furniture could have been recycled, but I ended up having to buy some new things, like the desk. I got two of these bookshelves from Target, and they were really easy to set up because they just unfold.

I painted the room myself - it was a grimy white. This color is called "Belle Grove Victory Blue" and it's from Lowe's. The walls had a bumpy texture that made it hard to paint - especially around the edges. If you ever visit me - don't look too closely!

One thing I did reuse? Two old bulletin boards I've had since I was a teenager. I just covered them with some craft paper that I had in the craft drawer. Over time I'll add more photos and mementoes. And yes, that's my camp patch from 1987.

This collection of folk art crosses is one of my favorite parts of my decor.  I've collected them over the years at various antique shops and markets. Some have come from friends as well. The little skelly was knitted by me.
This bookshelf was reused - some friends gave it to me when they moved away.

What I've Been Up To

Trust me, I am working on a new post ... but, it's taking me awhile. In the meantime, here's what I've been doing:

I've been...

picking blackberries in my yard,

visiting my new nephew...

... and finishing up this blanket for him,

watching this amazing, feel-good movie,

and taking care of this cute cat ...

... who is also very naughty!

Springtime on the Farm

Little Harvest

While there's still very little in the garden but seedlings, the "Farm" has all kinds of daily bounty. Aloe for burns or ouchies, rose buds for the windowsill.

Hope you're having as wonderful a Saturday as I am.

Life on "The Farm"

The beginnings of the garden

Rosemary. It will mostly be used for rosemary gimlets.

The boxes are beehives. The little pollinators just came
to live at the farm a couple of weeks ago.

This is the chicken coop. There are no chickens yet. Cleaning the coop and getting it ready for hens will be the next big project.