I lovingly refer to our neighborhood as the "burbs" because, well...it is the "burbs". I'm almost completely positive that we are the only house within at least a 30 home radius, not inclusive of empty nesters, that don't have kiddos. Because we don't fall into the current format of our fellow neighborhood inhabitants, I thought we should try and be a bit more "neighborly". (Not having a kid in this part of town is like not having an invitation to a party. Those little germ factories, as cute as they are, act as your Golden Ticket. No kid, no social invites.) Just the other day a perfect opportunity presented itself in the form of six new sets of neighbors. Woohoo!!! Fresh meat!
I got my butt into gear and made some tasty cookies and hand made "Welcome to the Neighborhood" cards.
Even though the thought of failing was definitely in the front of my mind I needed to at least do this to prove to myself that my current set of social skills were somewhat permissible in most situations. With cookies in hand I trotted over to the homes of all our new strangers, uh I mean neighbors, and tried not to act like someone who might have laced the treats with some sort of LSD. All-in-all, I think that my attempt to reach out and meet new people was mildly successful. This small triumph was marked by not getting a single door slammed in my face and being greeted with a smile by everyone. I also hoped that a small amount of the cookies might have actually been eaten rather than thrown away. A girl can hope right?
The never ending list of home projects are another result of living in the burbs. What, might you ask, was our "project of the week"? Painting...again. We have a long standing history with painting and not all of it's pretty, but I'll spare the gory details for now. We really wanted to bring some new life to our upstairs living area so we poured over paint swatches for hours before finally making a decision. So, with our trusty/ever so helpful assistants, Chase and Hana, we got started.
A gallon of paint and a couple hours later we were done. When we stepped back to admire all our hard work and planning, it hit us like a ton of bricks...the color was a disaster. Like I said before, we have a complicated relationship with wall paint. I see another weekend of painting in our very near future. Sigh...
Hana decided to protest against the wall color by picking a fight with it. I came back inside from the garage putting the brushes away to find this...
It looked like the wall socked her square in the eye. I'd like to think this happened because she was defending our honor against the horrid green now plastered on our walls...but I'm pretty sure she just took a corner too sharply. The next day I also found the tip of her tail covered in paint too. Since welcoming Hana into our family I've learned the funny lesson that black dogs are like black cars...no matter how clean they really are they manage to always look dirty.
In memorandum of my sweet Elka, we planted a beautiful young peach tree. It just finished blooming and has already started growing small peaches. Pretty sure we won't be able to eat any of the fruit this year, but I'm excited to watch it grow and hopefully thrive.
I planted in a large pot for this season so that I can keep an extra close eye on it's health and well-being. It is a little too delicate to fend for itself against the heat this year so having it in a pot will enable me to bring it into the shade or shelter when needed.
Elka always loved sitting under any tree she could find and just "watch" the goings on of the world around her. It was impossible to get outside to do yard work without her protesting disappointment when you didn't allow her to participate. There were many times that she would sit under the shade of the trees and become so comfortable that you literally had to mow around her. Elka was never accused of being a push-over...but I think that was one of her most outstanding and favorable qualities.
I think that she would have liked this little tree...
