Symplocarpus foetidus

Don't be alarmed by the title.  I didn't just run my fingers across the keyboard to see what silly thing I could create.  The title is the Latin name for the plant commonly referred to as Skunk Cabbage.  It is common in wetlands and is one of the first plants to show itself in the Spring.  So why is all this so worthy of a blog entry?  Because Ross and I went on a walk to the stream that feeds the small wetland portion of our property and found the Skunk Cabbage rearing its stinky, little head!  (Look closely for the purplish pointy thing sticking out of the stream.)

This is one of those moments that we look forward to each year.  It's a reminder of the wonderful things to come such as watching the white landscape melt away to green, to hearing the sound of the peeper frogs bellowing from the fire pond down the street, to the moment when we can open the windows and let the fresh air fill the house, and to the moment when we can shed all the extra clothes and feel the heat of the sun on our skin.  Who would've thought that something called Skunk Cabbage could create such joy!

Our stream under snow

On another Spring note,  Ross and I got our first packets of garden seeds in the mail.  We ordered them from the John Scheepers' catalog.  We got the catalog earlier this year, and I am throwing this out there because the company is local (less than a 5 minute drive from our house).  We placed the order on Thursday and got the seeds today.  I joked with Ross that they should have saved the postage and just dropped them off on their way home from work.  We are looking forward to digging in the gardens.  This will be Ross' first year of having a vine garden dedicated to melons and squashes.  Of course this opens room in his vegetable garden so he is starting to plan where everything will go.  Here is a link to John Scheepers' website: http://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/index.html.  You can request a catalog there if you so desire our order directly on the web.  And on another side note, Google Maps has recently updated its pictures.  If you know our address, you can Google Map search it (you have to go two houses to the left of the pointer marker) and see the outline of the fence for Ross' vegetable garden in the back.  I am amazed at the detail.  Thank the Lord we didn't have our laundry hanging out to dry!

Unintended Barchelor!

For the last couple of days I have been an unintended bachelor.  Ross went to Ohio for his Grandmother's funeral; I was not able to attend.  This has left me home alone and acting as a single parent to our puppy, kitties, and little cluckers. 

Ross and I have a running joke that when he is tired of cooking then it's my night to cook.  This means we eat out!  With Ross gone I have been eating out more than I care too so I decided to make my own breakfast.  It's said that a picture says a thousand words.  I'm not quite sure what all thousand of those would be when looking at the picture above, but many of them would be about my cooking prowess and the lack thereof.  (That is not a haze in the picture but smoke; I filled the whole house with it!).  Overall it wasn't a bad breakfast, but I did slightly burn the sausage, the egg, and the English muffin.  I guess I would have burned the yogurt too if it were possible.  Ross returns today just in time to save me from burning down the house.  Can I get a hallelujah?

The Legacy of Food.

My Sito (Lebanese for grandmother) passed away in her sleep last night. She left behind a legacy of cooking great meals.  She showed all of us her love by spending an abundant amount of her time in the kitchen.  She would make wonderful meals that sometimes would take days on end to create.  She would fret over you once you walked in her door and ask "are you hungry" and "can I get you something?" We never left her home hungry.  As a small child and throughout my childhood I would often watch her in the kitchen and ask her what she was doing.  She would often explain to me what she was doing, and would let me watch her cook up a storm.  While the guys would watch football on the television I was in the kitchen with her.  She taught me how to make many Lebanese dishes, and other dishes too.  I am glad I can recreate the wonderful smells of my childhood.  Thank you Sito.  Rest in peace.

Weathering the Weather

Snow is in the forecast. Uggggghhhhh!

I have seen enough snow to last me the rest of the year.  The problem is we have at least two more months of snow ahead of us.  We have been getting hit week after week with major snowstorms.  It has been a major pain managing all of it.

Ross has been a real trooper.  He gets out after every storm and starts clearing it off the roof.  We had water leaking onto the ceilings in two of our bedrooms earlier this month from ice dams that formed on the roof.  Clearing it off is of upmost importance.  Part of the issue is that all our heating ducts run up from the basement and into and through the attic.  The duct then runs to vents in the ceilings.  I guess this was a novel way to run a heating system in the 50s. Novel and inefficient.  Our contractor said that we probably lose about a quarter to a third of all our heat before it ever reaches a room.  What a nice way to spend our money.

We have hired a company to run new duct work throughout the basement to remedy this.  I choked a bit on the price when the contract was presented to me; thank God we didn't need a new furnace as well!  Hopefully this will help alleviate the ice dam issues that we have put up with over the last three years (or at least minimize their effect).  We will still have to clear the snow off the roof as we don't want it to cave in.  We have removed so much this year that you can see that Ross is taller than the roof when he stands on the pile of it.  We are praying for a slow melt off this year as too much melt too quick is going to cause a lot of flooding.

Max has been enjoying the snow.  He likes to run around in it.  He ran out to me on Saturday and fell down in the hole where my leg was (you can see his little head peering out in the picture to the left).  He climbed himself out with a little help from his Papa.  I jokingly told Ross that Max is going to be very confused when all the snow melts as he is right now running around about two and half feet in the air.  He runs right off the porch onto the snow banks, but in reality there is a step down from the porch.  I surely hope he looks before he leaps.  His potty training is going well.  Bootsy and Cloe are still not too happy about his presence.  We keep telling Max that barking at them is not helping his cause.

We officially began our 2011 renovation project.  We ripped out the old linen closet (last weekend) and the tile surrounds (this weekend) in the main bathroom.  I find it funny that there was tile on all the bathroom walls except in the bath/shower alcove.  In there they used a laminated sheet to protect from water penetration.  There was some old newspaper stuffed behind the toilet paper dispenser that I guess they used as insulation.  It was dated 1967; the last major update on this bathroom was over 40 years ago.  We are not surprised.  We plan on gutting the entire room and starting over from scratch.  It will be nice when it's done.  More importantly, it is the last room in need of major renovation.  It will also be nice to not have big projects looming over our heads. Best of all, it's a great way to take our minds off all the snow, and God knows we need the distraction!

Home Ownership, Yay!

Most of the time home ownership is a wonderful thing. Most of the time...

Last night I was sitting on the couch reading a magazine and enjoying time with our new pup Max.  All of a sudden I heard a strange noise; it was water dripping between the main window and the storm window nearest me.  Dripping water is never a good sign.

I got out the ladder and climbed into the attic.  We had several spots where water was dripping down the nails holding the shingles in place.  We had ice dams that formed on the roof.  This did not make me happy as we had cleared off the first several feet of snow nearest the gutters to prevent ice dams from forming.  It didn't help.  The worst drip was over one of the bedrooms (you can see the water spot in the picture).  There was also another drip over the bathroom which didn't irritate me as much as we plan to gut this room shortly.

The problem is that our forced-air heating system runs through the attic and feeds vents that are in the ceilings.  I'm not quite sure why whomever installed it decided on this plan, but I can tell you that it was a bad choice.  Even with the heating ducts insulated, there is too much heat released to the attic.  This causes the snow closest to the shingles to melt and allows the water to collect at the edge where it is easily turned into an ice dam by the cold, night air.  All the subsequent melt runs down to this dam and then backs up under the shingles where it finds it way down the holes from the roofing nails.  Lucky us.

So Ross and I got out the ladder, the snow rake, a shovel, and a hammer and went to town on the ice and snow.  This all started to happen about the time Ross started cooking dinner which subsequently went straight to the refrigerator.  I know that time flies when you are having fun, but I can now attest that it also flies when you are not having fun too.  We finished exhausted at about one in the morning after breaking plenty of ice and having a couple of personal meltdowns ourselves.  I double checked the attic and all the drips had stopped.  We didn't get to bed until close to three (Ross actually finished our dinner which was mighty fine).  Our bodies ache and we are both plum tuckered out.  It was a most eventful first day home for Max.  He actually slept right through all the banging on the roof.   The cats on the other hand were not as thrilled.  I think they believe the admittance of a dog into our midst brought about the wrath of God.  All in all, it was not the way I hoped to spend my Saturday evening.  On the plus side, at least I got to spend it with Ross!