Yo ho, yo ho

X marks the spot, me hearties!

…It’s a pirate’s office indeed!  Or something like that.

As evidenced by the above photo, Oliver recently painted pirate themed vignettes all over some walls in our house.  =)  Luckily, he also painted the rest of the walls shortly after — going over the terrible pink in his office with a more suitable brown color.  Check out some more of his artwork:

A pistol, swords, bottles of rum, and a Jolly Roger.

Cthulhu savagely attacking a ship. Oh noes!

Now the walls are a lovely, uniform caramel color.   Hooray for the end of Pepto Bismol walls!

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In lieu of family

Oliver and I feel very fortunate to have moved into our particular neighborhood and especially in between our immediate neighbors.  They are beyond friendly and kind.  They have now twice adopted us on holidays… it is really, really nice to live in a place where people take care of each other.  I just hope that at some point I can return the favor!

On Easter Sunday while we were in the middle of garden-palooza, Lisa from across the street came over and mentioned that they were having “a few” people over for Easter dinner and that we were welcome to join them.  Our next-door neighbors on either side would also be there, so we wouldn’t be completely amongst strangers.  How sweet are they to think of us??  I *heart* them.

We finished up digging in the dirt and washed up just in time.  “A few people” was actually somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 people and it turned into quite an affair.  There was [tons of] amazingly delicious food — including a chocolate chip cheesecake as one of the available desserts — and plenty of good conversation.  All in all I’d say we had a really lovely Easter.  Not bad when you think that our only plans were to work on the house and yard some more…

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And then there were more.

Today’s mission: garden rehab!  We spent all afternoon outdoors tidying up and prettifying the front yard because it’s been bugging me for a while that there were weeds in the flower beds and still that really lame border around the outside of the round-the-tree bed.  I wanted to pull the weeds, plant annuals, and fix the bed-edger.  The old one was just this silly, floppy, flat cardboard-y stuff that didn’t hold up very well to weather (read: it was cracked and broken in a few places!) or dirt.  Lame for a garden, no?  Yeah!

Well, don’t worry.  It’s gone now.  =)  Oliver threw it away and replaced it with a gorgeous ring of stones that were piled, for reasons unknown, beneath our deck up to now.  They’re such pretty stones, too… they have flecks of mica in them and they sparkle in the sun!  And meanwhile, I tackled the weeds and flowers.

The tulips really must love the weather as much as I do because they’re still growing and blooming like crazy.  All of a sudden I have realized that there are not only yellow ones planted in my yard, but also pink ones and two different varieties of red.  And who knows what else!  I find this immensely funny because I was fretting yesterday about how I wanted more color in that front flower bed, and I woke up today to see those new splashes.  Still, I am not one to be easily dissuaded once I decide I want to do something involving flowers.  I absolutely love planting them and caring for them… so I convinced Oliver this morning to let me buy a bunch of my annuals to fill in the spaces between all the yellow tulips.  I put in purple and white pansies and pink dianthus and pink/red/white petunias.  Now there is a riot of color out there and I LOVE it.  Here is our handiwork.

Isn't there just something about flowers in the yard that make a home feel loved?

That tulip bud is hiding pink petals; I'm sure of it!

Pansies are one of my mom's favorites. I was thinking of her when I picked them out!

Spring on Spruce Hill.

I ran out of time to plant the flowers I bought for the backyard, so they will have to go in tomorrow after work.  They’re snapdragons, for my dad.  =)

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The joys of vehicle ownership

Today, I bought two new tires for my car.  I think it’s funny that in nine years of owning my previous car I never bought new tires (my dad took care of it the one or two times that it needed new tires!), but three months into owning the new one, here I am replacing some already.  It’s not the car’s fault, of course… it’s mine.  On Wednesday I was on the entrance ramp from Route 1 to 495 right alongside a giant semi truck and I felt it was a little too close so I swerved a bit to the right, and bumped right into the curb.  The curb, as luck would have it, was just the right height to tear a nice gash in the sidewall of my front tire, and I promptly wound up with an un-fixable flat.

I am dating Superman, as I have long known, and he proved it once again by changing that tire in ten minutes flat.  Amazing!  Still, the “spare” is a tiny little donut-thing and totally unsuitable for real driving, so it was a top priority to get a new tire.  AND, since it seemed like a bad idea to pair a brand new tire with one already pushing 15,000 miles, Oliver and I decided I should just swap out both the front ones.

SUPER luckily, our next-door neighbor is the IT manager at a company called P.G. Tire.  He is also an angel, as I learned today, when he charged me exactly the “at cost” of the tires plus tax… no mark-up, no charge for swapping the old tires for the new ones on my rims, and no charge for balancing them.  I am thanking my lucky stars for all of the helpful and accommodating men I know today, that is for sure.

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Everything’s coming up

… not so much roses as tulips, really.  And that’s okay!

Spring has arrived in Laurel at long last and I am so surprised and happy to say that my front yard is full of flowers!  As I spent the last few weeks debating and planning what kind of annuals to buy to fill up the big flower bed around the oak tree in the yard, it appears that several dozen perennials spent them growing and growing until suddenly… about a week and a half ago, I went outside one morning and noticed all of the tiny green shoots poking out of the ground.  And since then they’ve gone right on getting taller and fuller, and now they’re HUGE!  And the best part?

They’re blooming!  Look!  Here they are couple of days ago:

Adorable buds all snuggled up at the end of a long day of sunbathing.

And it’s not even just tulips.  I’ve also got daffodils:

They're so happy-looking!

And there are some pretty little white sprays that I can’t quite remember the name of, even though my neighbor told me what they were once.  It’s been a lot of fun to watch them all come up, particularly because they are popping up everywhere, in practically every yard and planter between here and the metro.  I love seeing them each morning as I go to work; they come in so many great colors!  I’m loving spring so far.

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