Holy goat!

Interesting weekend. First of all we thought we were having Swedish guests and Swedish treats at the house but a volcano changed all that. So not cool. My parents never made it out of Sweden and I guess it's a relief that they are at home and safe. As of now they have rescheduled their flight for Sunday the 25th and we hope they can make it!

So James and I got right back on killen knot weed (Fallopia japonica). I'm using a garden fork that we bought for a dollar at a tag sale and I stick it into the big motherload stumps and pull them out like heads of Medusa. 

This is what you find under some rocks. Shudder. So gross.

But we have new allies in the knot weed war.

This is Sage. And that is not what she is paid to eat. There's knot weed right there and she is climbing around our Valborgs pile. (Short version: Valborg is April 30th in Sweden and we light big bonfires and sing songs to welcome spring.)

And this is Cinders. She was pretty focused on the knot weed but there was equal parts lawn consumed. What are you gonna do, cheap labor. 

And this is the knot weed field after an afternoon with our furry mowers. They can do some damage I tell ya. This picture must have been taken on day one of our experiment because on day 2 we had to add another cinder block for Cinders. 2 was easy enough for her to drag home. Sage only needed 1 block to keep her put but she must have ran to the end of her leash about 1000 times thinking "this time it might be longer". 

We kept a half eye on them because the entanglement possibilities were endless and if we tried to help out we got equally ensnared. Cinders almost took me out at least once by taking a swift lap around my legs with the leash and pulling taught. Then she rubs her head all over you. They're very social and nice to have around these creatures.

Florence has a third goat, Gaby, but she has a nervous condition and Florence couldn't get her to come over. When she gets stressed she goes stiff and falls over, she faints basically. We'll be sure to pick some knot weed and bring it over to Gaby and her sheep pals.

Florence brought us a mint plant. It found a home in a pot by the dining room window.

Our darling Dog Wood tree!!!

Azaleas in bloom. 1 pink, 1 white, 2 red bushes.

We are so focused on KILLIN and massacreing  that we have overlooked planting and bringing new things in to the garden (except for some random grass seed that we spread a few weeks ago... it was a stoopid city folk thing to do and it's mostly just feeding the birds I think...). 

Rosemary's little painting made us think though. She has painted in two bushes at the foot of the porch stairs and it changes everything. Why couldn't we just do that? It would hide a bunch of uglyness and help the front of the house get nice. 

So this weekend I found myself at Lowes buying a pot for our new mint plant and saw this Dappled Willow bush. It said on the tag that it likes morning sun and that is what's best about our front porch! It seemed meant to be.

Uh... hmmm... 

Yeah exactly - click on the picture to enlarge.... More than ever... But they'll come around!

We cooked burgers on the grill and for a Sunday treat I made kladd kaka for the first time in 20 years. It's like a Swedish brownie and it's like delicious and too easy to make.

Beat 2 eggs with 1 1/3 cup sugar.

Add:

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 pinch salt

1/2 table spoon vanilla extract

Stir together and finally add - YES! 1 STICK OF MELTED BUTTER!

Put in a buttered pan and bake for 40 minutes at 300˚.

Once every 20 years or so it's OK to make one and just eat it up between 2 people. We ate and watched Lost In Translation for the the 100th time and it's still pretty magical. Now we want to keep the magical mood and Harold and Maude is on the marquee for next weekend. Followed by Tillsammans (Together). MMMMmmmmmm

All pics were taken with my phone in this post so pardon the image quality. But I had fun with them in the app camerabag to make them a little more special. 

Tills vidare!

Alien take over

It was another weekend of working in the yard. We filled a dumpster and finally got the last garbage pile off the front lawn. We have been focusing on the south gable also known as Tom's side. He's our neighbor and if he only knew how much we care about what he cares about, he would be very honored. Our house needs some work, OK it needs a lot of work and we think our neighbors know we are doing our best to fix it up and not be such an eyesore. And some simple yard work helps a big long way. This is Tom's side after some raking and cleaning. The star magnolia is in full bloom and this pic was taken right at sunset and the house doesn't look half bad. 

I had a little too much time on my hands and drew up the changes to come in Photoshop.

There will be a new door, one window will go away because that is where the tub will go and we are replacing the little rounded attic vents for windows. We are also painting the house and finishing the trim. All in good time. All in good time. 

So this guy lives in our laundry room. We are going to get a have-a-heart trap and evict him pretty soon cause he makes a bit of a racket in there, but I've been alright with him so far. But the other day we caught him in the act just being a little too greedy. Or he's got his calender all wrong and is stocking up for winter.

I mean can you stuff more seed in there buddy! Relax and leave some for BIRDS. Being that it's BIRD SEED. Cheeky bugger. Plenty of pun intended.

A new favorite sparrow - the chipper! He's a tiny little fella.

This pretty little lady is a female cowbird. You wouldn't know she's the Medea of birds by looking at her. 

When it comes to Grackles we are making it up as we go along. Like is this guy a gal? Why is your head green all of a sudden? 

Aaaahhhh, what a nice surprise! A red azalea growing right next to our patio. 

Oh my lord and word. This knot weed sh*t is giving a whole new meaning to "grow like a weed."

It's a full on alien take over in our back yard. These suckers have grown a foot and a half in 4 days. Grrrrrrr....

We have no way of killing them, the root system is so crazy intricate that napalm seems to be the only solution. 

For now we kick them. Clip them. Stomp them. Spray them and hoe them. Just so we don't have to look at them.

Lovely spring colors in Blue Jay land.

Lovely Rain

And this guy.

And in the part of Ripley - baby alien slayer - Linda K.

 That stringy thing on the ground - that's what I like to call good knot weed cause dead knot weed is good knot weed.

She's got her tools - I've got mine and all I need is a shovel.

Misplaced energy is still energy!

We showed up on friday night and Scott had installed 3 windows in the living room and one in the dining room. They still need to be trimmed out but by golly whatta difference already!

It's so much quieter now that the black garbage bag that was acting as window for the past 2 months isn't flapping in the breeze.

Another sign of the DOG wiped away... There used to be a half eaten windowsill attached to this window but now it's gone. Bye bye doggy, bye bye.

I'm really happy with our choice to go 2 over 2. It appeals to my Scandinavian sensibility and looking around the neighborhood it seems to be the style. The argument against them is that our house was built in 1800 and at that time they could not make panes this big. The correct windows for the time period would be 8 over 8 or smaller. Now, 19 Maple Ave happens to be a big mish-mosh of eras and has gone through so many stages that it's hard to do a true restoration. We are putting in skinny 4 over 4 windows in the bay window because that was most likely a Victorian addition for example. So bear with us Clintondale, we won't turn Big Pink into a complete Frankenstein but are using our best judgment.

So, seeing the leaps and bounds that the 4 windows did for progress James and I went nuts. In every possible direction. One minute we were tearing up the floor in the awful green room. That could easily have waited a month or five but alas, on hands and knees getting rid of pee stinking linoleum.

Just so you get the idea, this floor is a vast improvement...

This is the room next to the green room and the 1 year plan is to join these 2 rooms to make the master bedroom. Knocking down a wall and hopefully raising the ceiling. Also hoping to put a bathroom in that far corner.

Next minute I'm assembling IKEA furniture for the guest room and making the bed. It's really so so so so cute!

Guest room by IKEA.

Next extremely important task was apparently to finally blow up a pilates ball that's been in a box since we moved in. Followed by 20 sporadic crunches.

While this is going on James is going bananas on the knot weed. Not even close to being on the agenda but hey! When the mood strikes. We somehow cleared a good third of it!

A man and his ho. Or is it hoe?

It was a gorgeous day and I had to join in. I will not miss a good photo-op where I can look like a total country hobo.

No that's not our fire, officer. Alright it is our fire, but look how safety conscious we are with the fire extinguisher right there.

So one can now walk from one end of the knot catastrophe to the other. Linked is a site where our dear knot weed (deemed an invasive plant in New York state...) is pictured next to snails and bugs and some other farmer enemies. Soooo, there is still a lot of work to be done to get rid of it but this was a step in the right direction. We didn't uncover as much litter as we expected, but there was still enough beer bottles and bleach containers hidden in the dirt to wonder a bit about people's habits and general ideas of upkeep.

Back to the dervish like activity of the weekend. I also bought a turkey, assembled a christmas tree stand, arranged the living room 3 times, made pytt-i-panna (Swedish prince sausage, potatoes and onion all fried up together and served with fried eggs on top. Spice it up with paprika. Delish!) got an Apple expert on the phone to fix my busted iTunes library, planned our thanksgiving menu which includes a lot of brining research. The turkey goes in the bucket on Wednesday morning and I will tell you all about it.

And that about covers the weekend.

A short 2 day stay in the city to prep for a movie I start in a week. I look forward to it, Henry's Crime, with Keanu Reeves and James Caan. And back to Clintondale tomorrow night. It gets harder and harder to leave our lovely Hamlet and our aaaaawesome house. Come by anytime this 4 day weekend for glögg and gingersnaps! Welcome!