Backyard beauties

We know that when you open a business it's all about location location location. We took over the very successful bird feeder franchise in front of the dining room window from the precious owner. We really had no idea what a gold mine we were sitting on. The clientele is very versatile and loyal and comes from all over. We easily go through a feeder a week. We thought we would capitalize on the success and branch out to a lesser known area, over by the kitchen window. If you want to make it in this business you gotta have cojones, right. So we bought a new feeder, filled her up and waited. Not a bird in sight. But I know that the most gentrified areas of Brooklyn were once industrial wastelands and they will come. Sooner or later, they will come. It starts with the starving artists and the hipsters follow. As a marketing ploy I spread some seed on the ground. And check it out:

When we showed up on saturday morning the new feeder was empty. I wonder what the first bird who discovered it thought. Probably the same thing I thought when I first moved to the Williamsburg area in the mid 90's - OMG how do I keep this secret to myself. 

A lot happened in the yard while we were away this week. (Lots happened in the city too -  it was doc week for Linda. I worked on a documentary about FDR right across the river at his home on tuesday and wed-thurs was a documentary about Fran Lebowits directed by Martin Scorsese. He hung out with us on a balcony for an hour or so while shooting Fran peeking her head out at 6 o'clock on the Grand Central Station clock.

Marty was very dapper and jovial but there's unfortunately no real story here. My story of the day was when Lisa the DP and I were in the back of Fran's old checker cab with a camera driving through Times Square at night. She is an old school driver alright and was laying on the horn cursing everyone else on the road. It was a little scary but mostly just hilarious.

So back to what happened on Maple Ave...

This is the flower bed outside the dining room that we uncovered a week ago. Just in time!

This is the kitty cat bud tree in full bloom. Aaaahhhhhh.... 

It smells amazing! I would love some ID help with it!

This is the next tree to go.

And the chestnut.

This tree has unfortunately split down the middle, probably happened in the big storm, and most of the buds have died, but I'm following this one closely. If we can at least get one flower.

We needed to try our home brew to make sure we are on the right track. It should still age for another 2 weeks but we wanted a sneak peak.

The author enjoys a 2 week old Fat Robin Pilsner.

And you know what - we got beer. It's already pretty tasty. 

Today was yard work and fish tacos. I totally cheated and used fish stick for filling, just fried them up in a lot of oil in the pan. We love fish sticks over here so that was hardly a negative. For fixins I marinated cabbage in vinegar and lime juice and some salt and pepper. And cut up some tomatoes and red onion. And then this sauce:

1/2 cup plain non fat yougurt

1/2 cup mayo

juice from 1 lime

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp  ground coriander

1/2 tsp dill weed

1/2 tsp oregano

1 tsp chipotle chili powder

1/2 tsp minced capers (kapris)

1 tbs chopped fresh cilantro

Mix it all together and let it sit in the fridge for a few hours. Darn good. We sat outside on the patio and drank Micheladas with the meal. !Muy Bueno¡

Adios!

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.

short but sweet weekend

Lazy saturday. Got up to the house around 4 am and woke up 10.30. Tried to start the day off right with mexican eggs. Which is really just scrambled eggs with cheese, red pepper and onion and a dash of chipotle powder. Then we soak a lot of tortilla chips in there before we fry it up. A little fresh cilantro and we got Huevos Mexicanos. I dabbled a little chipotle salsa on top but it really didn't need it.

We spent the rest of saturday in the yard. This patch outside the dining room is unfortunately infested with knot weed as well. We raked out all the leaves so we could see where the baby aliens were.

We also freed up plenty of spring flowers.

We decided to name the 1st batch from the Blue Jay Brewery "Fat Robin Pilsner" in honor of this guy. He just looks like he knows his beer. 

Batch #2 is up and running/fermenting. Drunken Grackle Pils perhaps?

And this is the handsomest man in the world raking.

And that was our weekend. How was yours?

Random Signs of Spring

This will be our first spring in these parts and we really have no idea what our yard will look like, what's growing where and so on. I'm sure we are in store for many surprises - good and bad.

This is good! 

These buds were kitty cats just a week ago and now they are almost blooming. Let's play the ID game everyone! Cause I have no idea! Time to start looking for a plant book - now that we got the bird issue taken care. Wink wink J and thanks again!

This could be bad. But it could also be lovely flowers. Growing in the middle of our construction debris.

This is only good. It's a flower bed that survived the snow plows.

This is AAAAALLLLL bad. These ugly gross baby alien heads are knot weed. The big nasty dirt patch next to the barn is a mine field of these horrid things. If you need to take your aggressions out on anything please come to our house and kick the baby aliens!

This is a great spring sign! Young red winged black birds a plenty!!!!

The boys are taking a break after a job WELL done! The whole bedroom and bathroom are framed out and now you can see the dormer. Smygkök utkik utsmyg vad hette det nu Kajsa...

The ceiling will come down to the top of the small rounded windows which will get real windows which will make the light in this room even more gorgeous.

The closets are built and will create a small hallway in to the bathroom. 

This is an image from this fall that I forgot about. I took it through our bathroom window which has old rippled glass in it. Makes for a lovely distortion doesn't it.

Morning light

The boys have been upstairs for a few days and it's looking amazing. It's so far from being done but I already want to move in!!!

The light is just gorgeous in the mornings and part of the plan is to put windows into the vents as well. 

This is a couple of days ago and I need to get up there tomorrow morning to get an updated snap, cause today the framed out the dormer. It's hard to see but our roof has peaks and ridges going in all sorts of directions and it took some figuring out but we managed to preserve most of them. 

We are not keeping  the sharp peak but are bringing the ceiling down to those new cross beams. It's cheaper and will be much better when it comes to insulating.

This is going to be the bed wall. Good bye little green door. Goodbye beautiful stone work.

This wall will become closets and the wall to the bathroom.

It's a Grackle! A Grackle I tell ya!

Noisy beautiful bullies! Love em so much I want to name my house after them. 

Although I'm crushing hard on the robins right now. I can watch them run for ages. Why do they do that? They've got wings - why do they use their legs like suckers!

"Duh-huh-huh. Are you guys talking about me?"

I mean come on this guy is awesome. He's got a serious penguin thing going on. Runs like one too. 

And lastly some nature porn.