Things Get Seedy

Hi! Things are going well here in Texas! We're getting unpacked, slowly but surely. The living room, kitchen & hallway were all looking good. Until I started working on the guest room/sewing room yesterday. Had to take out about a million boxes, just so I could find the floor in there. I'm now working on getting that room in order, and once it is, I'll take more pictures of the house, without boxes this time. Yay!

I've been busy feeding our outdoor kitties - they live under the house and take care of various rodentia that might be roaming the prairies around here. (I actually saw the mom herd a field mouse over so the kittens could kill it - serious Wild Kingdom over here, and I had to look away. She's just teaching them to survive, but I still don't want to see it.) Anyway, we do give them some food to help out, but not enough that they stop hunting. Well, that's the plan. I tend to spoil cats, in case you didn't notice. Ahem.

Anyway, they're skittish, but getting more used to us. I tried to get some pictures:

Here they are eating. Mom is the tortoise shell calico on the right (the dark-type calico with yellow & gray mixed into blackish fur). The babies are solid colors: black, yellow, and gray.

Wait, someone's missing. Oh, here he is:



Hee hee!! SOOOO cute. Kitten close-up!



I haven't named them yet. Aren't you proud? I'm trying really hard to keep some distance, in case something happens to them. They're wild, after all. But not having mice & snakes under the house is worth a little cat food every day. :)

We've been busy in other ways too, namely in planting stuff. We do live on a farm, after all!

So the other day I tilled up some ground in front of the porch for a flower garden. We'll see how it does. Nothing's come up yet, but it's early.



We also built some boxes for raised bed gardens in the backyard. We're going to have 2 4x4 square foot gardens. It's an interesting method that my sister told me about. This is my first try at it. Basically, instead of planting in rows you plant in squares. It's supposed to be a much more efficient use of space. We'll see! Anyway, we built the boxes and filled them with a combo of topsoil, peat moss, and compost. Then I marked them off in a 1 ft x 1 ft grid, then planted the seeds. (By the way, the Square Foot Gardening website is: www.squarefootgardening.org)


And by the way, yes, I do see the irony of living on a farm and yet having raised bed gardens instead of regular in-ground gardens. However, with the new job I start on Monday, I won't have as much time for weeding. The soil here is also very sandy. Major crops in this part of Texas? Hay, rice, and cotton. Not cucumbers. So. Raised beds it is.

Oh, I can hear you now! "But what are you planting, Kelli?"

Okra (a dwarf variety, so hopefully they won't get so tall)
Corn (my first attempt at corn - this should be fun!)
Tomatoes (2 varieties - cherry ones and little yellow grape tomatoes)
Cucumbers (found the same type of seeds I used last year, so we'll see if they go insane like last year's did)
Squash (nothing better than battered & fried squash - yum!)
Bell Peppers (planted red ones, as well as a variety mix of white (!), purple (!), and dark brown (!) ones - why not?)

That's all in the garden for this spring. The great thing is, we can use this garden as an experiment. If something doesn't work, we can try again in the fall, when Texans have their 2nd gardens of the year (this never ceases to amaze me).

So! Very exciting. I love having a garden. There's something very meditative about it. It forces you to be patient - after all, there's no rushing a seed. It's so basic: a seed, soil, water, and sun. But yet it's a miracle. Each little seed, when it sprouts, is life, green and fresh, coming out of something cold and dormant. I find it absolutely amazing. Which is why I probably prefer to grow from seeds than planting seedlings someone else has grown.

This garden will also be even more meditative for me, since my job is in Houston - a high-rise building, right in downtown. High tech and loud, traffic and busyness. Then a drive from city to country, and I put on my gardening boots and get my watering can and go tend the veggies. (The watering hose won't reach far enough, and I'm ok with it). It's such a wonderfully charming, simple thing to do. But there's nothing more wonderful in summer than a fresh salad you pick off of your own land, wash it and eat it. I just love it.

Noel has already asked how long before we have cucumbers. :) I kinda thought after last summer he'd never want to see a cucumber again!

Greeeeen Acres Is The Place to Be!!

We have arrived!!! And Texas has welcomed us with open arms!

So now I guess I can show you our new house.

Now for an inside tour. First the living room:

It's a HUGE room. We have the living room in the front part, and our library/sitting area in the back part. In this picture (of the library part of the room), Noel is standing in front of my writing nook, a little area with my writing desk and a nice window view.

One of the many cool things about older homes (this one was built in 1915) are the built-ins. Here's a gorgeous cedar bench built by the owner's father years ago:



He also built this gorgeous cedar built-in, also in the living room. I love the colors of the wood (Note lounging lazy cat in foreground).

Our bedroom is lovely, with a built-in vanity in the corner. Love it!!

We have a bathroom, but I didn't take a picture of that. I also skipped the other bedroom, which is currently Box of Stuff Central. It will take a while to get through. :P

The hallway has a cool built-in too:

(Ok, seriously, I promise to take new pictures Post Boxalypse).

We have a laundry room (currently full of empty boxes):

And of course, no home is complete without its heart, the kitchen. The kitchen in this house is GORGEOUS.

And the kitchen has a built-in too! Love this!

Also, it sits on a 165-acre working farm! The landlords of the home still work the farm. How neat is that?

See? COWS!! (In the background, I didn't go through the Cow Patty Landmine field to get a closer pic). (Although I did actually shovel cow poo today, but that story's for another day.)

And because this is Texas, there are also cow skulls!! As decorations!!



Because nothing says "Welcome To Our Home!" like animal carcasses.

Here's the hay barn:

And the requisite red barn with watering trough (or as my cousin John said, a Redneck Swimming Pool):

Here's the view from the front of the house:

And from the side:

And to the back:




We've also even found a cool restaurant/bar place to go for dinner (our landlords recommended it). It's a fun place called Othie's. They have pool tables, air hockey, live music on weekends, and food. BIG food. (This is Texas, after all!) I ordered a country fried pork tenderoin, and this is what I got (beer glass included for scale):

Needless to say, we made 3 meals out of this. YUM.


So here we are, happily in Texas. Even the kitties seem to like it. OH! That reminds me! We have barn kitties too (well, technically they live under the house, but still). I'll get a picture of them as soon as I can. They're skittish, but SOOOO cute (a mama & 3 kittens!!).

On The Move!

We're on the way! Tonight we're in Meridian, Mississippi. Tomorrow we plan to arrive in Texas, if everything goes as we hope it will!

I saw the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile today. Exciting stuff!!

Wish us luck on the rest of trip!

Boxes, Boxes, Boxes!

Guess what I've been doing?

Fun stuff.

You know what would be awesome? Having movers to pack up all this crap and drive it where we want it. It would keep me from (1) cutting my thumbs on the tape dispenser, and (2) having to drive the big humongous truck I've had to rent to get everything to Texas. I'm a bit nervous about driving the truck, but it'll be yet another big adventure, right? I'll take pictures.

Noel put the deposit on the house yesterday. We're both very excited about it - so excited that I don't actually want to say anything about it yet. I'd rather show you when I get there! I haven't seen it yet, but Noel described it and it sounds fantastic.

And I'll be getting to Texas in time to plant a garden for the early summer! Yay!

Big News!!

Hi everyone! We have big news today!

I was offered the job in Houston and have accepted it! I start on March 21st.

So this week is Frantic Packing Week. Noel is still in Houston working, so the cats and I are packing up the house. Noel feels horrible that he can't be here to help, but I told him that he can unpack everything. LOL

Seriously though, it's interesting to see how much crap you can collect in a house within a year. It's even MORE interesting to see how much crap you actually move from one house to another. I've got a ton of magazines that for some reason I have been hanging onto for at least a year, some for several years. Now, granted, they may have pretty stuff in them, they may have neato recipes, but how often do you look through older magazines that have been sitting on your shelf for ages? Um...never. So I got rid of them.

Why pack it, if you don't use it?

Anyway!

We'll have more news very soon about the house we're looking to rent. The one I had listed in a previous blog was already taken. Dang. BUT! Noel found a real keeper today, and he's planning on putting the deposit on it tomorrow. It's going to be really fun. More details later! I don't want to jinx anything. :)

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

Well, my trip to Texas is quickly drawing to an end. I leave on Wednesday morning (tomorrow) to head back to the mountains of NC.

Noel is not coming with me.

This sucks.

Well, it doesn't suck that he has another job starting soon, and the one he's on now is still going. Employment is a good thing.

But being apart is really, really hard.

Sigh.

Ok. So in other news, no word yet on the job that I interviewed for. Hopefully we'll hear something soon.

We've been busy driving around, looking at places we might want to rent, and I've been daydreaming a LOT about my garden this year. :) We just have to get moved in time to have a garden! Other than that, our time has been weirdly divided - with Noel working on night shift, we didn't get to see each other as much on this trip (or go out and do as much) as we would've liked.

We did manage to see not 1, but 2 cowboy parades! Very exciting. :)








So that was the extent of the trip, really. Now comes the hard part - leaving.

I'll miss you, honey! We'll see each other again soon. :)

Where's Kelli?

Where am I? Need a hint?

Ok, how about another hint?

Not sure yet? Does this help?

Donkeys!

Ok, last hint. This should do it:

Flat? Donkeys? Oil? YES! I am in Texas!! Outside of Houston, to be exact!

I came to visit Noel as a belated birthday present (my birthday was 2 weeks ago), and also because I had a job interview here the other day. No word yet on the job - we'll see.

The kitties are being well tended by my dear Aunt Betty. Thank you for taking such good care of the boys!!

Anyway, it's great to be in the same time zone with Noel - he's been here for a month, and that's a long time to go without seeing each other. He's still working night shift though, so our together time is limited to a few hours a day. Difficult, but certainly better than nothing!!

He is a sweetheart - look at the gift he bought me for Valentine's Day:

Purple tulips!! Love them. And it's so nice that they're a living plant - they've already got 3 more buds on them and are just gorgeous.

So while I was prepping for the interview, I didn't go out much. Since the interview though, we've taken the opportunity to do some exploring. Noel found a cute house that might be a potential if I get the job and we move to this area soon:

Isn't it ADORABLE? An absolute dollhouse. Huge back yard too. Perfect for gardening!

(Speaking of, I'm obsessing about my garden for this year. Am toying with the idea of planting a purple garden - there are so many purple plants. Wouldn't that be fun? Purple broccoli, purple carrots, purple lettuce, purple basil, lavender, purple tomatillos!)

Noel found a gorgeous church that he pointed out to me the other day. I went by there today while he was sleeping at the hotel, so I could get some pictures of it. Gorgeous, no? The steeple is stunning.

Of course, knowing me and my sometimes stupid life, I didn't realize until too late what else was going on:

Oops.

For those of you who don't know, I have an uncanny ability to walk up to churches in the middle of funerals. Once I was admiring a car in front of a church, not realizing that it was the family car for a funeral until I looked up and a gaggle of people dressed in black were staring at me from the church steps. And another time, I walked into a church while they were preparing the body for the funeral. I have a gift, really, for dead people. Yeah.

ANYWAY. The church was so lovely! And being that it's a Catholic church, it had the stations of the cross. But instead of being plaques inside the church, they had a park set up across the street with individual crosses, with a plaque for each station on its own cross. This park featured a huge live oak in the middle of it. Gorgeous tree.

So of course, this was the perfect opportunity to do a few Things in Sky pics:

Now, speaking of gardening, I went to the local home improvement store and checked out their plants and such. It seems that this far south in Texas, they actually have TWO planting seasons, early spring and early fall. How cool is that?

Know what else is cool?

You can grow avocados here! (Or as the locals say, Avacodos. Apparently.) Catlyn - I took this picture for you. :)

Noel, who is not a guacamole fan, can't understand my excitement over the avocado plants. But! You can also grow key limes! And gardenias! Sigh....if only there were purple gardenias.

Also found a fun piece of graffiti:

Heh.