My dear friend Leeds and I did the Whidbey Island Garden Tour the Saturday after Dom and I returned. The above picture is a sample of the wonderful private gardens that are opened to the public just once a year. This particular one had a bevy of interesting features including a large electric train installation, interesting sculptures, a barn turned music studio, an old farmhouse turned guest house, ponds, streams, estate-sized lawns, woods and an antique tractor. The weather was fabulous--more like Italy than Washington State.
After a busy Fourth of July weekend spent in Seattle, Dom and I took in a Seattle Mariners day game on July 8th. Unfortunately it rained (hence the above shot of the roof closing) and it was a really horrible game. Thankfully the M's have been doing better since then and go into the All Star break only 4 games out of first place in the AL West.
With company expected last Saturday, Dom and I put on a full court press to finish up a number of projects around the house. In addition to repainting the front deck and planting all the deck pots, we finally finished our winter bathroom remodel. There were quite a number of fiddly things to be done--recaulking under the tile baseboard, painting the door, the woodwork around the door and a good bit of the hallway, touching up paint on the walls, installing the towel bars and tissue holder, all the cabinet hardware and the wood threshhold. On Saturday morning I cleaned the bathroom and finally put down the new rugs and hung the new towels. All we need now is some art for the far wall.
Here is one of the large pots I bought to replace some horrible wooden planters that we took out last summer when we painted the deck. My deck fountain well did not fit into it but we managed to construct an alternative using a couple of large plastic buckets. I repainted the fountain and now it is a fair imitation of an old terracotta pot. Behind it I have planted some things that can hardly be seen from this angle. I have also added to another eight pots. Even so I have actually reduced the number of pots I have to water this summer by about 25%. The vegetable garden is coming along pretty well--lots of raspberries, swiss chard, carrots, peas and eventually squash and beans. The chipmunks seem to get all the strawberries and the onions did not do very well.
On Saturday a number of my Forest Ridge high school classmates came to visit for a mini-reunion. From left to right are Kim, Claudia, Mary, Maura, Julie and me. Kim's mother and husband also came as well as Dom. It was fun to catch up with everyone.
On Sunday my friend Sally and I gave a baby shower for Leeds' daughter. Here you can just see Leeds and the soon-to-be-parents, Jen-ai and Eric. It was mostly the Alpental gang as Jen-ai was an Alpental baby herself and Eric has also been around the mountain "forever." I provided the food so, in amongst everything else I have done the past week, I was busy making cupcakes, iced tea, crostini and tapenades, etc., etc.
Boy, was I ever happy to have today to recuperate! We have two weeks before the next big event but so much has already been done. It will be nice to get my desk cleared off, do some reading, a lot of weeding and then start ramping up for more guests on the 25th.
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