catching up to spring

The close of April is hear, and it has been full of color here at our wabi-sabi cottage. Everything is waking up after a harsher-than-usual winter in the Kansas City Metro. The garden is going in, greening up, filling out. Garlic and parsnips, walking and green onions, clamored through the winter and are flourishing. Vegetable […]

“do you wanna build a snow-squid?”

What do you get when you combine a day off with streets too bad to drive anywhere with the most amazing playing-in-the-snow snow of a lifetime? A snow-squid, apparently. I did not go outside planning to release the snow-kraken, although I fully intended to play in the snow. It is after-all the *most* perfect playing-in-the-snow […]

that one tree

I am a Christmas tree junkie. I have put up eight trees in one house before. I’m making no promises that it won’t happen again in the future. (Sorry, Boo!) From my years as a florist, I hold onto a sense of lavishness in such things. From a combination of cost per investment, fire safety, […]

ST:TCT

My husband is a Trekkie, the rarer sort that embraces every series of the franchise. He has also struggles with enjoying the holiday season. Between his parents divorce and significantly older siblings during his childhood and a series of wintertime deaths in his adulthood, he hasn’t been sold the same bill of goods I have. […]

all through the house

Two years ago, we inherited some Christmas figurines from my husband’s Aunt Vertie. Apparently, she loved Christmas decorations (I had never met her). I love holiday decor as well. When we were presented the opportunity to select some figures for ourselves, we focused on a rather large scale holiday dinner scene. I was captivated by […]

make the yuletide gay

Kansas City got its first winter storm early this year, at least, early for my time spent here. The Sunday following Thanksgiving, our wabi-sabi cottage and gardens were covered with four to five inches of snow. Hoping to stay ahead of the storm, I got the house ready for the Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. […]

end of harvest…?

I made sauce this evening, the same “end of harvest” roasted green tomato sauce I found last year, but with a broader range of ripeness in the tomatoes I used. That said, I am hoping it will not be the end of harvest. I spent the afternoon out in the garden, cutting back the massive-yet-under-producing […]

garden macros

Three months of ninety degree heat, a week of fifty degree nights, and five straight days of rain have had an impact on the garden. Everything is overgrown and lush, but also interlaced with shriveled fruit, and crispy brown leaves. Each of nearly three dozen tomato volunteers are still setting buds, blackberry lilies are going […]

paving the way

Between full-time work, indoor projects, maintaining the established beds, and waiting for the budget to build back up, the gardens at our wabi-sabi cottage can be slow growing. Shopping places like Habitat ReStore encourages patience since resale and reused materials won’t show up in the correct clusters, so prioritizing projects can be dodgy, but I […]

doing with-out the dine-in…

The wabi-sabi cottage has the tiny kitchen typical of the era, the area, and its bungalow style. A patch job on the floor indicates that what is now a small dine-in kitchen was once two separate spaces, perhaps the kitchen and a butler’s pantry. The kitchen looks to have been redone some time near the […]