no house pictures this week. we spent the weekend gorging ourselves on thanksgiving leftovers and celebrating my papa's 58th (haha!) 87th bday. here's a few photos of a side trip we took on our way back home. oh and remember this?
same persimmon tree 2 weeks later: it's pretty neat to see it go through the stages from green to red to bare. think the persimmons are almost ready for my tummy.

harumph. someone ate my sugar snap pea sprouts over thanksgiving. it was probably the albino possum. he used to be my friend. he cannot be my friend if he continues to dine on my vegetable garden.

with the wall so purdy and painted, we're on to the next project. gutters should probably have been somewhere next on the list, but the yard needed some gussying up now that the wall is so fancy.
it seems that the previous owners (at some point down the line) were quite the gardeners. every time we dig somewhere in the yard we find old vegetable tags or shards of broken pots. last weekend we found the ghost of a vegetable bed and so we decided to breathe some life in to it.i sneaked in to osh hardware late one night and snagged the last of the starter plants. yellow globe onions, broccoli, sugar snap peas, sage and peppermint. then i went crazy and bought just about every seed packet available. i think it's probably too late to plant from seed but with our trusty friend, global warming, keeping our days so warm....it might just work. fingers crossed, please. then we can add to the list: dino kale, beets, shallots, carrots, arugula, romaine lettuce and chives.

six (or was it eight?) bags of planting soil and one bag of chicken manure later....we have a baby veggie garden!while i was busy sowing, curt was back at the concrete madness. we planned out the perfect stepping stones and curt poured the most beautiful garden stones you ever done seen...which i promptly stepped on. i got banned to the beach chair while he fixed them up again. now they're perfect, except for the paw prints from some little night rascal...

oh man, i'm sore. after a weekend of digging, shoveling, digging, shoveling, painting, raking and shoveling, my body is sore. curt too. i'm no lightweight. and look! for reals this time: ta da!
but let's go backwards first: we poured the steps last weekendthen inscribed and decorated (some seashells from various travels and a stone that curt found in our yard that looks like africa). we capped the wall off with a lovely finishing touch (we call it german finesse)of a little ledge all around.pulled yanked coaxed chainsawed took out the funky old stump that stood between us and a clear path in front of the wall,shoveled loads of dirt,and then busted out the painti don't even have pictures of the rose bushes we battled or the battle scars endured, but trust me. it was rough....luckily we still had enough daylight to fawn over the new colors on the persimmon tree, the hawks circling above and our perfect california light. not a bad sunday, eh?
and a quick before and after (click for a larger view):

we had a house guest last weekend...my parents came with their dog, milo, for a visit to the cabinhouse. they stayed with friends, he stayed with us. i don't think he's been so environmentally stimulated before. after trying to take on the neighbors' much much bigger dog, he finally settled down and went after the squirrels--a more manageable challenge. oh, and he liked the wall. so much that he kept trying to sit on it's very tiny edge.

it was an animal weekend, curt found a very tiny and very fast little critter running around the steps. he was relocated to a safer neighborhood.
i thought we were nuts for buying all of these bags for 2 little steps...shows how little i know about concrete. we have one bag left.
and last, but not least...the infamous NAMBLA (North Atlantic Mission Baseball League and Associations (no, not that NAMBLA...) commissioner hailed upon us from his new digs in thailand. mike, good to have you back in town for a hot minute...