Our First Aniversary

1 year ago today...

From Super-Duper Wedding Album (click link if you want LOTS more wedding memories!)

We got married! It was such a fun day, such a wonderful celebration, so special to have our many good friends and our amazing families came together for a terrific party. The weather was perfect, the food was great, the band rocked, and everything just came together like clockwork. And you could say more or less the same about our first (married) year together too. Life is good! :)

Tonight we are celebrating by going out to dinner at Nimbus in Bellingham. I've never been (I ate at a previous restaurant in the same location, years ago, but lots has changed) and I'm really looking forward to it. It's at the top of one of the tallest buildings in town, and I timed our reservation so we will get to enjoy the sunset during our dinner. How romantical!

Hitched!

We are officially married now... pictures can be found at 9-8-07. Wooo!

Busy Day

Moira helped Cary and her Dad calculate the bracing angles necessary to re-inforce the observation tower to withstand an onslaught of wedding guests.

Dave came out also and made good progress on the railing. The observation platform feels really safe and sturdy now. :)
I fertilized the lawn, worked over all the container plants, and then put my signpost up at the branching of the trail between the house and the parking pasture.

In the evening a fellow from Lynden came and delivered the hay bales we bought from him, and Cary and Nick stacked them at the edge of the yard. We got a really good deal on them because they are three years old - no longer good for feed, but perfect for seating around a bonfire.

Pasture Mowed

Earlier this week our next door neighbor, Mannix, kindly mowed our pasture for us as an early wedding present. It looks about 70% larger now that it has been mowed! We're going to use this pasture as wedding parking and camping. Depending on how fast the grass grows, we'll probably mow it again a few days before the wedding. Mowing it now is great because it will be all nice and green with new growth instead of all brown and stubbley.
Here's the view looking back towards the entrance to the trail that goes over the bridge and back to the house. We're planning to hang a large banner/sign between the two trees at either side of the opening to help people notice it.

Thanks Mannix! It looks terrific. :)

Tower Improvements

Dave came out on Sunday, and we added stairs to the observation platform. Much better than the ladder!
We also roughed in the railing around the top of the platform - it needs some more supports before we call it done, but it already feels safer. Big black thunder clouds moved over us all day, but it never actually rained more than a few drops on us - too bad, because now I have to water the lawn.

The bridge got a railing too, and the brush clipped back away from it.

We also started working on our signs for the trail, but that will be a multi-day project because waiting for paint to dry is boring.

Also - I mowed the lawn again! Now that's excitement. It just keeps looking better all the time.

Cary's Aunt Chris & Uncle Reimar came down in the afternoon and helped with the tower railing and spreading wood chips on the path, and then they camped overnight in our field and watched the meteor shower. This was the first time anyone's camped out here since the house was built, so it was an inauguation of sorts, or perhaps it would be better to consider it a trial run on the wedding accomodations. They declared it quite comfy. :)

Bonfirewood

That's two fewer piles of logs around the place, which is a good thing also. This is for the wedding night bonfire, now we just need to make the fire pit bigger.

Wedding Work Party

This Sunday, August 5th, we are planning a wedding work party. Anybody who is available to help, we would appreciate your labor! We're planning to work on at least some of the following projects (depending on how many folks show up and what y'all are motivated to do):

~build the observation tower
~spread wood chips on the trail to the parking pasture
~make & install directional signs on the trail
~build the rest of the cedar rail fence
~cut up and stack firewood for the fire pit

We've got a good selection of gloves & shovels & wheelbarrows and the like, but feel free to bring your own tools & equipment if you think it would help.

And of course we'll be firing up the grill and drinking some beer in the evening!

Mowing & More

My parents brought their nice new riding lawn mower over this weekend, and we mowed the etire lawn. We've mowed some parts of it once before, but this is the first time it has all been mowed at the same time. Here's Cary about halfway through: That thing is fast! Since mom & dad got this new mower, they also very generously gave us their old walk-behind mower. It's self-propelled, but I get the feeling that mowing the lawn will take a lot longer than an hour with it. :)

After the mowing was done in the back, Mom & I pulled crab grass. It came in the fill we brought in, so luckily it isn't in the whole yard, just the area right around the house. Even so, there was lot of it, as you can see from the wheelbarrow below.

I'm normally not a stickler for weed-free lawns, but crabgrass is really ugly when it gets big, looking like a starfish or an octopus, with huge thick stalks growing horizontily along the ground before turning upright to produce big seed heads. Of course it is extremely fast-growing, so this happens in a blink of an eye. Naturally, it is also really hard to pull up by hand. The stalks just break off (they remind me of corn suckers) and each one can sprout into a whole new plant. The only way to get them out is to dig them out, roots & all, with a small trowel. Mom shows off a (small) fresh kill, below:
Meanwhile, Cary used the mower to make hay in front of the house. This section of the field just got press-ganged into the lawn! It looks a bit brown and stubbly this morning, but with repeated mowing it should green up and get used to the idea that it's a lawn now.
By the end of the day, after much mowing, raking, and weed whacking, the place really looked great - although of course there is still more raking and mowing and whacking to do, not to mention sweeping the grass clipings off the porch. :)
What we did today produced a huge transformation in the look and feel of our yard. I can really really REALLY see our lawn as a wedding venue now. It's actually going to work! Sweet.

1/2 price pottery sale!

We now have FIVE beautiful huge ceramic pots! One round one in varigated green with a bamboo-leaf motif, two conical blue & black ones, and two traditional-flower-pot shaped ones glazed green on the top and left unglazed on the bottom. We also have a couple of big bags of potting soil... now we just need some plants! or some seeds. Haven't decided what we're going to grow yet, but the idea is to have some pretty flowers all blooming at wedding time. :) With that in mind, we might have to go back for even MORE pots this weekend...