Moving, Progress and Tall Tales

First things first I guess.  We've moved as some of you already know.  Our days at the Cox Farm Road house have ended.  We'll miss it and all the flora and fauna that came with it.  Yes, even the snakes!

Ahh...memories...

Our travels and moving adventures took us right around the corner...literally.

That's the turn sign for the old house in the front yard of the new house.

And now we're here...for only a few months we hope.

From 4 bedrooms, 2 baths to 2 bedrooms, 1 bath.  It's...cozy.

The move has been an adventure. as we mentioned, but it was made so much easier by hiring movers through the U-Haul website.  We've used it to pack up from Vienna, unload when we got here last summer, and now again to move down the road.  We've never had a bad experience and the movers this time (Olsen's Affordable Movers) were excellent.  They helped us load and unload 3 truckloads on one of the hottest days we've had.  I've got them on speed dial for our move into the new house!

Speaking of the new house...we've got a brand new, shiny roof.

When the sun hits it, the space station has to draw its blinds

Who wants to help us set the record for most fried eggs on a roof?

The plumbing and electrical have all been roughed in and now they are starting on the interior heating & A/C, by installing the duct work and coil for the heat pump.

It feels cooler in here already.

Duct...duct...duct...

GOOSE!!!!

Sorry...I couldn't resist the joke.

Next week we hope to have the exterior walls and inside of the roof spray foamed (insulation) and later this week the windows (and maybe doors?) will be installed.

Moving on to the garden...

Neta has certainly demonstrated quite the green thumb this year.  I'd like to say that my masterful plowing and discing of the garden, along with the years of "pasteurized" soil were the main culprits, but a lot of the credit has to go to Neta.  Usually after just a few minutes of garden work, and I do mean "work", she is covered from head to toe in dirt from all of the weeding, pruning, digging, picking, tilling, crawling and TLC'ing.  (You don't even want to see her after a full day of gardening.)  For all that effort, she has produced stuff like this:

That's 22 pounds of tomatoes...and that's not all of them.

There have been numerous peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, cantaloupe and watermelon.  Our last watermelon, on Saturday, almost needed moving help to get it home.  She has made some delicious refrigerator pickles and processed and frozen a bunch of tomatoes.  Even Emily got in on the game and made a batch of pickled green tomatoes that were so good I didn't think they'd last the first hour after we opened them.

We also have some really large (they weren't supposed to be!) pumpkins growing as well.  But my favorite of all things in the garden has to be the sunflowers.

That PVC pipe is 10 feet tall and it's not a tall as the tallest one!

I told Neta when she bought the seeds to "go big or stay home".  She (and they) did not disappoint!  I've seen some tall sunflowers, but these make me happy.

Big as a dinner plate!

Sun...flowers

Blooms everywhere!

Only thing missing is the stars

That's it for now.  We hope to have more news later this week or next.  Our schedule is staying busy with a family reunion (Neta's paternal grandmother's family) this weekend, a trip to Maryland next weekend, my brother and his kids will visit for a day later that week and Neta's brother and his family coming up for a visit the weekend of the 30th.  July has been and will be a busy month!