back online

So, we moved. And as of yesterday evening, we’ve got internet! To everyone who’s commented or emailed me: I’ll try to catch up over the next couple of days, sorry to leave you waiting!
It was a pretty chaotic week and we’re still completely exhausted but we’re loving our new place and are busy settling in. We did four whole days of painting walls and ceilings, putting up wallpaper in one corner, installing laminate flooring (oh that we could afford wood floors!) and base board and lights and finally, assembling furniture. We just barely got done in time and on moving day we were already so tired and sore that we were about ready to drop. But with the help of our amazing friends and family we got all our stuff hauled over and two days of unpacking later we’re making ourselves at home here.
There’s still a ton to do of course and while I’m looking forward to catching up with comments and emails and blogs the main priority this week will be getting as much done as possible and getting a day or two of rest in between before going back to work next week.
So I’ll leave you with some fall pictures that didn’t get posted before moving and get back to my to-do lists.

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checking out

We’re a week away from getting the keys to our new place and once we have them there’ll be walls to paint and laminate flooring to lay down.
Multiple trips to Ikea, formal stuff to take care of and then hauling all our stuff over, dealing with scared kitties and settling in. We start packing this weekend, so in case I’ll not manage to squeeze in a post or two, see you some time in November!

And as I can’t have a post without pictures, here’s a couple film shots I took with the OM-2N of Dana last weekend (because a week from moving I had nothing better to do than dust off the film equipment and scanner, obviously):

pony shots and more news

The weather continues to change at a quite literally dizzying pace. 14°C and wind yesterday, 30°C today.

On the cool days it feels like fall is already here.



(trees reflected in a trough)
On the warm ones the air is stuffy with humidity and the rich smell of overripe elderberries. A last attempt at the summer we never got this year.


But on to the news! We finally found a great apartment and will be moving in November! I didn’t want to say till we signed the papers but now everything is settled. We really love the new place which will make leaving our pretty but small flat less bittersweet. It has a huge balcony which I’m looking forward to planning a garden for and is situated in a cute little village not too far from our respective work places (my commute will still be about an hour though, which I plan to use for reading and knitting). I’m still not looking forward to moving all our stuff and furniture and cats, but I guess that part of moving is never really fun. So while we wait to pack up we’re plunging into the fun part of moving: the planning and gathering inspiration and colors and, eventually, the shopping.

gardening 2011 – part 5 and some other news

I finally managed to get a nearly full balcony shot:

As you can see the zucchini has become enormous but despite fertilizing it once a week the leaves are going yellow. We are still regularly harvesting huge zucchinis though.
The cucumbers and tomatoes (behind the zucchini) are also doing great. We’ve only had one cucumber so far (which was bitter unfortunately) but there is another one or two growing now.

The other side of the balcony isn’t looking quite as lush, because we only just resowed some salad greens in boxes.

The sicilian peppermint is looking (and smelling) great though and the tomatoes have really taken off. I truly didn’t think they would carry so much, we’ll have a much bigger harvest than I expected.

We ate the first ones just today, yum!

Homemade garlic rosemary bread with farmer’s market wild garlic cheese and homegrown tomatoes and basil…it doesn’t get any better than this!

I’m writing this feeling a little bittersweet about it. We only just found out today that we will need to move out of this apartment as soon as possible. We’ve been here for about five years and love this place. Still, it has gotten way too small for the two of us plus the kitties plus a lot of stuff and hobbies and we would have started looking for a new home in winter anyway. But as it happens, a legal battle our landlady has been fighting with the city about some fire safety measures has, after years and years, finally come to a conclusion which is that they need to take this whole place completely apart, walls and all.
So we’re looking out for something new and green and countryish and hopefully lots larger and with maybe a bit of garden to go with it (or at the least a large balcony). I’m not really looking forward to packing up us and all our stuff and all those plants and planning and painting and moving and scaring our cats but move we must and I guess we’ll be happy about it once we’ve found something nice and gotten settled.