Quick and Dirty (no, really. see the last photo)

 So...all of this stuff has happened recently. 

I made Michael install a fan.

 I can't sleep without air circulation.

 We enjoyed a fabulous weekend at a friend's lake house. Thank you, Sean!

 We hosted visitors (Michael's parents) and promptly put them to work.

 We had some fun too.

 But mostly we just made them work.

 We hosted more visitors. We didn't make this group work though. They were already exhausted from their cross country trip including song-playing and movie-making. (Really, I'll do more on this later but it will require a loooong post to explain the peculiarities of this story).

 Pep made fast friends with the band/movie crew. He'll sleep with anyone willing to be lazy with him though. 

 Drywall went up on the stove wall. This wall wasn't particularly difficult. 

 The bay window walls were a bit more difficult, requiring the building of mini-walls.

 Michael installed canister lights.

 Aren't they pretty?

 We attended a birthday party for two of our friends that entailed me sewing a Medieval dress for myself and a tunic for Michael. It was a lot of fun!

 The bay window turned out quite well, especially now that I've accepted that the walls will never be truly level in this house. Sigh. 

 And we started to work on slapping drywall on the sink wall. This was truly the most difficult part of the project so far. 

 Frieda developed some separation anxiety. She sits with her head up on the back of the couch and watched and wimpers every morning as Michael drives away. 

And we've acquired a mud dog.

And the sad thing is that this won't even be considered catching up since I can't currently locate my camera cord therefore, all new photos are off-limits.

Photos to come include finished kitchen drywall, mudding and skim coating of all the walls in the kitchen (I'm so excited at how good it is looking), and pulling up the laminate floors (plural!) that have been laid on top of the lovely hardwood in the kitchen.

The Comeback Kid

 After my last garden related post, my dad made a quick call suggesting that perhaps (even though I had already dumped a ton of lime on the soil) that the soil was perhaps still too acidic. His pH meter, on loan, was placed in the mail the next day. 

And in the meantime, I took the suggestion of one commenter and threw on as much nutrition as possible in the forms of fish emulsion, epsom salts, and an organic, all-around fertilizer.

A few days later, the pH meter arrived confirming a very, very low pH reading, something like a pH of 3-4. So, more lime was unceremoneoulsy dumped on the garden. 

At that point, I wasn't counting on any plants surviving let along giving us any produce.

And while I have certainly lost a few plants, on the whole, the garden seems to be turning around. 

And keep in mind that these photos were taken last week and each of these plants have probably grown by 50-100% since then.

 One lost tomato plant on the left but a thriving basil on the right

 A few tomatoes truly taking over their cages

 Vibrant habenero plant

 A suddenly thriving eggplant, baby eggplants and all

 One humongous zucchini plant and one struggling zucchini plant

 These cukes now fill out that back fence

 I hope our St. Louis friends love canteloupe because they will probably be coming out of our ears

 Corn!

 A cuke and an invader

 But seriously, does anyone know what to do about an ant invasion? They are killing this zucchini plant.

 The beans are finally taking off

 And the herb garden is really filled out, although that was never really an issue

 Mint and dill (and catnip, until I hacked it down last week) are taking over the world, or the herb garden

German chamomile, another victim to the ant invasion

Pay Attention to MEEE!

Though not as jealous as my parents' gorden setter, Malena, Frieda sure does love attention. And she'll happily take said attention from anyone. 

 Michael

 Nora, a friend's bassett who loved to push Frieda around with her nose

 Grandpa Reindl (maybe she gets the attention seeking from Michael, as he is loving some back-scratching attention from his mom in this moment)

 Grandma Reindl

 Michael, again

 Andrea

 And every member of the band 6-person band/film crew that spent a whole 24 hrs with us a few weeks ago. In this picture she is seducing Phoebe and Dan.

 And Aviv

 Rachel

 Dan, again

 Chelsea

 And of course, Pep

But she always comes back to Michael

Frieda took her first trip to the dog park today and had lots and lots of other dogs paying attention to her. I'll try to remember to snap some photos of the doggie-cuteness next time we go. 

As a side note, as you may tell form the blurry photos, I am pretty adamantly an anti-flash photographer. I apologize, but not really because I'm not changing my ways.