A View From The Cottage

At this time of year, where we live in North Carolina it is sunny and warm with a hint of much warmer weather coming close behind. But this year so far has been quite different from the norm. We had a long, bitter cold, gloomy, wet winter that went well into spring. Spring has been about what we usually experience during the winter, temperatures in the forties with rain and very little sun. We had a heavy frost on our last frost date and it has been below freezing every night this past week. I am almost afraid to see what the summer will bring. Last summer we had 8 inches more rain than the state of Washington, when we usually worry all summer about water conservation. I don't get it...
   My garden is really behind schedule, partly because I had a two month long bout with pneumonia, which took a lot out of me, but also because the weather has been too cold and wet to get the spring crops in the ground. But on days when it isn't raining, I have been putting in cool weather crops like chard and lettuce, cabbage and kale. Maybe with the weather being so cool I will still get some cool weather crops harvested before it starts getting hot.
   We have had many project underway at Heart's Ease Cottage over the winter and several are now drawing to a close. The foundation work we did in the late summer and the water management work my husband obsessed over all winter are completed, making way for a project that I have been dreaming about since we bought the house in 1989. We are building a deck off of the kitchen area with a covered area for having meals out of doors and flagstone patio area in my kitchen herb garden. The deck will soon be completed and hopefully someday soon it will stop raining, so I can begin implementing my new herb garden plans. I will be putting in a flagstone patio across the sidewalk from our new deck and expanding my present herb garden to reside along the left and the right of the flagstone patio. I am very excited!
  I have been working on another project, a bathroom remodel. I am finally to the point of putting paint on the walls! The renovations began with me pulling up the composition tile, (not much fun by the way...), and putting down mosaic tile. I have wanted to do that for years. We replaced the sink and cabinet with a pedestal sink and closed in our deep square skylight tunnel, fitting the ceiling with a reflective tunnel and cover instead. Finally, all the construction work is finished and I have put the faux finish background on the walls, next I will be stenciling the walls with stencils that I designed and cut myself. The end is in sight and soon I will be doing a post on the whole project, including some tips and how-to's for the decorative paint finishes and stencil creation. Until then here is a photo of the progress of the project.