A Week Without Baking (Almost)

In the way that everything happens at once, my house is being transformed from many angles. I've been busy with school and watching things get cut down, so not much activity in the kitchen. Take a look.

before

There used to be a forest in the yard, but some of the trees were dying. We decided to cut them down in order to save the two white pine trees where our hammock hangs.

Weston watched the action from a makeshift cage while Matt and I took some photos. The arborists used rope & saddle to climb up the trees instead of ladders or boom trucks. It was so cool to watch! Weston enjoyed learning the words 'bobcat' and 'chainsaw'.

This is the new view of the back yard. There's so much open land and sky. I think we need a basketball hoop and a fire pit. Yeah, that would be nice.

What to do in the open space?

 

Ye Olde Antenna

Before the trees were all cut down, our roofing team arrived and set to work.
First thing, they had to take down the crazy old antenna. It hit the roof with a thud and a crash when whoopsie! it came through the dining room window.
That first day seemed to take forever as the guys were getting acclimated to the new project. Of course, being slowed down by having to fix windows didn't help any.

Eventually they got down to filling up the dumpster.

And climbing up and down the ladder with stuff.

This is what the old worn out shingles looked like.
And then they were gone, to be replaced by 'felt' or tar paper. It's been slower than normal I think, but they have to pull off six or seven layers of asphalt shingles (which is too many, shame on whomever has been roofing this way!) plus the original wood shingles are still down there too!

We had to cut down the Wisteria vines that once shaded the West end of our porch because they were growing over the top of the roof and winding themselves around the gutters. And then suddenly... Ryan wanted to cut down the evergreen bushes in front of the porch too. It's so open I just don't know what to do!

All this activity began on September 7th and as I said before I haven't been able to make much food at home in the interim. However, last night a couple ladies came over and we made Dark Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread. I got zero pictures and misplaced the recipe. In my next post, I will put up the recipe and some photos of a new batch.