Which is worse: Luan doors or having no flour or sugar for two months?

 I am now prepared to answer this question, and the answer is this: Having to look at flat, orange-y 1990's era Luan doors every day is worse than a lot of things, including changing up your diet in a new and pretty drastic way. Really. It is. 

The Road to Hell may be paved in good intentions, but the Closet Doors of Hell are probably Luan doors

I've been doing the no flour, no sugar diet for two months now and feel great, except for the first three days, when I alternated between feeling like I had the flu and feeling like I wanted to kill everyone who crossed my path. (The body does not give up its carbs easily). 

While I was dealing with a whole new way of eating, we replaced three of our nine Luan doors, which unlike dieting, felt good from the moment we started loading the old doors on the truck to when we painted and hung the new farm-style doors in their frames. So, the verdict is obvious. New doors for the win, every time. 

Farewell, hideous doors, and may a choir of angels sing thee to thy rest.

If going through a few days of keto-acidosis felt like having the flu, the Luan doors have been like a visual flu virus in our house. They are to the eye what a hard diet is to the body, I am convinced.  Maybe I'm too sensitive about my surroundings, but I have a somewhat philosophical take on doors -- they take us into new places, welcome us back into familiar ones, and make a statement about what's inside before we ever lay a hand on the handle -- so how they look is important. They should say, "come on in," rather than "abandon all hope ye who enter here."

Was making my diet healthier for my aging body important to me, too? Sure it was. But honestly, I saw those awful Luan doors a lot more than I saw myself in a mirror each day, so that's why I'd vote on the ugly doors for being harder to live with than suddenly not being able to have bread and dessert. 

A pleasure for the eyes to behold! 

And with all this renovation going on inside, I have to say that changing my diet up for the healthier could not have come at a better time. Not a day goes by when something new doesn't get painted, hung on a wall, or moved around. It's nice to have an even energy level throughout the day as I work. We're settling in to a new, somewhat Luan-less house now (six more doors to replace before we're done) and will have lots going on in the next few weeks as we race to the finish of the dry season in Oregon. This is a magic time, when paint dries quickly and outdoor work can be done any old time, and it's quickly is coming to a close -- the leaves are already beginning to turn up here. 

So..body, lighter and brighter, and doors lighter and brighter, too, as we head into the last part of the year. Hope your late summer is filled with plenty of loveliness, too. 

I still see summer...

but it's giving way to autumn.

All the little things

It's been a year of big things but a summer of little things. Little things are, after all, what ultimately makes the world go 'round, whether for good or bad. A magical day is usually comprised of a bunch of good little things. The Roman Empire fell because of a series of bad ones.

Around the homestead we are finally in the swing of growing, picking, and prettying up outside, and touching up, refining, and replacing inside. I'm in the process of painting all the trim upstairs white, which means a little bit of painting, every day. And I've also been refinishing the oak trim downstairs, removing old water damage on the sills, and re-sealing with stain and polyurethane clear coat. Every day there is some little thing inside this house that's improved upon. Or outside. And that feels good. Because even if it takes 1,000 little improvements, once they're all done it will add up to the house looking great -- one big win for us. 

I don't know about you, but I actually enjoy a series of little tasks so much more than one large one. If I can spend my days doing 11 completely different things -- outside for this, inside for that, I'm generally pretty happy. In high school, I was a sprinter, never having been any good at distances. Perhaps it's the same principle. Put forth a little burst of energy for one thing, rest, then move on to the next thing. 

Here's a little of what we've been up to around here:

There's always laundry, but no rain means drying outside.

pumpkin dog biscuits

 

Cukes, zukes and tomatoes coming along nicely. Big Ag did a fantastic job on these raised beds, and the hay bales in the back will be planted soon, too!

Goodbye oak trim. Hello crisp white paint. Wall painting next!

Speaking of painting....exterior house painting coming in September!

A country bouquet to brighten up the house.

More lawn removal

Here's an ariel shot of the domestic end of our homestead -- our house and yard. Our acreage is off to the left side of this photo and can't be seen in it, but it's there, just down the hill beyond those trees.

If you see the highlighted areas in the image, that represents the second portion of lawn we will be killing and getting rid of this summer, as part of our back yard renovation plan. As you can see, the front yard has already had its lawn removed and drought-tolerant landscaping has been put in.

So if we took out half the lawn in putting in our front yard landscaping, raised beds, and chicken coop/run on the right side of the house, this new project will remove about half of the half that's left. Meaning in three years, we've taken out 75 percent of our water sucking, useless, non-edible lawn, which should bring us to a point of well exceeding the State's mandate that we reduce usage by 25 percent, due to the current drought.  

I'd love to take out even more, but we are leaving a bit of lawn on the back and side of the house, first because we can't landscape over our septic tank, and second because we plan on having a fire pit and want to be able to apply the sprinklers to it if it's ever necessary, since it's rather close to the house.

So I'm already excited, dreaming of what's going to go onto those highlighted areas -- more Spanish lavender, more red hot pokers, and more ceanothus, plus some other natives I've been wanting to try -- including milkweed, main food for the lovely Monarch Butterflies that live around here part of the year. Plus a larger patio area for entertaining. Who says water conservation can't be beautiful?

And the best part is that easiest phase of the project comes  first: shutting off the water in those zones, sitting back and letting the summer sun bake the unwanted portions of lawn into dead, yellow straw, which we can then just landscape over. 

And then the creative planning and real physical work begins, probably next winter.

All part of moving things forward in a (very) dry land.