Hi, everyone!  *waves* sorry for the radio silence over the past several months…  but as usual, low funds and busy schedules make Jack and Jenn dull MCM homeowners.  😛  Let’s see, what’s been going on:

At the start of the summer, Duck made a new friend…

…unfortunately she mistook the curious nose-boops through the window as an invitation to belly up to the salad bar on our back patio, also known as the container garden Jack has been working on all summer.

Enjoy our cherry tomatoes, girlfriend.  (You and your friends already ate our chard, peppers, and basil…  so what’s one more veggie among friends?)

Skunk has been his usual lazy self.  He is obsessed with building pillow nests on the long green sofa that was custom-made for the house when it was built…  dude has good taste (and a mastery of the dopey facial expression).

We’ve had a long run of lovely temps in the evenings, so we’ve been taking full advantage of the patio.  Jack found our old tikis in a box we hadn’t unpacked, and bought some citronella torches to keep the mosquitoes at bay.  We spend most nights out there grilling, listening to bossanova, and watching the sun set.  It’s heaven.

Probably the biggest project this summer was the overhaul of our front planter beds.  They were stuffed with overgrown old evergreen bushes, which blocked the view out of our big gorgeous windows:

After a couple of years of trial and error (mostly error — not a good idea to plant ferns under an overhang where they get no rain!  oops!), Jack finally tackled the project the right way and made them look SO much better.

After tearing out the leftover bush roots and prepping the soil…

(OMG doesn’t the view already look better out those widows, without huge bushes in the way?)

…he laid out bags of white gravel and these cute little Sweet Box bushes he bought, to make sure everything was spaced correctly.

…put our new little babies in the ground, surrounded them and our other existing plants with the gravel, and voila!  A much cleaner-looking front to the house, and a better view.  They’re already starting to fill in a bit, and next year will be even better.  Whew!

Enjoy the last few weeks of summer, everyone!  Talk at ya soon!  xoxo