Peaches, Plums, and Berries…Oh My!

So Chris and I have learned a valuable lesson – never go shopping for plumbing fittings at Lowe’s because you’ll come home with a new kitchen appliance! Two weeks ago we bought our stove (impulse purchase!) and on Monday night we went in for some more plumbing fittings and walked out with a brand new refrigerator (it still has the plastic cover on it in the picture). Fortunately for us this type of impulse purchase can only happen one more time – we still need a dishwasher!


The rest of the week was spent installing kitchen cabinets and fixing plumbing. We only have two more to install – the cabinet above the refrigerator and the desk.


We tried to order countertops this week but we found out that it’s a lot more complicated than we imagined. Since we have an island, the options for the countertop material and edge are rather limited. So our options are to get an inexpensive countertop with an edge and material that we don’t like or get an expensive countertop with a color that we don’t like. We’re planning on going to some other kitchen or countertop stores this week to finally make the decision. We’re leaning toward the more expensive options for re-sale purposes. Hopefully before the month is out we can have our “reveal” photos for the first finished room!

On Wednesday night, our contractor came over to go over all the items on their list. We’ve been rather frustrated with them lately because everything that they do ends up making more work for us. One example happened this week. They had moved the 220 line for the stove and instead of the 4-prong outlet that is national code, they installed a 3-prong outlet. We made them switch it but in that process they ended up putting two big scratches in the new kitchen floor. We spent so much time on this floor and now we have to fix it. We’re trying to get some money back from the contractor because the list of similar items seems endless.


We spent most of this weekend working in the yard again – at least this time the temperature was much more bearable! Saturday was very windy and while we were out in the yard, a huge limb on one of the trees snapped off (several of the trees have some eaten or rotted wood). Chris climbed up in the tree to remove the rest of it. Later in the day another big limb fell off near the tomato/pepper garden – at least they weren’t close to the house.



Since we’ve become the owners of this money pit, we haven’t had too many pleasant surprises. This week, however, we found that we have several types of fruit growing in the backyard.

There is a huge bush in the backyard that was out of control (at first I thought it might be a rose bush) and we believe that it’s a huge blackberry bush. Under part of this bush are two trees – one is a peach tree and the other is a plum tree (we think!). Because these two trees have been smothered by the blackberries for many years they look a little sad but they do seem to be producing fruit. We cut enough of the blackberry bush away to give these trees some sun. We also have a big cherry tree in the yard and several strawberry plants near the house. Hopefully we’ll have a plentiful harvest and I can try my hand at making other types of jam this summer!