The lettuce grew so high it looked like I threw some really bad non-organic fertilizer (think: toxic) to make it grow. I didn’t. My mother says the leaves are bitter when they are that big but I don’t mind the taste at all.

Unfortunately the carrots and beets were mangled by a bunny rabbit or two or three or four. No worries, since we are surrounded by lots of farmer’s markets and quite a few Amish farm stands too which resulted in some very picturesque carrots! Perhaps it was the way the Amish farm wife wrapped the carrot tops in pretty red yarn.

Because when I unwrapped the carrots to prepare them for dinner, one of them decided to have some fun with me and “pose” for their fall carrot-themed jean line.

Since our first summer at the Red House Lynn has tried a couple of times to do pizza on the grill. The first time we simply threw the dough on the grill rack (big mistake), then scraped off the burnt but still raw (never could quite figure out how that could be) dough and threw it away.

I think we tried at least one other time, too but ended up using dough that wasn’t 100% and the pizza itself wasn’t worth writing home about let alone photographing.

When we moved out of the house on Long Island and into an apartment, I chucked a lot of stuff that I didn’t think we would ever use – a French coffee press and not one but THREE Italian espresso pots, ramekins of every shape and size and chipped dishes, cake pans, and pie plates, etc., etc.  Apparently I also threw out our stone pizza board, a wooden pizza paddle and an extra large spatula — all of course which I needed now even if we wanted to make pizza on the grill again.

I went to Walmart (I know, I know) but they had pizza “pans” for a mere 99 cents and I figured I would rather waste a buck than 10 bucks if the “pans” melted on top of the grill.

Lynn loves to roll out dough. My reaction to this is: BE MY GUEST. He also loves to hand grate cheese. My reaction to this is: GRATE AWAY. (Although for this pizza he just sliced up the mozzarella). I managed to open a container of pizza “sauce” that we picked up at the “fancy” supermarket in Syracuse even though I could have made my own for about $3.00 less. As you may have deduced by now I’m really big on making things myself rather than buying them. But suddenly I’ve changed. (Don’t believe those who say people can’t change, they can and do.)

He rolled out the dough on the new pans and this time  decided to “cook” the dough a bit on the grill first.

About 10 minutes later, he put on the sauce, the cheese and some fresh basil from the garden.

They did take a bit longer to cook on the grill than I expected but they turned out pretty darn good – thin crust that I like with blobs of fresh mozzarella and basil from the garden.

Back to the garden, I found a zucchini hiding underneath the leaves that was a monster!

Even when I cut him in half and filled the “boats” with tomatoes from the garden, I still had to figure out what to do with the rest. (Half went into a pasta dish and the other half was grated and made into zucchini pancakes!)

Unfortunately by the end of August when we came back up to the Red House, nearly all our tomatoes were gone, the weeds took up most of our garden and something is growing in one corner that may be squash or pumpkins or both.

In the meantime, I have to fight my way through the weeds and dig up the garlic. Yes, it’s that time again.

And even though Lynn was really cursing the entire time he was putting everything together, in the end he said it was “easy.” Go figure.

I feel I have to share once again how the original kitchen looked in 2010 just to give this story some perspective.

We also have two amazing hardwood floors in Guest Bedroom #1 and Guest Bedroom #2.

Originally I was going to get a laminate floor to save some money but the guy installing the floor (who came to do the initial estimate, too) advised us against it. Also we have hardwood floors throughout our teeny, tiny Long Island house and even 12 years later the floors still look great and are really easy to clean.

So in case you don’t remember what the floors looked like, here’s a shot:

Unfortunately, our master bathroom and bedroom are nowhere near completion…

So right now we are bunking in Guest Bedroom #2 (the larger of the two).

We also finally got some of the electrical work done – so no more fixtures literally dangling over our heads.

Lynn and I always have a problem finding products that we like (ceiling lights and bathroom fixtures are our two biggest challenges) so we decided to try and salvage the existing light fixtures. A can of silver spray paint on one of the bedroom light fixtures and some rewiring on a decorative living room fixture therefore were a good compromise.

And yes, we cheated a bit, too and picked up a really inexpensive Ikea light that looks like a spaceship!

With my kitchen nearly done (I’m having an issue with ordering the countertop I want but more on that in a later blog post), and my parents coming up to visit, I also baked. I know I complain about baking over and over again but not only did I make zucchini bread but I made a cheesecake, too! Originally the plan had been to make zucchini bread using the zucchini that was growing in my garden. Obviously, that didn’t happen but I can say I did get two huge zucchini from the farmer’s market – one went into the cake, the other went into some homemade ratatouille.

Originally I thought when we came up to the Red House our garden would be brimming with vegetables. I had planted zucchini, beans, peas, carrots, tomatoes and tons of basil. Unfortunately, we now have a very large family of bunny rabbits living on the property.

While they did leave me with some basil and a few tomatoes, they ate nearly all the peas and all the zucchini! (The carrots are still in the ground so I’m not sure of their status yet.)

I did start to harvest some of the garlic since this time last summer I had dug it up. I was particularly happy that I managed to grow a crop from some of the cloves I harvested last year. After digging up about 30 garlic heads though, I decided to let them be for another week since some of the heads were rather small.

One interesting side note to our time up at the Red House this summer has to do with a reunion we attended. Most people know I lived in Munich, Germany, for 10 years but some may not realize I graduated from high school there, too.

Since this was my 35th (gulp!) high school reunion and Lynn and I hadn’t been to  Munich since 2007, I decided it was definitely time to go back (especially since I had also somehow missed every single reunion prior to this one as well). Dare I mention that Lynn and I will be celebrating 35 years together, too, this October?

Consequently, while most summers are spent exclusively up at the Red House, this year we spent 10 days in Germany and 5 days in Italy. As usual we did a lot of driving and eating and gushing at all the beautiful architecture, vistas and of course food.  And while I love the Red House even in it’s unfinished state, I do want to share some pictures of the trip.

There were farmer’s markets brimming with fresh radishes, artichokes, beans, tomatoes and lettuce, as well as flowers in nearly every hue imaginable.

There were shots of castles on the Rhine as well as picturesque vineyards (even on a gray day), and too many pictures of Italian art and architecture to share but a handful.

And then there was the food. Bread and cheese, homemade pasta, beer and pretzels the size of basketballs, Apfelstrudel and pizza!

Of course after the Europe trip (particularly with nearly a week in Italy) and with a “real” kitchen, I had no excuse but to make my first Red House pizza in my new oven, too!

Truthfully, the oven could have been hotter since the crust came out soggy. (The leftover pizza that we warmed up and kind of burnt the next day actually tasted better.)

What I realized after this trip however, was how very similar the area around Munich (particularly Garmisch-Partenkirchen) was to upstate New York. Undoubtedly, it’s why I always liked being up here. Granted, the mountains are not as high, but we have very pretty lakes and streams, rolling hills, and gorgeous forests a mere hour’s drive from the Red House.

On a different and not so bucolic note, we came home from our journey to find bats in the Red House. Our contractor has been working diligently to replace all of the plumbing in the house primarily to put a bathroom in the master bedroom and in doing so has unfortunately created a few “holes” in the walls.

This has resulted in at least two bats trying to take up residence inside the house! We noticed this one night when we were watching a DVD. Suddenly one of us saw something fly by out of the corner of one eye with what looked like very dark wings. Lynn and I are not good with bats or any other type of scary monster-like animal for that matter. Consequently, we quickly exited the room, shut the door and ran upstairs.

The next morning, our contractor showed up and found the bat sleeping by the basement door. He put on a pair of gloves and simply picked up the bat and put him inside a plastic supermarket bag. Once in the bag, he took him outside and released him back into the wild! Since the bat slept through the entire experience, I can only conclude it was a “teenage” bat.

We thought the bat episode was over, until the next night we were watching another DVD and sure enough once again there was something dark flying around in the next room. So, we repeated our previous night’s performance by quickly exiting the room, closing the door and going upstairs. This night however, Lynn also decided he was going to “seal” us in the room – so underneath the doors he wadded up some placemats and a kitchen towel.

This didn’t bring me any great amount of comfort and truthfully, I woke up at 4 a.m. thinking I heard and saw something flying around the bedroom. Plus, I was really really hot since the room was probably around 300 degrees since we had put in new windows, insulation and now a new floor! (Okay, it wasn’t really that warm but it felt like it.) Plus, now that I was hot and annoyed, I really had to pee but was afraid to go into the bathroom. Note to self: this is why you’ve never been camping – you hate bugs, creepy crawlies, bats and other things that are generally scary.

Finally it was morning. Our contractor showed up again (in itself always a good thing) and he found the hole in the wall that he thinks the bats were flying through. He grabbed some insulation and filled up the hole. We have not had any bat sightings for about 24 hours now so I’m hoping this method worked.

I was also hoping that similar to Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” our very own “Puck” would emerge from the forest behind the Red House and tell us that the bats were only just a dream! Unfortunately, he did not, they were in fact very, very real!

I will leave you with this thought and image. We started our trip this year in Frankfurt, Germany, a city Lynn and I had never visited. We walked through the old town and came upon a pedestrian bridge called the “Eiserner Steg.” There on the bridge, similar to many bridges we’ve seen in Paris and Florence, were locks that had been affixed not only to the structure but to other locks, too.  As romantic history buffs will know, the padlocks when locked with a key, symbolize a love that can’t be broken especially since the key to that lock is thrown away.

Since I, too, am a hopeless romantic, I spent a lot of time looking at the engravings thinking I would find a couple who had the same initials as we do. Perhaps, instead, I should have been looking for a lock with the initials “RH.” After all, I think our relationship is pretty darn good after 35 years (especially since this is our THIRD house renovation). The Red House still needs a lot of work and love put into it – somehow I know we can do it.

When I’m busy (which is always), he offers to “help.” This could be something as simple as laundry, dinner, or gardening. In March, for reasons I don’t quite remember, I decided to attempt to start tomatoes inside our house on Long Island from seeds.  Now, I’ve never ever done this before but picked up a couple of those biodegradable fiber containers (with eight “pots”  per container), filled them with dirt, threw in some seeds and waited for them to grow.

Eventually a couple of thin green baby tomato plants emerged and this past week, I asked him to do some planting for me.  I (or so I thought) gently explained that since the composition of these containers disintegrates in the soil, he could just rip each one apart and put it in the dirt, so no need to try to transplant each and every one.

I, always being in a rush when planting, would have taken a knife or scissor to each box and dumped them in the ground.  This is what I found when I came home from work:

The Entire Cell Pack: Planted!

The entire container, as is, in the ground. I decided to just stand there in the garden and shake my head.  Who knows, maybe something will actually grow this way, but I doubt it. Furthermore, I didn’t even have a conversation with him about it.  I guess my silence was enough when he asked, “What?”

Meanwhile, back up at the Red House, it was Memorial Day weekend, traditionally, for me at least, the weekend I devote to planting.  Since I had a lot more “garden” than I’d had before, I bought a lot of plants.

I actually never had started anything from seed before (not counting the aforementioned doomed tomato plants) but since seed packets were oh so much cheaper than buying starter plants, I figured, what the hell I’d give it a shot. Therefore, the Red House now has green beans, acorn squash, pumpkins, zucchini, and sunflowers planted — all from seed.  What will and will not grow I’m assuming will eventually reveal itself.

Green Beans From Seeds

But I’m not an idiot, I also bought lots and lots of plants that were healthy and larger enough to start bearing fruit..shortly. This included celery and basil, beets and spinach, leaf lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, brussel sprouts, two different kinds of peppers, and even more green beans.  I guess now reading the list, I went a little overboard.

Basil, Celery, Tomatoes, Peppers

While I started planting, the first priority, however, was to get some sort of fence in the ground to ward off the deer.  Last year when we planted, the deer and I had a field day (they won) leaving me with nearly nothing to eat!  This year I was determined it would be different.  If I was spending this much time and money planting, I was going to make sure that I got to savor everything I was growing.

Lynn had found some metal posts hidden in the back of the garage a few weeks ago.  They would come in handy.

Simple Metal Posts

I actually thought they were ok as is. But oh no, apparently they weren’t “good” enough and Lynn spent nearly a day spray painting them green!

The New "Green" Posts (In Color Only)

Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it, really.

Getting into Memorial Day mode, I did put out our “lanterns” signifying the unofficial beginning of summer.

Red House Lanterns

Since I had already planned to do hamburgers on the grill when my parents came up to visit, I thought it would be fun to try and do pizza on the grill the night before.  Apparently I had forgotten that last year’s pizza on the grill was a disaster because I blindly went ahead and tried it again anyway.

I brought up the dough and rolled it out and thought if I put the dough on a wooden paddle board, I could simple “flip” it onto the pizza stone that was supposed to be getting super hot on the grill.

Pizza Dough

What really happened was, apparently you need to be very tall in order to have the height you need (in addition to great wrists) to flip the dough so it lands on the stone looking like a pizza pie should — nice and round.  When I flipped my sorry  little dough however, it came out looking like a map of the United States!  I kid you not — look at it, the key states are there — like Florida, Maine and the West Coast!

Pizza USA

Lynn thought it was good, I thought it was pretty bad.  I mean really, the crust was too doughy, the cheese hadn’t properly melted and there was just too much sauce.  Please don’t let me try and make a pizza on a grill ever again!

Meanwhile, my parents came up the next day, and while Mom helped with the garden, Dad had the unenviable task of helping Lynn with the fence.  It was also really hot that day, and Dad, not used to much physical labor these days actually thought it was fun! (He even wrote a story about it.) The “boys” did manage to get most of the fence up though before the weekend was over and for that I thank them both profusely.

My New Fence

Next time we’re up, I want to try out my new “gardening” boots. And hopefully everything I’ve planted will grow.

I Love These Boots (Kohl's $10.99)

And not just more weeds.  Even if they look like flowers.

Even the weeds are pretty!