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.

Meanwhile, our contractor had installed our very expensive kitchen faucet to then tell us that while it might have been given an “A” in “Design World,” in fact it was a piece of crap and he decided it warranted an “F.”  Apparently, it came with an integrated supply line that was too narrow. (Trust me, I didn’t know what that was either until about 2 weeks ago – it’s the hot and cold supply lines that are permanently attached to the faucet.) Since the lines weren’t the proper size, if we wanted a drink of water, let’s just say it took a really, really long time to fill up an 8 ounce glass. Want to fill a pot with water to make pasta? Forget it, that’s at least a 20 minute task.

So while it looked good…

It needed to be replaced. So we went out and bought a new faucet that was half the price with two separate supply lines that would hopefully give us something that resembled a steady flow of water and not the trickle we were dealing with.

We also managed (I say we but Lynn did all the work) to put up one wall of kitchen cabinets with doors!

And while I had written in my last article about having a dishwasher that was useless because it wasn’t bolted to anything (an “F” in my book), Lynn did manage to screw it into our temporary plywood countertop which meant it was instantly usable and thus quickly became an “A.”

Meanwhile, the bird that had been creeping me out in my last post (she gets a “D” for scary) was really just sitting around waiting for her little birdies to hatch. They now spend a lot of time poking their little heads out of their nest while they wait for another bird to come and give them a worm or two to eat! I desperately tried to get a photograph of this happening in action but the bigger bird start flipping out at me when my camera kept “clicking” (no dumb ass it’s not a gun). Plus, Lynn was yelling at me that the bird was going to attack me! Geez! So this is the only shot I got.

The other Herculean task we managed to accomplish last Memorial Day weekend was some of the planting. Problem was there were so many weeds, it took us nearly 5 hours to dig them up before we could even start to plant! Which means by the time we got ready to plant, I could barely move. (I know that’s an “F” for being out of shape!)

Still this year, I put in at least 4 different kinds of tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, acorn squash, basil, carrots, spinach, Romaine lettuce, plus seeds that promise to sprout pumpkins and sunflowers!

I also planted a fair amount of marigolds hoping like last year that they will in fact keep the animals away. It obviously wasn’t going to work instantly though since last weekend we saw an “abbondanza” (as the Italians say) of animals with glimpses of at least 2 bunnies, 3 deer, a chipmunk and a very large snake hiding in the garage.

One of the bunnies immediately went for the carrots and when I tried to “shoo” him out of the garden, he freaked out and started hurling himself against the fence! Really, it was quite a sight to see. Luckily, he did manage to find a big enough hole in the fence to squeeze himself through. We’re hoping he was so traumatized by this experience that perhaps he’ll think of the garden as an evil place? (I’m kidding.)

This weekend we found new connectors (elbows and such) sitting on the floor waiting to be somehow hooked together so we have new PVC that will directly feed into our sewer line. (Yes, it does in fact look like a installation piece at a museum!)

Right now we have an old cast iron pipe that our contractor revealed was actually leaking in several places. This means since we’ve discovered this that when we flush the upstairs toilet, it leaks into a small hallway. (That’s a definite “F.”) So we try to flush as little as possible (when it’s yellow, let it mellow, when it’s brown, flush it down), but sometimes we forget.

Meanwhile, back outside, the meadow and the wildflowers this time of year are simply stunning. (That’s an “A.”)

My only concerns are that while I seem to technically have plenty of strawberries, (green leaves and little white flowers), I have yet to see one berry or even the beginnings of one.

The garlic however, seems about less than half the size that it was last year but perhaps I’m rushing things? When I did, in fact, check my pictures of garlic scapes from summers past, they actually came to maturity in early August.

I’m not going to grade my gardening skills or give a letter grade to what may or may not grow this season. Summer break is nearly upon us and with enough weed pulling, watering and good old sunshine, hopefully everything will bear fruit.

Oh yeah, on the drive home, even the gas station wanted me to do a survey to give them a grade! I “opted out.”

The Red Door at the Red House

But two hours later when we decided to do a bit of a road trip up to the mountains, this is what we greeted us.

An Early Snowfall

I thought it was gorgeous actually and it made me crave heart-warming things to eat.  Since we had recently watched the French film The Secret of the Grain, I started to think of a couscous I could make that would be perfect to whip up in the wok (aka the only pan that works really well on the ONE burner).

Filled with shrimp, chick peas, fresh cilantro and grapes (because I had some leftover), it made a simple but lovely dinner.  But before we could eat it, we needed to work on one of the projects that was our raison d’etre for being at the Red House that weekend — namely putting in some insulation in the dining room.

Funny thing, the room we spend most of our time in (and cook in, too) is also the coldest room in the house!  That’s because there’s absolutely no insulation between the dining room and the bathroom/laundry room addition which in its current state is simply a shell. We went out and bought some of that pink foam board and with the help of some furring strips, managed to hang some of the foam board and a few pieces of sheetrock.

What I didn’t count on was the fact that this part of the house was falling apart so even attempting to screw in the furring strips caused a few old beams and bricks to give way.

The Mess

Lynn labored at doing this but as usual we ran out of time and finished less than half a wall.  Leaving the Red House that afternoon, I looked at the bamboo that dies each year but somehow manages to come back stronger and lusher than before.

The Bamboo in Winter

For some reason, along the way home, I started to think about making a chicken pot pie.  Why I was craving chicken pot pie I don’t know other than it was cold outside and the combination of pie crust, potatoes, chicken, peas and carrots all cooked in a lovely cream sauce just sounded really good.

A few days later, I was able to pull the dish together albeit not at the Red House. I cheated a bit and made the pie crust (flour, ice water, butter) in the food processor, then rolled it out on my slab of marble.

Pie Crust for the Chicken Pot Pie

Prior to that I had cooked the potatoes, peas and carrots and tossed them with some chicken I had boiled earlier in the day.  Mixed together with some heavy cream and some dried tarragon, this was my filling.

The Filling

I baked the whole thing in the oven at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes and yes, it was pretty yummy!

Awesome Chicken Pot Pie

And as we were eating it, I was still thinking of the snow we saw that day and knowing there is much more to come.

A Winter Wonderland