Spring Cleaning

Spring has sprung here in the DC area, which means cherry blossoms, tourists, and a thick coat of pollen. No matter what color your car is, it will be yellow for the next several weeks -- but you'll hardly notice through your itchy, watery eyes. The first week of April was pretty crazy, which is why I'm just not getting around to telling you about it. In a nutshell, we had two sets of houseguests (successive, not concurrent, fortunately) AND a landscaping crew here for most of the week. Our friend Paige has a landscape design business, so she helped us repair parts of our yard that were damaged by the renovation and/or all the snow.

Here are some during and after photos. We had them re-sod the front lawn, which was mostly weeds and bald spots before.



They created a planting bed on the driveway side of the house and transplanted the roses back to where they were before (more or less -- we're not sure which is which yet).


They cleaned up some of the brush in the corner of the back yard, repaired the stone edging, and created a new planting bed of loriope in front of it.

After re-locating the plants that had been transplanted to the back yard, they moved an azalea that had been hidden in the back corner and gave it some friends to keep it company. We didn't want to invest in re-sodding the back yard or doing much with this part of the yard until we re-build the garage, since it will go in this spot.

Last weekend, after all our houseguests had departed, we went to the garden center and bought a few new plants to fill in some empty spots. I also cleaned off my flower boxes, filled them with impatiens, and hung them on the front porch.
We added some lavender to the roses, and Josh created another small planting bed on the other side of the window well and planted some Russian sage.
We have been talking to SAI (our builders) about rebuilding our garage, and have gotten an initial estimate from them, so hopefully we'll be able to pull the trigger on that as soon as we get our tax refund. Yes, the tax credits from building a green house will help pay for the garage!

In other news, I had a celebrity sighting on the Metro Thursday morning as I was riding in to work. I was on the Orange line heading to Metro Center when I saw the Indian-American actor Kal Penn get on the train. You may know him as Kumar from the Harold and Kumar movies, or the main character in The Namesake. He was also in the TV series House but had his character written off the show so he could work in the Obama administration. I hear he now goes by his real name, Kalpen Modi, and works in the White House -- although I think I also heard that he will be going back to Hollywood soon. Anyway, he was definitely dressed like a White House staffer -- navy suit, American flag lapel pin, ID badge on a lanyard around his neck, Blackberry in hand. I'm not sure if anyone else on the train even recognized him. I discreetly tried to take a photo with my iPhone, but it didn't come out very well.
OK, that's all for now. I've got to get ready for a sleepover at our friends Scott & Paige's house. Josh and Scott are taking their son, Conrad, on his first camping trip tonight -- in their back yard. Meanwhile, Paige and I are planning a girls' night in with their two daughters. Should be quite a night! If all goes well, the boys can plan a more adventurous camping excursion next time. Maybe in OUR back yard... ;-)