June at VMF

Last week at the farm was a busy one - gardens to put in, lots of mowing and weeds to pull, cleaning the pool, and not to mention the continuing saga of our house remodeling (still in the design phase). Fortunately, despite a few rain showers, there was enough good weather during the week to get all that done as well as attend the Case board meeting on Friday and Saturday.

The garden looks pretty good, and the lupines were especially pretty this year, as you can see in the picture at right. Don't know whether we'll actually get a chance to harvest much this year, but I put in a full garden anyway: tomatoes, beets, bush beans, lettuce, baby bok choi, peppers (sweet bell and serrano), and the Japanese soybeans called 'edamame' that you get in Japanese restaurants - that's an experiment!

Still working on the house design, but now we've added to the 'team' a kitchen designer, John Hall, who is making great headway in getting us a really wonderful kitchen design that is respectful of the 1920's character of the house as well as incorporates modern features of living. I have spent a lot of time learning about architectural and design styles of the 20's and 30's and have found that many of the ideals of the Craftsman movement resonate very well with what we are trying to do at Villa Mir. The Craftsman home typically had open floor plans, with rooms flowing into one another and long views from one room to the other. Although rooms are not always large - and ours are not - they feel spacious and comfortable. Bringing nature indoors is another theme, with extensive use of natural materials - unpainted wood with visible grain, stone, and natural motifs. I like this quote from one of the books I consulted: "The Arts and Crafts philosophy held that an individual is not separate from others or from nature, but rather that the world consists of interconnected persons, each with his or her individual gifts and personal expressive style." Totally in keeping with the intent of the house when we are done! More on this later.

An annual task for June - always a joy! - is to clean the pool. This in-ground concrete monstrosity has been with us since the 1930's or so, is not covered in winter, collects leaves and muck and many sorts of amphibious and reptilian animals, and so what fun we have cleaning it out every spring! For those of you who remember helping with this task, I must tell you that brother Paul has made certain innovations which REALLY help - most notably the use of a power washer (why didn't we think of that!?) that means little hand scrubbing is needed. Its still dirty work, though. Jack and Helen and their friends helped out by catching frogs and releasing them to safety into the creek beyond. Still it was an all-day job, but now it is done and ready for paint, and hopefully we will get yet another season of swimming from it. I, for one, am looking forward to spending some hot summer days in July down there.