Peony Update

My peonies are behaving the same way they did last year: strong start, but then their growth levels off and only one plant produces a viable bud. Now that we have a house with a yard, I plan to transfer them from their large deck pots to the ground where they will hopefully thrive!

(Last year's posts are here, here, here, here and here.)

Here are the cuties on March 29:

And here they are now:

Let's hope the single bud blooms!

Kitchen Teaser

After weeks of take out, frozen meals and the occasional gifts from generous friends, we have a start date for the installation of our new kitchen cabinets: April 16! This means that one week from today we will have new cabinets, a new counter top and be in the home stretch of our kitchen remodel. I don't want to post the before pictures until I have the after as well, so here is a little "kitchen-in-progress" teaser:

During the process of measuring for our new floor, we had the pleasure of discovering that one or two layers of the kitchen floor was asbestos tile (there were four layers of flooring on top of the concrete slab). This is not uncommon in a house built in 1960 in Northern Virginia and since we want to put in new flooring, the asbestos had to go.  An abatement company came in yesterday to pull it all up and dispose of it properly (i.e. dig a hole and bury it).

For your viewing pleasure, here are pictures of our kitchen as it looks now:

If you look closely, you can see the gas hook up to the right of that cabinet. My gorgeous new double oven range is looking forward to moving into its new home!

A sad empty square that will soon be a beautiful kitchen!