Making an indoor garden

Our new house has a window box in the kitchen, so we were obliged to start a herb garden, obviously. That beautiful basil plant in the back was from Ananda, but the rest -- pots and soil included -- were financed by my parents. I bought and planted the herbs a few weeks back, and they look (and taste) happy their new home.

I started with sage, oregano, thyme, basil and parsley. Since we already have rosemary in the yard, I think I'll add mint, cilantro and more basil in the future.

We've always had house plants, but I don't have any experience gardening, per se. Aside from a few herbs and a honeysuckle on our deck in Vancouver, Michael and I haven't grown anything outdoors.

While these herbs are in our kitchen, they are the precursor to our outside projects: namely, greens in the garden and tomatoes and strawberries on the deck. I suppose we'll have to get started on those in the near future, what with it being spring and all.

Goodness

When you move into a new house, people buy you treats called house warming presents. I've never experienced this in full force before now. Maybe you have to move into an actual house? We've received flowers, plants, booze and chocolates from our lovely friends, including this British Easter chocolate haul from Robyn, who lives in London:


I realize that I've been posting about the house a lot, but even so, I haven't had time to write in as much detail as I would like. I hope that I'll have time for more reflection after we get back from our trip to California (where we get to stay in this room for one night). We've only been living here for one month, after all.


March has also seen life beyond the house. Last weekend Michael and I went to our first roller derby. We were floored by how many people showed up. Everyone in Victoria! Except no one that we knew (well, except for the host). We watched Victoria's Eves of Destruction decimate Vancouver's Riot Girls. Our favorite part was the diversity of the people in attendance - all ages and all sorts. Our least favorite part was sitting on the arena floor. That's what you get when everyone in Victoria shows up before you.


The weekend before we went to the IMYGRATE exhibition at Olio Co-operative. In 2008 we found one of the IMYGRATE characters -- a scuba diver/space man -- on the side of Oxford Foods. We brought him to Italy (the instructions beside the character told us to take him with us), left him in a cobblestone alley in Florence, took a photo and emailed the evidence. Thankfully, I randomly heard about the exhibition (which is a precursor to a book), and we saw our photo and accompanying email on the gallery wall. I was too shy to take a photo, but this one shows you how many characters were created for the project.


One of the other things that we've been doing lately is eating great food. In addition to cooking some fabulous meals in our giant kitchen (three times the size of our old kitchen), we've enjoyed memorable meals at Choux Choux Charcuterie, pictured above, and Brasserie L'Ecole. Things are pretty good, friends. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

There are photos

I've posted photos of our house on Flickr. Finally.

Making breakfast for our new roomies

On Sunday, we made a Dutch Baby for our new roomies. The recipe continues to be awesome, as does our new housing situation. This weekend I also found time to take on a few small projects, which I'm pretty sure I'll tell you about soon.

Bathroom window

I only have one picture for you today, and it's not a picture of the inside of our house. Instead, I'm sharing the view from our bath tub. I love me a bathroom window, especially when it comes with a magnolia tree right outside.

We've spent the last few nights by the fire, recuperating from our ambitious unpacking schedule and trying not to get sick. Soon we'll get to focus on the fun stuff, like gardening and house warming parties.

Moving house

We moved two apartments into our new house in one day.

Aside from the aching muscles, moving was the easy part. Who can complain when one of our helpers (i.e. Jen's mom) made our beds for us?

The hard part is unpacking. It's almost as difficult as the packing, but - thankfully - without the deadlines.

At least we have some boxes like this to keep us going. I'm itching to show you some actual photos of the house, but I want to wait until we have a few more boxes unpacked.