Engagement anniversary.

Last weekend, while everyone here was celebrating the 4th of July, we were in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky celebrating our engagement anniversary. Every year we mark the day we met, the day we got engaged and, of course, the day we got married.

We stayed at the West Family Dwelling house, built in 1821, in a restored Shaker community. Shakers were celibate and in their housing there are two entrances, one for women and one for men.

And two staircases. Because, you know, walking up stairs is so carnal.

This was our room. They have reproduction Shaker furniture and the style is spare and peaceful.

After we checked in, we had a picnic on the lawn near our building. During the 105 years that the Shakers occupied this property, they built 260 buildings. There are 34 buildings remaining.

In the 1700's, some folks broke off from the Quaker meeting and formed a more charismatic religion, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. They were dubbed "Shaking Quakers" and later "Shakers" because of their dancing and shaking during worship. They followed a God they saw as both male and female and believed they were living in the last millenium and that, as sisters and brothers, they should not marry and had no need to have children.

The Shakers were farmers and craftspeople, and sold produce, vegetable seeds, wooden products and candles.

On their farms they raised cattle and sheep, and produced woven goods.

They were innovators and made a number of labor-saving inventions, like the first water tower in the state and a washing machine.

The Shakers had a "hearts to work and hands to God" philosophy, a melding of spirituality and practicality.

The Meeting house where the worship services took place, was used for a time, after the community dissolved, as an automotive garage. There are still oil stains on the floor.

One Shaker innovation was the flat broom, which was more efficient than other brooms at the time.

I absolutely love Shaker dressers. If I could have managed to sneak this out, I'd have done it.

We toured several of the buildings. This one had a staircase that lead to a door that opened to nothing at all.

Or, at least, would have opened if it weren't for this old padlock.

Everything is so solid. The wide plank floors, in spite of their age, don't squeak at all when you walk on them. Aren't they gorgeous?

My favorite thing is the curved bannisters in the main building.

There are two of them, one on each side, which curve their way through three stories.

The land is enclosed with beautiful stacked stone fences.

The doctor of the community encouraged weekly bathing (far more frequent than the norm at the time), hard work, and a diet of plain, simple food. Consequently, the Shakers tended to be long-lived.

This anti-Shaker cat, who preferred lazing around to hard work.

I also liked these cheerful beehives. If I were going to keep bees, I'd definitely paint their boxes bright yellow.

Parts of the property were left as meadowland, which I'm sure the honey bees appreciated.

The Canada geese who live by the pond are road hogs who moved slowly and grudgingly out of the way when we drove through.

I wouldn't have wanted to be a Shaker, of course, but this place was just so serene.

Especially in the evening, when everyone who wasn't staying had cleared out.

Two years ago we were at a B&B in Asheville deciding to get married. Feels like a lot longer ago than that.

Front yard update.

Three years ago today, I was living in the new house I'd bought a month earlier and just starting to work on the landscaping. It was basically a plain grass yard, with minimal plantings at the foundation.

The clover that we put in to replace the grass is pretty full now. The instructions that came with the miniclover seed said it could be kept to a standard lawn height by mowing it occasionally. But we looked at it a few days ago and decided we liked it tall and lush. Why should we have to mimic a conventional lawn? It's starting to bloom a little and I'm very happy with it.

From the first crocuses through daffodils and tulips, bulbs continue to send up flowers in waves. Asiatic lilies are in bloom now.

The liriope and other perennials along the new walkway are full now.

The birdbath is absolutely covered up by coneflowers. I only planted a few but they have spread profusely.

This is a purple d'oro daylily plant, which makes no sense at all. It's a purple version of a stella d'oro, which means gold star. So why didn't they name it a stella de viola?

The same view of the house as the first picture, taken today. Quite a change, isn't it?

It's never too late to do something different.

One of the big things going on in our lives of late is a mid-life career change for my husband. He was deeply unhappy with his work in the corporate world, trying to juggle competing demands from the heads of the company and not finding much in the job that felt valuable. I hated knowing how much he hated it. When the company started struggling and layoffs ensued, I saw it as a wonderful opportunity. I offered to pick up the financial slack and take over kid duty when he needed to be in class or at a part-time job, and urged him to get trained in something he would feel good about doing. And so, he enrolled in a program to get certified as a Clinical Medical Assistant. With that certification, he could work as a phlebotomist or EKG tech or more generally in a hospital or physician's office. My only condition was that as a needlephobe, I could not let him practice on me! After months of evening and Saturday classes, and lots of studying in a field completely new to him, the course wrapped up with the national exam. We went out to celebrate!

Several days later, he got his results back and found out he didn't just pass the test, he aced it. I pulled out the bottle of bourbon I'd bought to mark the occasion. Because I never had a doubt he'd do well. And he posted this incredibly sweet thank-you: "When I told her we should bring back a couple of bottles of wine from Italy, she said "How about a couple of cases?" When I told her before cooking a fish and chips dinner that I was going inside to batter the cod, she raised an eyebrow and said "Is that what you boys are calling it these days?" And when she could tell I was tiring of a business world that was taking a very real physical and mental toll on me, she said "whatever you want to do we will make it happen"."

Ready for the 6-week externship, which he is now two days into. It was a scary move but, I feel certain, the right one. He's been happier and more relaxed even since just starting the program. And when he came back from the first day at the medical office where he's been placed, he was smiling and wanting to talk about it. That in itself makes it all worth it.

Other times, it's a run of funny things.

Like this sweet potato seal I found.

Or a cherry turkey.

Or maybe a place to stop for lunch when you're feeling blue.

And then I saw a joke on a friend's facebook timeline:

Dad: "What's a pirates favorite letter?
Kid: The letter Arrrrrgh?
Dad: You'd think it be the letter Arrrrgh, but they be enchanted by the C's!

I had to try it on my kids, leading to this exchange with my older son:

I walked right into that one!

A run of odd things.

In the last few minutes of the last appointment of the day, I heard a loud thud and then spent too much time watching this scene out the window.

 And then I unwrapped a truffle only to find it was a chocolate Death Star.

Worse, I went into the fenced-in back yard to plant something and saw this on the ground. That's right, a severed duck foot. But why? And how? My theory is that it is the work of El Chupacabra.

But on the other hand, a little house finch landed on my husband's messenger bag when he was on his way to class. That makes up for the rest of it.

My tiny war on weeds.

I said I'd follow up on this grassy weed that springs up all over the new clover lawn. Given the root structure, I didn't think it was an actual grass but couldn't find it online or in a weed identification book I'd checked out from the library. I did, however, find a website that lets you send in photos to ask a local expert.

Someone at the ag extension from a neighboring state provided the answer: Yellow nutsedge, "a troublesome, difficult-to-control weed." Apparently I am to be thankful it is not the even more aggressive purple nutsedge.  Sedges spread by underground tubers, so my plan is to just keep pulling them out as they pop up. Thank goodness it's a small area!

More of my attention of late has been here. I love working in the little oasis that is my backyard. And nothing is quite as mind-clearing for me after a long day at work as sitting on the ground and pulling out weeds I don't want.

This is a weed I think of as "popperweed." It's actually called hairy bittercress and when the tiny seed pods dry, bittercress will shoot those little fuckers everywhere. Often into your eyeballs if you are weeding. It's a diabolically clever means of spreading its offspring far and wide.

This is another weed I tried in vain to identify and then sent into the ag extension site. It starts out green and pales to yellow and has hard purplish seedpods and tiny white flowers. I was told this is burweed but when I looked it up, that doesn't quite fit. Particularly since this weed has no spines and that's one of burweed's chief characteristics. I do believe it's a broadleaf winter annual but its identity is still a mystery to me. I pulled out as much of it as I could find and now that it's dormant, I'll wait to see what emerges next winter and pull more.

I declared a fatwa on this weed a couple of years ago. Creeping charlie (aka ground ivy) is not an unattractive plant but it will absolutely take over and choke out everything else. I want room for weeds I do like - clover, wild violets, wood sorrel, henbit, deadnettle - to spread. I have completely eradicated it from my front yard and flower beds, and now I've turned my attention to the back yard. It's a sisyphian task and I suspect I'll never quite get it all. But that won't stop me from trying. And when an entire vine pulls out at once? It makes me absurdly happy.

This is the one weed I will actually use an herbicide on. Because I want the roots dead. I am wildly reactive to poison ivy and it has brought misery into my life on countless occasions. However, I read that the key is not just using soap or a specialty wash, but to take a wash cloth and scrub any exposed area to thoroughly remove the urushiol oil from your skin. I've been doing that and so far, so good.

When the city recently repaved our neighborhood roads, they did so without any sort of notification for not putting yard waste out for pick-up. Instead, they shoved it into my flower bed. On top of blooming flowers. Not knowing why, I pulled it back out and added more to the pile. Lather, rinse, repeat. The third time, I dragged it out onto the newly-paved road, cut back all the leatherleaf mahonia that was growing through my fence from a neighbors yard and added that to the pile. And waited. This time, the city carted it all away. I suspect I'm known as the crazy woman who puts out endless piles of weeds. But I can live with that.

Has it already been a year?

In some ways it seems to have passed in a flash, in others it seems like we've been married a lot longer than that. I got a Groupon deal for photos printed on metal for five bucks each and had two from our wedding made. I braided the silk ribbons we'd used in our hand-fasting and framed the photos with them to hang on our bedroom wall.

Our anniversary was Sunday, so we decided to dress up and go out for dinner. It had rained most of the day but cleared up in the late afternoon and was very pleasant out.

We headed downtown to the restaurant that had catered our wedding night family dinner. My husband had called ahead and asked if they could re-create the dessert I'd requested a year ago. Not on the menu, but I'd remembered this restaurant used to serve a really delicious chocolate mousse. After the meal, they brought this out - on the house!

Of course, we'd also put back some wedding cake, per tradition, and I had taken it out of the freezer that morning. That and a bottle of our wedding champagne, and roses my husband had brought home that matched the ones I'd carried. We slipped our rings onto each other's fingers to repeat our vow - "Leis an fáinne mé pósadh tú agus geallaim mo ghrá" (With this ring I marry you and promise my love). I admit, we're sentimental fools.