Country Living Update - Happy Birthday to me, and Purging Neutrality

We are settling in at our new country home. The arrival of Max is imminent. While there is an enormous amount of unpacking left to do, and mountains of junk remaining at our old place in Fells Point, there have been two big accomplishments in the last couple weeks.

First, I got my birthday present from Debra:



It's my very own Troy-Bilt rotor tiller, with counter-rotating tines. I've already staked out the garden. As soon as I find where I can get a big pile of aged manure, I'm going to have at it. I also have to either convince Debra it's no big deal to carry a load of manure in the back of her Element (I'll put down a blue tarp. Jeez.) or get a hitch put on it.

It's looking like I'll be buying a hitch.

The other accomplishment is I got rid of the last roomfull of horrid wall-to-wall carpeting in the house. When we bought it, the whole house except the kitchen was wall-to-wall carpet. The color was "neutral". I loathe neutral colors. Nothing says "I don't really live here" like neutral colors. The very first thing we did upon taking possession of this house was to rip the neutral carpets out and put in hardwood floors. This took a couple weeks for the floor material to come, and to be installed, and to be finished.

But there was one room we decided not to put in the wood floor, and to put down carpet tiles. We got fancy artistic tiles called "Interface Flor" from the quite expensive but environmentally proper Blue House place down the street from our old house. I kind of see this place as the death of Fells Point. It used to be there were mom and pop antique (junk) shops all over Fells Point. Mom and Pop decamped for Perry Hall as soon as they could sell out for the big bucks, and now we have Blue House. You won't be finding any used vinyl LPs or 1970s silk shirts or pulp porn paperbacks at Blue House.

Anyway, this Interface Flor (learn how to spell, you think you're Ikea or something?) stuff has a little web tool where you can lay out the design of your floor. I spent a lot of time messing with this. I decided my favorite designs were of the "crazy patchwork" variety. Most of my designs appalled Debra. When I went down and ordered it myself, there was much consternation in the household. "Couldn't you just get a few shades of green?".

Today I installed it. Debra's father was visiting. They are both very disturbed by the floor, er I mean flor. Debra eventually reached "It's not as bad as I thought."

I love it.

Here's the newly installed flor [sic].



Here is what it looks like looking in from the screened porch.



And here is with furniture added, looking in from the side door towards the kitchen. Debra's cookbooks will go in the bookcase.



And here is the Noble Hound curled up in my chair waiting for me to come and sit down with him. Isn't this cozy?