Getting Ready!

My parents have a very old home.  About 150 years old.  They have been working on it for years.  Each year they tackle a problem or redo a room.  Well, the wedding gave them a little more momentum.  Since I was home last January they have redone..

The upstairs bathroom, the downstairs bathroom and the entire kitchen.  They have also repapered all the walls downstairs and many of them upstairs and refinished most of the floors. They do most of the manual labor themselves, though my strapping younger brother did alot of the heavy stuff.  Better Homes and Gardens meet This Old House.  I am seriously impressed.

So now we are working on the outside.  There has been a heat wave lately so outside work means lots of sweating, swearing and water breaks. So while my brother was on a ladder painting the house (he should get a medal!), I was pulling weeds from flower beds.  I need to be careful not to get tan line because of my strapless wedding dress, thus this fetching ensemble…

Obviously I am totally glammed up for the wedding!

Fall Foliage

It is fall in Ankara.  The days are warm, the nights are cool.  The weather is lovely.  The leaves are starting to change-sort of.  I think it is because it is not quite cold enough that the leaves are changing color patchily. The colors are not particularly vibrant.  But after living in California for three years, a little yellow on the trees and leaves on the ground feels like autumn to me. 

However, my conception of autumn and foliage has been forever ruined by the standard.  Nothing can ever come close.   Seriously.  My parents have ruined me for fall anywhere other than New Hampshire. 

In the fall our home is surrounded by brightly colored trees.  In front of our home is a pond, and when the light is right the trees across the pond reflect on the water and it looks like they might catch on fire. 

There really is no competition.  As lovely as every place I have lived and visited, truly nothing compares to the gorgeousness of the New Hampshire woods.  Sure the power goes out occasionally.  Yes, your cheeks might feel like they will freeze off in the winter.  Driving home can be a death defying act on the narrow, dirt, ice covered roads.  But…

 

Really.  There is no comparison.

 

See this photo?

I receive photos very similar but very different several times a week.  This is the view off the front porch at sunrise.  My mother sends me sunrise photos from home about three times a week.  They are my favorite emails to find in my inbox.