Fall colors

I finally have a few pictures of our new home to post. I was excited to get some shots of the fall leaves in our front yard.

View from the curb

We love our apple tree

Cute little stairway on the side

View from the deck (It's way better at night)

These trees turn such a brilliant red in the fall

The back yard certainly deserved to have its picture taken before today, but fall colors will have to do

Revenge of the Wasps

Yesterday morning I took a branch off one of the beautiful oak trees in our new back yard to be examined by the staff at Millcreek Gardens. I had noticed a particularly large amount of puffy, green nodules on the branches that seemed to be killing the trees.

I was told that the nodules were called "galls and that they were caused by a tiny, silver-winged wasp that creates them to house its larva.

The kind man at Millcreek told me that unfortunately there was not much I could do, but removing the galls might help. Well, better said than done. There are thousands of these galls on our trees. Regardless, I set about walking through my back yard with a large garbage bag in hand, determined to pluck as many of the little suckers off as I possibly could. 

Tonight as we were driving home we ran into what I believe was an indignant group of these ferocious little beasts. Thousands of the winged things began pelting the car as we stopped at our local gas station. They were literally raining from the sky like some cliched 1960s creature flick. I could hear Jason screaming as he quickly pumped a couple gallons into the car. We got out of their as quickly as possible. I have never seen anything like it! My skin is still crawling. Yuck! Jason said the lights must have attracted them, but I have to wonder if they were really just getting their revenge.

Step one… The house

It's officially ours!

When I saw our home posted in the online real estate listings I wasn't remotely interested. We had only decided to drive by so that we could use it as a comparison for what what we called "the Sigard House," a beautiful older home in SLC, Utah that we'd been determined to make ours. When Jason peeked into the backyard however, he told me we had to make an appointment to see this place. It only took one visit with our friend and realtor Tony Reece for us to forget the Sigard House completely. The inside was immaculate and comfortable, but what really got us was the lot. The scrub oak filled backyard felt like a mountain retreat. The previous owners had obviously put a lot of time and money into this place. Hollyhocks and Hastas lined the side yard and all of the beds were overflowing with Sweet Woodruff. There were grapevines on the well kept wooden fence and a beautiful stone walkway winding through. I was in heaven and now I can stay there.

I must add a thank you to Tony for helping us find our dream home. Tony put so much time into making sure we found exactly what we wanted and he made the whole process so fun that I nearly decided to become a Realtor myself. Tony is so charismatic, so thorough, and so knowledgeable. I would recommend him to anyone trying to buy or sell their home. THANK YOU TONY REECE!