Good morning! Sorry about this late post, but Tom and I have been busy drinking coffee, complaining about the road-race supporters ringing cowbells outside our bedroom window, and designing a kitchen. Tom has decided that he wants to replace the kitchen in our soon-to-be house before we move in, so we are having an enjoyable time planning it out. As he fusses over appliance and cupboard placement, I have been studying photos of 1940s-era kitchens to get ideas about period colors and hardware. Style magazines of the decade heavily promoted red and white as kitchen colors, although a peculiar slate-green also surfaces fairly often. They were also big on matching: as in bright red linoleum, bright white cabinets, bright red Formica counters, bright white housewife in bright red-and-white-checked apron.

Today will be a housework day, and a studying-the-home-inspection-report day, and a trying-to-comprehend-the-mortgage-paperwork day. Still, we remain cheerful, and I cannot wait to start reaming out the hideous overgrown flowerbed in the front yard. I've already discovered a sweet little stone retaining wall, and a peony and a lilac, and a few iris. The rest is a mystery waiting to be unchoked.